Problems with the booking of a "Canary Island" cruise with Costa Cruise Lines.
Prior to this booking we had never cruised with Costa Cruise Lines. In mid-December 2004, we received an unsolicited postcard from Costa advertising special deals on "Canary Islands" cruises. Even though we hadn't heard much about Costa Cruise Lines we have always wanted to visit Casablanca which is one of the ports of call.
On 22 December 2004, we visited the "AAA Travel" office in Binghamton, NY (U.S.A.) to inquire on booking the Costa cruise and air travel. We have always booked prior cruises and air travel with "AAA Travel" and found them to be exceptional. In the past, when booking cruises with cruise lines the process went very smooth but on this booking with Costa we watched our travel agent, Sheila Stulir, make dozens of phone calls to Costa attempting to get information on this cruise. In many cases she was put on hold for up to 20 minutes (while we both waited) only to find the person at Costa could not help.
Once Sheila found a person at Costa to help with booking this cruise we selected our cabin (#1276) and also requested transportation from the Genoa airport to the ship (Costa Fortuna) in Savona, Italy. On our past cruises, with other cruise lines, we used transportation transfers offered by the cruise company to travel to/from the ship and had always found this to be the most convenient method to make connections.
On 4 January 2005, I used the Costa Web site (http://www.costacruise.com/costa/USA/Homepage.htm) to check our booking information and found both the "Canary Island" cruise and the transportation were listed.
On 8 February 2005, I received a call from Sheila at AAA Travel informing me the Costa "Travel Documents" had arrived and I could pick them up. At this time I asked Sheila to check the information on the transportation from the airport to the ship in the "Travel Documents". I informed Sheila that the on-line information from the Costa Web site had shown a "Departure time" of "11:30AM only" for the transfer which would cause a problem since our flight to Genoa wasn't scheduled to arrive until 1:05PM. That evening I sent an e-mail to info@us.costa.it requesting to reschedule our transportation.
On 10 February 2005, I visited the AAA Travel office to pick up the Costa "Travel Documents" and talk to Sheila. Sheila informed me she had placed many calls to Costa about the transportation from the Genoa airport to the ship but had no luck in getting the transportation rescheduled and was unsuccessful in getting any information from Costa on optional (Costa or non-Costa) forms of transportation to the ship. That evening I sent another e-mail to corporate@costa.it, info@costa.it and helpcostaclick@costa.it requesting to reschedule our transportation.
Since I hadn't received any acknowledgment from Costa on prior e-mails, on 12 February 2005 I sent e-mail to internationalsales@carnival.com at Carnival Cruise Lines, a member of the exclusive "World’s Leading Cruise Lines" alliance, which includes Costa and requested help. I also copied helpcostaclick@costa.it, info@costa.it, corporate@costa.it, info@us.costa.it, pcalamara@giocoviaggi.com and ragostini@giocoviaggi.com on this e-mail.
On 14 February 2005, I received an e-mail reply from mail@us.costa.it (Costa) which stated:
| Subject: Re: Costa Cruise Booking #1938290 From: mail@us.costa.it Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 13:32:14 -0500 To: Bob & Mary Beebe Thank you for contacting Costa Cruise Lines. Please call our reservations line at 800-GO-COSTA in regards to your questions about your transfer. Sincerely, Costa Cruises |
At 7:10PM on 14 February, I called 1-800-GO-COSTA as requested in the e-mail but found the transportation from the airport to the ship had been canceled on 10 February. I then inquired as to how and why the transportation had been canceled and was told it was canceled at the request of our travel agent Sheila at AAA Travel. The information of the cancellation was news to me since I had not requested the cancellation and Sheila had not informed us of the change. I later checked with Sheila on the transportation change and found Sheila had not requested the cancellation. She had talked to a Costa agent on 10 February, on rescheduling the transportation but was told by one agent the transportation voucher could not be used since we had not booked our air transportation through Costa. Sheila was also informed by a Costa agent that by canceling the transportation vouchers we could incur a penalty greater that the cost of the vouchers. Sheila was also instructed to contact another Costa agent/department if we wanted to remove the transportation voucher without incurring a penalty. Sheila did not attempt to contact the other Costa agent/department on canceling the vouchers since we hadn't requested a cancellation. Sheila had also been told, by one of the many Costa agents she spoke to, that in many cases passengers arriving in Genoa on later Costa arranged flights would be transported to the ship after the 11:30AM and our vouchers could be used if we checked at the "Costa Lounge" at the Genoa airport.
