A recent survey about cruise customer satisfaction resulted in a couple of results and/or recommendations that, to us, were puzzling.
Puzzling result…
According to the survey, conducted by the respected firm J.D. Power, one in five cruise passengers experience a problem while on their cruise.
You think?
Put five people anywhere, doing anything, and it's a virtual guarantee one of them will "experience a problem" with something. Ever try and get five people to agree, completely, on anything short of what day it is. Ask 3,000 passengers on a cruise if they had any problem with anything in the areas of service, stateroom, food, getting on and off the ship, entertainment, cost or excursions while traveling for seven days…and finding that 600 had some kind of "problem" is not hard to imagine.
So maybe it just needs a little perspective…80 per cent were completely satisfied.
Is the glass 80 per cent full, or 20 per cent empty?
Puzzling recommendation…
Among the things J.D. Power suggested people do before booking a cruise was this one:
"If you are taking a cruise with numerous ports of call find out which cruise line ranks highest for embarking/debarking. The more organized and efficient the cruise line is with both of these metrics, the less stressful the experience may be when leaving and returning to the ship."
As you know, we've been on many cruises. Not once did it ever occur to us to check out how efficiently people get on and off a ship when visiting ports. And rarely, if ever, did we experience anything beyond a normal delay in the process when visiting ports. First of all, there's never much of a rush because the ship is going to be there for hours.
So while this can be an issue in getting on the ship to depart, or getting off the ship to go home, doing an efficiency embarkation/disembarkation check when visiting a port is, well…puzzling?
Is anybody puzzled by our views?
Coral Princess
11 nights
October 24, 2013
Fort Lauderdale (return): Aruba, Cartagena, Panama Canal, Colon, Puerto Limon, Grand Cayman
Inside: $899
Cost per day: $81
www.princess.com