Recently, Royal Carribean Cruise Line’s (RCCL) Vision of the Seas officially cancelled its entire 2021 summer season from Bermuda.
The ship was scheduled to depart from the island weekly, from June 26 until August 28, and travel down to Nassau, Bahamas and continue to CocoCay, also in the Bahamas, before returning to Bermuda.
Cruise management announced in an email that recent developments have been showing that cruises departing from the U.S. this summer are becoming increasingly more likely. With that likelihood, they have noticed that American cruisers are preferring to depart from their own country as opposed to a foreign port (such as Bermuda).
This is why they have cancelled this summer’s homeporting from Bermuda.
“While we are no longer homeporting from Bermuda, we still look forward to visiting the beautiful island nation with several ships from our fleet as we have done for many years,” the email read.
The cruise line is offering impacted clients two main options for compensation; a 100 percent refund or 125 percent credit towards any future RCCL cruise.
Vision of the Seas is the second RCCL ship to have their 2021 summer season cancelled, the first one being Odyssey of the Seas, which was supposed to depart from Israel. Only three RCCL ships currently have firm restart plans for this summer; Adventure of the Seas, which will depart from the Bahamas, Anthem of the Seas, which will depart from England and Jewel of the Seas, which will depart from Cyprus.
TNN’s Trevor Lindsay spoke with a Bermudian who had paid for the cruise, spa treatments, couples massages and various excursions months ago.
90 days before departing, Royal Carribean passengers receive a travel package. Thursday, May 20 marks 93 days before the lady and her husband were supposed to depart from Dockyard.
“Our next course of action is, instead of travelling at the end of August as planned, we are going away during the week of Thanksgiving to see an [American football] game,” she said. “We have asked RCI for a full refund, which could take up to 45 days.”
With an ocean view room and everything else that the cruise had to offer, the cruise cost the couple just over $4000.
“I’ve always wanted to leave on a cruise from out of Bermuda and return, it was on my bucket list,” she said.
Being such huge news for the island, she is surprised that the government has not released any sort of statement on it yet and tweeted the update directly to Premier David Burt.
“ Something [about this] should have been posted on the COVID Bermuda page or something like that,” she said. “This decision could not have been made overnight.”
TNN anticipates a response on this breaking story from the Bermuda Government shortly.
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