Due to a two hour flight delay on US Airways flight 14 from Philadelphia to Munich we were unable to catch our connecting flight, Lufthansa flight 2642, from Munich to Genoa and were thereby unable to make the scheduled 5:00PM embarkation of the Costa Fortuna at Savona. After hours of flight delays and negotiations with US Airways on rescheduling transportation to the cruise ship we were booked on the 9:00AM (next day, March 13) Lufthansa 4474 flight from Munich to Barcelona. Once the flight to Barcelona was confirmed we called Costa about 4:30PM (Munich time) from our hotel to inform Costa of the travel delay and our plan to meet the ship in Barcelona. Two calls were placed to Costa using the Emergency phone numbers listed on the inside cover of our Costa "Travel Documents". On the first number called I received a recorded message but the on the second call I spoke to the Costa representative "Summer". I informed "Summer" of the travel problems and explained that we would catch up with the cruise ship in Barcelona. I also requested that "Summer" contact the Costa Fortuna as soon as possible to let the ship's crew know of our plan to join the cruise in Barcelona. "Summer" responded that she would send an e-mail to inform the ship of our embarkation change.
Lufthansa 4474 flight from Munich to Barcelona was on schedule and we were able to be at the dock in Barcelona to greet the Costa Fortuna as it arrived. We informed the Costa representative at the dock of our prior embarkation problem and need to join the cruise.
We (and two other couples) were greeted by Maria Fulminante of the Costa Fortuna Service Desk. As Maria escorted us on board the Costa Fortuna I explained that my wife and I had placed an order via the Internet for a shore excursion in Barcelona and would like to catch the tour. Maria said we should proceed directly to our cabin to get our excursion tickets and that "Costa Cards" to open the room would be outside the cabin door. When we arrived at our cabin we didn't find our "Costa Cards" and returned to the service desk to explain to problem to Maria. Maria provided us with a temporary card to open the cabin and obtain the excursion tickets and hopefully our "Costa Cards". We returned to our cabin and only found a card with our second seating dining table assignment, we then returned to the service desk again and were told to proceed to a lounge where the shore excursions would meet prior to boarding the tour buses. We arrived at the lounge in time to contact the tour group but a check of the excursion records did not show any tickets for our tour and no record of our Internet order.
After missing our tour of Barcelona we returned to the service desk to attempt to locate our "Costa Cards" since they would be needed to access service aboard the ship and to allow us to leave/board the ship. We again contacted Maria Fulminante at the service desk who after some checking for our "Costa Cards" then generated new cards while we waited.
We then proceeded to the "Shore Excursions" desk to look into the Barcelona excursion tickets (to see if we would be charged for the tour) and check on our tickets for the shore excursion to Marrakech at the next port, Casablanca. The "Shore Excursions" desk had no record of our Internet order for the Barcelona tour, the Marrakech tour or any order we had placed for excursions via the Internet. We then requested to order tickets for the Marrakech tour but were told that tour was fully booked and we could possibly get tickets if our name was on the "waiting list". We had greatly anticipated taking both of these shore excursions and after missing the Barcelona tour we requested our names be placed on the waiting list for the Marrakech tour.
It was now almost 3:00PM and the only touring we had done of Barcelona was the taxi ride from the airport to the dock. We purchased two shuttle tickets from the excursion desk and took the very short shuttle bus ride to see if we could salvage any sightseeing of Barcelona. Due to the limited amount of time we now had, we were unable to find any sightseeing tours that would return prior to the afternoon sailing of the Costa Fortuna. After a quick, but limited walk we returned to the ship.
As the ship prepared to leave Barcelona our cabin steward presented us with a new seating assignment for diner, first seating! This was quite strange since we had requested second seating when we booked this cruise and already found a card for second seating in our cabin when we first entered it. It was now fully apparent to us that the e-mail message sent by "Summer" the day before had not been passed along to the crew of the Costa Fortuna. With this latest mix up (seating assignment) we proceeded to the service desk again to express our feelings on these matters. We again meet with Maria Fulminante and another member of the service desk staff to discuss these matters. A call was made to the dining room on our seating assignment and we were informed to attend the second seating, contact the staff and request a new seating assignment for the next day. As for the tickets for the Marrakech tour, a check of the computer showed we now had tickets for the tour and were informed the tickets should be delivered to our cabin sometime this evening. We returned to our cabin and found two tickets had been delivered while we were at the service desk.
