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As for the shore excursions, this is ludicrous. All businesses are 'for profit' entities and to think that any cruise line or assciated tour operator is not making money on these is just plain idiotic.
Tim
quote:Originally posted by LeBarryboat:In the old days as Cruise Director, we personally got kick-backs for promoting a particular shop or restaurant in the ports. I personally collected these kick-backs and it was a suite deal for the Cruise Director. It often meant several thousand dollars a week extra pay. It's not a new practice and I've heard that in the last ten or fifteen years or so, the cruise line corporate offices have tuned into this extra revenue source. I guess the S*** had to hit the fan eventually when passengers found out about this.
What happened was the cruise lines themselves decided to profit from what used to be the cruise directors' racket. I worked for a couple of years as On-Board Port Lecturer, promoting the recommended shops. One of my duties was collecting the 'advertising fees' from the recommended shops in each port; said revenue went to the Home Office.
Rich
There is nothing sweet, or savoury about kickbacks
They are simply the first and worst step on the road to bribery and corruption, and as a blatant restriction on free trade, as customer unfriendly as it gets
Now quite why HAL or any cruiseline are not in their rights to do this I am not sure. There are staff to pay... HAL have done the research, HAL have arranged the tours, HAL have printed all their excursion leafelts, booklets, have shore excursions staff and so on... so yes, the cost to them is certainly more than the cost of the excursion, so a pax should get a bumped up price... as he has done nothing to arrange it. It he had wanted to arrange it himself it may have taken him a few hours work. Now HAL would also be entitled to a bit of profit as well... how much is their business. Most cruisers know they have a choice between going alone or with the cruisline and the pros and cons of one or the other.
Alaska have supposedly passed a law to ensure cruiselines tell their pax what the mark-up is, which HAL apparently haven't done; but I also read elswhere that the actual law has not yet come into effect? I have no idea there.
Re the PSA fee, HAL acted within the law.. if the fee has not been charged to HAL then it's not their fault but a govn't error... which may eventually be rectified. I am not sure how the pax or his lawyer know that the govn't have not sent out the bill. If HAL gave the money back without the govn't telling them to do so, when a bill eventually arrived, one can see the pax would not cough up.
Re the shopping kickbacks as TBird says.. most people here would have been sacked. I was not permitted to accept a single item from any client/customer.. it would have been deemed bribery. This is one reason why I abhor the practise of some pax who hand their steward a tip on day one feeling proud they will get extra service because of it. It's bribery, nothing more. I would also make a point of not shopping in any named shops.
Pam
We were sold on the spot!
George+
Who knows, maybe it will turn out that the people who say they were fined are lying, or misunderstood what they were being charged for?
Of course HAL marks-up the cost of shore excursions in Alaska...in fact HAL has one of the most solid shore ex programs in Alaska. Passengers can expect a certain level of professionalism and quality because they run many of the shore excursion businesses in Alaska. I am always confident to book my customers on HAL Alaska because I know that they will be hand-held during the whole cruise and excursions experience. HAL has the most carefully planned out excursions in Alaska.
It will be interesting to see how this will all pan out.
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