Cruise line's "forced stayover" puts couple over budget

Vancouver, B.C., teachers Linda and Gordon Lanyon thought they had landed a bargain when they signed on last May with Seattle-based Holland America Line for a $2,500 per-person, 12-day Mediterranean cruise, airfare included.

Linda Lanyon booked with Holland by phone; paid with a credit card for herself, her husband and two friends; and began making plans for a July vacation to Venice, Barcelona and ports in between.

A week later, she came home and found a phone message from a Holland agent.

"They said they couldn't get us on the flight they said, and now there would be the cost of a hotel room" in Venice for one night. The charge: $750 per couple.

"Who can tell you that you have paid in full, and then one week later, change their minds?" Lanyon asked in an e-mail.

The devil was in the fine print.

"We were told we were paid in full and were sent a receipt saying amount owed was zero," she says. But stated on her confirmation e-mail was a notice that flight schedules and/or availability of flights could require an unplanned overnight stay on the way in or out.

She asked for her money back and got it, but minus a $627 cancellation fee per couple. But Lanyon, a first-grade teacher, felt that was unfair, given that "we wanted to be on the trip, and only canceled because they didn't come through with their agreement."

She filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, sent letters to Holland America and made phone calls. Searching the Internet, she found complaints posted by passengers who had similar experiences. One came from a man who said Holland contacted him a few weeks before his sailing to tell him he would have to pay an extra $400-$500 for a night's hotel stay in Anchorage.

"I finally got the VP on the phone, and she said that it's in their brochures and on the Internet that they have a right to add to a hotel booking later," says Lanyon. "Brochures? Internet? What about the people who book on the phone?"

Holland reservations agents are trained to tell customers about the policy upfront, says spokesman Erik Elvejord. But Lanyon said that didn't happen in her case.

Had she booked on Holland's Web site instead of over the phone, she would have had to dig deep to find the information in a section titled "Legal and Privacy."

Bottom line: Holland agreed to a credit of $627 per couple toward a future cruise. Not enough, says Lanyon, who asked for a refund or the opportunity for the same cruise next year at the original price.

"Forced stayover"

The Lanyons and their friends were caught in what's known as a "forced stayover," an overnight that might be required on either end of a cruise because of a change in an airline connection.

"You can live or die by the fine print. But it's not good customer service," says Carolyn Spencer Brown, editor of cruisecritic.com.

She has several suggestions for cruise passengers hoping to avoid problems like this:

• Book your own air travel through the airline directly or through a travel agent who can also book your cruise.

Cruise lines don't necessarily do the best job or even offer the best prices when it comes to air reservations, says Brown.

"When I price cruise-line air, it's usually a couple of hundred dollars more. You pay a little bit of a premium to have no choice whatsoever."

Her advice: Give yourself a day's leeway on each end of the trip. Cruise lines usually warn passengers who book their own air that they will have to fend for themselves if the flight is delayed and the ship leaves port without them.

• Find your own hotel, or ask a travel agent to find one for you, and arrange your own way from the airport to the hotel and cruise dock. Taxis are always available, and any good hotel can help its guests get to where they need to go.

Lanyon considered this when she heard the price for a room in Venice was going to be $750, and the agent said that was the low end of what was available from the cruise line.

"When I asked if I could find my own hotel, we were discouraged from doing so and told we would lose our transfer fees that we had already paid [for transportation] from the airport to the ship."

That's true, according to Holland's Elvejord. Prices on hotels the line uses in Venice range from $350 to $500 per night per person, but someone looking on her own or through a travel agent could find many good hotels for far less.

Brown ran into a similar situation recently on a cruise she took out of Barcelona.

"The cruise line's hotel was 500 euros ($675). I found my own for 200 ($270). Admittedly their hotel looked very elegant, but it was more elegant than I needed."

• Buy a travel insurance policy from an outside vendor, not the cruise line, that covers extra costs you might have due to travel delays and/or missed connections. Access America's standard policy, for instance, covers prepaid trip payments lost due to weather-related flight cancellations or delays. It also covers extra transportation and hotel expenses should you be forced to catch up with a ship at its next port of call. See www.insuremytrip.com for other options.

Carol Pucci's Travel Wise column runs Sundays in the travel section and online at www.seattletimes.com/travel. Comments are welcome. Contact her at 206-464-3701 or cpucci@seattletimes.com