… Not Back to the Adriatic After All…

Alas, I will not be returning to the Adriatic this time around.

It’s complicated, but in a nutshell…

As I understand it, cruise lines book cabins on their ships in a similar manner to the way airlines book passengers on their planes. By that, I mean that they have a tendency to overbook them, based on the concept that a certain percentage of those booked spaces will inevitably be cancelled by passengers before the event comes around.

On the relatively rare occasion that a cruise gets overbooked in this way (and I can only think of two similar occurrences in all the many years that I’ve been working on the ships), the first to get the axe, in order to facilitate as many paying passengers as possible, are lecturer and tutor posts.

In Saga’s defence, they’ve been totally transparent with me, and despite it being a nailbiting week, the simple fact is, as we get to the end of that week, and with only a couple of days before embarkation; they don’t have an available cabin to accommodate me.

It is disappointing, of course, but I’m not too upset about it, having already enjoyed the exact same trip in April, on the Spirit of Discovery. On the positive side; I have three cruise assignments to look forward to in 2024; we’ll be sailing to Norway in March, Iceland and the North Cape in July and spending next Christmas in The Caribbean. Should any more trips be booked in the meantime, I will, of course, announce them here.