Posted on 09/16/2005 8:45:13 AM PDT by WestTexasWend
AUSTIN (AP) - Katherine Reedholm and her husband booked a seven-day Caribbean cruise out of Galveston as a family Christmas gift for the couple's four children.
Now, she says, Carnival Cruise Lines has canceled the trip to shift around ships to accommodate a $192 million Hurricane Katrina relief contract with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and offered the Reedholms a refund or the opportunity to book another cruise at a higher rate.
Reedholm says she understands the need to provide housing to refugees and emergency workers, who are living on Carnival ships off the New Orleans coast. But she says customers should be able to rebook similar cruises for the same prices they originally paid.
"All I see is Carnival profiting from the hurricane," Reedholm, a real estate agent in suburban Austin, wrote last week in a letter complaining to the company.
Miami-based Carnival disputes those allegations, saying it may suffer financially from the hurricane and that it only wants to help the relief effort by chartering ships to FEMA.
"It was a difficult decision to do these charters, because we knew we were going to be disrupting the vacation plans of tens of thousands of people," Carnival spokeswoman Jennifer de la Cruz said. "We felt it was the right thing to do."
David Reimherr, a travel agent who owns Holiday Cruise Co. in San Antonio, said among his 12 clients affected, most ended up canceling their seven-day Galveston trips and were understanding about it. Some passengers were mad about the higher rates to rebook, though.
"They jacked the prices up. Now, whether that was justified or not, I don't know," said Reimherr, noting supply and demand probably played a role.
I read somewhere what Carnival was getting paid by the government for the ships...it wasn't small change that's for sure.
And last I heard, they were having trouble getting people to agree to live on the ships...have there been any updates on that?
After the Superdome, I'm surpised any company was willing to make its ships available for refugees. If Carnival are being paid a hefty amount, it wouldn't necessarily be unreasonable given the risk to their ships.
I wonder if these ships weren't scheduled for rehab in the near future anyway.
According to the article its a 192 million dollar contract.
Carnival is in this for the cash and damn everything else.
Carnival is in it for the money. It damn sure isn't in it for the people. I agree with the poster who stated about "after what happend to the Super Dome"....I mean, you know it is going to cost alot after they trash the cruise ship. They will have some excuse for doing it. The bed was too fluffy, the pool wasn't the right temperature, the morning sun put a glare on thier cable tv or something else will be amiss ............
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