Royal Caribbean International has changed course and now will compensate passengers who missed their ship in San Juan due to an early departure forced by Hurricane Irene. The company now says it will give each guest who missed the Serenade of the Seas, but boarded later, with a future cruise certificate for 30 percent of the cruise fare paid for their sailing "as a gesture of goodwill."
The company also said it was contacting guests who completely missed their cruise to offer an undisclosed compensation, saying it "would prefer that the impacted guests learn of the amount directly from the line before it is disclosed publicly. We are compensating these passengers because we understand that this was an unusual situation, and we want to provide our guests with another opportunity to sail with Royal Caribbean International in the near future."
The incident occurred Aug. 21 when Serenade of the Seas, which was scheduled to depart at 8:30 p.m. was ordered by the Port of San Juan to leave at 5:30 p.m. in advance of Hurricane Irene. Therefore, 145 guests who had not re-embarked were left behind. Royal Caribbean provided 15 of the passengers, who had booked their air travel via the line, with hotel accommodations in San Juan for Monday evening, as well as a flight to Aruba on Tuesday, where they re-joined the ship. The cruise line also notified the 130 passengers who paid cruise-only fares and booked their air separately of hotel availability in San Juan, but said the expense was their responsibility, since it was a weather-related event. They also were responsible for their own air to re-join the ship.
"Since this decision was made by the Port of San Juan on Sunday while the ship was docked alongside, there was no way to notify our guests of this change in departure time," Royal Caribbean said at the time in a statement.
Meanwhile, Carnival Cruise Lines’ Carnival Victory was forced to depart San Juan about four hours ahead of schedule, stranding about 300 passengers at the port. However, about half were able to meet up with the ship at its next port call in Barbados. For those who were unable to board ship, Carnival provided a complimentary, two-night hotel stay in San Juan and complimentary air transportation to Barbados. Guests who did not have passports in their possession could not proceed to Barbados and missed the full voyage.
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