With confirmed tickets for the Marrakech tour things were starting to look better and we prepared for second seating diner. We arrived early at "Ristorante Raffaello" for the scheduled 8:45PM start of diner. It was shortly after 9:00PM before anyone was allowed to enter. As requested, we presented both the first seating and second seating cards we had received to the staff and requested a new (second seating) table assignment. We were then informed we would receive a new table assignment, tomorrow prior to diner. We were then given a "temporary" table assignment for just that night with a couple from Austria who did know some English.
Following diner we returned to our cabin and found our steward had returned while we were at diner and left another two tickets for the Marrakech tour. We now had four tickets for the Marrakech tour. The following day, March 14, we again went to the "Shore Excursion" desk to find out why we now had 4 tickets after being told the ship had no record of our tour bookings when we boarded the ship at Barcelona. A check of the records at the "Shore Excursions" desk now showed we had purchased 2 tickets prior to the cruise via the Internet and a second set of two tickets were requested at the excursion desk while the ship was in port at Barcelona. We then requested to see the order information for the tickets requested via the Internet and were shown a copy of the same e-mail confirmation I had received on March 8, prior to the start of this cruise. I requested, and was given a photocopy of the ship's Internet request for shore excursions. After talking to the personnel at the "Shore Excursions" desk it is still not clear as to why this same Internet request was not available the day before, in Barcelona, and why our request for the Barcelona tour, on the same order form, was never executed but the Marrakech tour order was executed.
It is now March 14, an "At Sea" day prior to our arrival at the port of Casablanca. Hopefully our new second seating table assignment will be trouble free. We arrived at "Ristorante Raffaello" early and requested directions to our new table assignment. When we arrived at our table (number 305) we were greeted by a somewhat confused waiter who double checked our assignment card and then seated us. The first thing we noticed was the table had been setup for four people and our seats did not have any tableware at all. As we explained to the waiter about our need for the new table assignment we learned that he had not been informed as to our addition to the table. Within a short time we were presented with tableware and the four other (and somewhat confused) members of table 305 arrived.
By the third day of our cruise (March 15) we had finally cleared up the problems caused by missing the embarkation at Savona. Following the cruise I instructed our travel agent to check into whether a refund had ever been issued by Costa for the transportation vouchers that were canceled by Costa on February 10. After many phone calls to Costa by our travel agent the refund was issued on April 15.
While it was unfortunate that we were unable to join this cruise in Savona as scheduled, we realize that Costa has no control over the actions of our air carrier, (US Airways). We do want to point out some of the many problems encountered with the booking and execution of this cruise that Costa does have control over.
Prior to the actual booking of this cruise it was very hard for us or our travel agent to access detailed information from Costa on this cruise. We learned of the cruise from an unsolicited ad we received in the mail but were unable to find additional detailed information from the Costa Web site. During the meeting with our travel agent she had to make many phone calls and was often put on "hold" for long periods of time. This lack of detailed information and our access to the information lead to the incorrect ordering of transportation from the Genoa airport to the ship in Savona.
The processing of our cruise booking by Costa should have caught the incorrect request for transportation from the Genoa airport to the ship. Since Costa does offer transfers from the airport to the ship for people who book the air transportation through Costa, it should have been easy for a computer to check for the required air transportation.
Once we noticed the problem with the transportation from the airport to the ship it should have been easy for someone within Costa to provide information on alternative transportation methods. Since the home office of Costa is in Genoa, they (or the transfer provider) should at least know how to get from the airport to the train station.
E-mail messages sent to Costa should have been answered in a timely manner. It took almost two weeks to get a response, by phone, from one e-mail. I prefer to use e-mail since it is very easy to document such details as numbers, dates, locations, web URLs, e-mail addresses and the sequence of events. Phone conversations are sometimes misunderstood and do not provide documentation for follow-up on correcting problem. A prime example of this lack of communication and documentation occurred when someone within Costa canceled our transfers but neither us or our travel agent were aware of the change.
One of the few e-mail responses from Costa was to "Please call our reservations line at 800-GO-COSTA ...". Why provide an e-mail address on your Web site if you still require people to use a phone? A response of this type shows that not much effort was done to research the information/comments in the original e-mail.
As with the prior comment on the use (or lack of) e-mail by Costa we also found the same lack of help on problems with the Costa Web pages. Here again, the Costa Web site provided an e-mail address for problems with the Costa Web site but the response "Please try not to use Mozilla browser, it will create more problems in our website for you and it will solve." from webmaster-usa@web.costa.it shows a lack to directly confront and work to solve user problems. I looked through some of the Costa Web site code and found it had not been designed correctly to handle new Web browsers. Along with the problems noted in my e-mail to "Costa - Webmaster USA" the Costa Web site is poorly designed for usability and clearly not up to the same "World Class" level of the Web sites for other cruise companies.
