Hello everyone

Thank you for your comments regarding Adonia. I’m delighted to see that you are as excited about this ship as I am! I think she’s going to be very well received by you and your fellow past passengers. As I know this ship well, I am really looking forward to welcoming her to the fleet. She’s so elegant and is certain to be a joy for us all to travel on.

It seems there are two ‘hot’ topics that you have raised in your recent comments; smoking and charter flight seating.

With regard to smoking, the comfort and safety of all our passengers is something that we take extremely seriously and believe that the policy we’ve arrived at is the fairest for smokers and non-smokers alike; that is smoking will be permitted on balconies and designated areas of the public deck only.

With regards to charter flight seating; we have always tried to accommodate passenger requests to sit together, as well as to seat passengers in the same seats as their outbound flight, but this is not something we have ever been able to guarantee. We always tried to do it where and when possible. We have recently announced a documented seating policy, which aims to be as fair as possible to all our passengers. That is that we first allocate seats to passengers who require assistance, followed by families with children under 12 and then all other passengers booked in date order (in recognition of those who have chosen to book their cruise early). The good news is that we’re currently working on implementing an online system that will enable you to select and pre-book your charter flight seats. I look forward to telling you all about this system when it is launched.

Thank you David for your question regarding our holidays to Iceland, Greenland and Norway. These cruises usually operate for 18 nights and, as such, tend not to receive a large amount of interest from families. During the school holidays we try to ensure that we offer a good choice of holidays of between 7 nights and up to two weeks sailing to destinations that traditionally appeal to family groups.

Just to pick up on a question posted a couple of weeks ago relating to our alcohol policy. We are currently running a trial on Ventura, but at this point in time we do not confiscate alcohol as a matter of course on the remainder of the fleet (we reserve the right to do so if we feel the health, safety, comfort and enjoyment of passengers may otherwise be compromised). We are waiting to gauge the response to the trial on Ventura before making any future plans for her fleet companions.

Mathieu – it was lovely to hear from you. Thank you so much for getting in touch.

Well, that’s it from me. James Cusick will be returning this weekend to delight you all with his updates, so this will be my final blog for a while. May I take this opportunity to thank you all for taking the time to post your comments, it’s wonderful to be in direct contact with you all and I hope you have found my responses of interest.

With kind regards,

Carol