While it was nice to easily find "Emergency phone numbers" inside the front cover of the Costa "Travel Documents" it is not clear that information can be transferred to the Costa Fortuna in a timely manner. When I called the "Emergency" phone number to communicate our problem caused by a flight delay I did not feel comfortable when I was informed by "Summer" that the information would be e-mailed to the ship. With my prior e-mail experience with Costa I hoped for the best, but in the end it looks like I wasted a phone call. Had this been an emergency such as a death in a family how would the ship be contacted? The Costa Fortuna is one of the newest ships in the Costa fleet, how are the communications to the other ships?
When we joined up with the Costa Fortuna in Barcelona we were not the only people how had missed the scheduled embarkation from Savona and I would feel safe to say this is not the first time that a passenger has missed the ship. I would have thought this ship and others would have a standard process/procedure for this type of processing but it looked like all of our information had been purged from the ship's records even though we had called the "Emergency phone number" at 4:30PM, before the Costa Fortuna had left the dock in Savona at 5:00PM. I would at least like to have seen our "Costa Cards" at the service desk when we arrived.
We are still waiting for answers as to why the "Shore Excursion" desk had no records of our excursions ordered via the Internet when we boarded the ship on March 13, but were able to produce a copy of the record on March 14. The tour of Barcelona was one of the reasons we selected this cruise.
As mentioned above, it looked like all of our information had been purged from the ship's records but in the case of our table assignment for the second seating dining we would have thought the waiter(s) for table 305 would have been notified of our new table assignment prior to our arrival at the table on the evening of March 14. We had been on board the ship for over a day and had received our new table assignment from our steward.
While this was our first cruise with Costa, this was not our first cruise. We have done other cruises of the Mediterranean and even a Trans-Atlantic crossing but we found the "over all" service of the Costa Fortuna to be less than we experienced on other cruise ships. We were not sure if this service level was related to "Cruising Italian Style".
Here are some of the differences we (and others passengers on the ship) noted between Costa and cruise ships.
Buffet dining was open 24 hours a day on other cruise lines. The Costa buffet area (Ristorante Buffet Colombo) was closed at night and during the time of evening dining. We found it very hard to get even a cup of coffee in the "off hours".
The Costa Fortuna did not provide passengers with a self service laundry for such things as an ironing board. Multiple self service laundry rooms were available for last minute "touch-up" on other ships we have sailed.
Even though the Costa Fortuna is a very large ship we found some of the main traffic areas to be very crowded and congested. The one area we found most difficult to navigate was the deck 9 (Napoli) area when we traveled from the main (glass) elevators to Ristorante Buffet Colombo. Due to the lager number of lounge chairs on the deck area it was an obstacle course on most sunny days.
| Date | To/From | Subject |
| 8 Feb. 2005 | To: Costa | Costa Cruise Booking #1938290 |
| 10 Feb. 2005 | To: Costa | Costa Cruise Booking #1938290 |
| 12 Feb. 2005 | To: Carnival | Need help with Transfers from Airport to Ship |
| 14 Feb. 2005 | From: Costa | Re: Costa Cruise Booking #1938290 |
| 15 Feb. 2005 | From: AAA Travel | Fw: Costa Cruise for Bob and Mary Beebe |
| 15 Feb. 2005 | From: AAA Travel | Fw: Costa Cruise for Bob and Mary Beebe |
| 6 Mar. 2005 | To: Costa | Can not "Login" to "MyCosta" from Mozilla browser |
| 6 Mar. 2005 | From: Costa | RE:'Costa=905-036'Can not "Login" to "MyCosta" from Mozilla browser |
| 22 Apr. 2005 | From: AAA Travel | Re: Costa Cruise refund on the transfers |
| 25 Apr. 2005 | From: AAA Travel | Re: Costa Cruise refund on the transfers |
Many issues that detracted from our enjoyment of this cruise were addressed in this write-up and we hope that Costa would use this information to formulate quality improvements. Many of the problems we experienced on this cruise can be traced back to a poor communications or failure to communicate. While many attempts were made by both us and our travel agent to communicate with Costa, the response from Costa was less than adequate.
There also appeared to be poor communications within Costa. My phone call to inform Costa of our flight delay looks as if the information did not reach the Costa Fortuna prior to our arrival on the ship in Barcelona.
While this write-up has addressed many of the problems we encountered before and during the cruise, we would also like to mention some of the better aspects of the cruise.
Robert & Mary Beebe
