I had the opportunity to go on a south east asia (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand) cruise as a past of a conference on the Super Star Virgo, last week. While the cruise ship was fabulous, with great crew, and an altogether lovely experience, the tour operator, SOTC was subpar in almost every department
Information:
I was not informed about the types of accommodation available, whether the cabin would have natural light (sea facing), or not, no email, phone call or anything from the tour group. I can understand this as this was a large group booking, but what I cannot stomach is the attitude of the crew directors (there were 8 of them who were obviously unhelpful and unwilling to do their duty, much less go that extra mile for us. There was a particularly obnoxious lady from Bangalore whose language and body language both communicated her absolute disdain for our plight. So, here, my issue is not the actual lack of service, but the brazen attitude that said, "we don’t care and we can’t help"
Boarding the ship;*
There were long, serpentine queues at the Singapore cruise centre, which I know, are facts of life, but there was no professionalism in getting us on board, there were NO SMILES, no cheerful attitude in any of the 8-10 (yes, there were a whole bunch of them, as there were around a 1000 of us, you’d expect with such a massive booking, the service would be passable, no luck)
Availablity*
I was given to understand that the entire SOTC staff travelled in balcony class, wheras we were in what would be similar to the Titanic’s Steerage.. well not exactly, that’s part is OK, but not ONCE, was I or any of my colleagues approched with a question like "how are you?" "Is everything alright" " How is the trip going?" NOTHING.. much less, when we approached them, we saw their stony, unapprocahable demenour and decided aginst asking for much, those who did try, were met with a totally unhelpful attitude.. especially the a lady from Bangalore. Who was she? Well, they had no name tags and never bothered to Introduce themselves (unlike the friendly Local Singapore bus guides, who always introduce themselves first. I have been on other such tours, especially Cox and Kings, where the country (home) guide always works in tandem with the local guide, these guys sucked big time!
Attitude:
Its all about attitude, they were totally unhelpful, and DIDN"T seem to care... that’s what hurt the most! You would see them in groups of 4-5 enjoying themselves on the ship, none of them was circulating, enqiuiring, or doing anything useful, you would wonder who they were, except for the SOTC, Kuoni Blue T shirts they wore
Disembarkation:*
Before disembarkation we were made to sit in the ships main hall, so as to facilitate disembarkation orderly. Here the contrast in service attitude and professionalism was brought into sharp focus.
One of the 8 SOTC guys started haranguing us in stringent tones about what we had to do and what not to do, I guess he wanted to be clear, but there was no professionalism in his tone, his language, his attitude. You do not have to shout to be understood, especially when you are talking throuhj a microphone, via a very good theatre system. he kept blabbering on and on, rather incoherently (the right word is "harangue")
The contrast was in Juliet, a girl from the Philippines, who was a part of the ships crew. She assessed us, saw the kids and the parents were restless waiting, so she sung a song in Hindi, one in English, made the kids have a dance, all done very pleasantly, professionally and with a nice attitude. We almost forgot we were there to disembark, and thought it was a real show
I am not saying that I expected the SOTC guys and gal to sing and dance, I am just contrasting how the same situation was handled with professionalism and wit and mismanaged by SOTC
Back at the crusie terminal when we arrived there was utter chaos, I don’t blame it on SOTC, but I do think that they could have arranged the buses to the hotels on time, we waitied more than an hour at 8 pm for a bus to the hotel
Worst:
The local hotel SOTC chap said he would see us there, or at least at breakfast the next day, to guide us about our flight home, for any help. He prompty dissapeared. He was invisible the next day morning at breakfast, at aftternoon and finally when we had to leave at 4pm, a local guide came, who was quick, cheerful, professional and witty, The contrast was amazing..So we have a tour guide who just dumped us, never called, and didn’t even bother to let us know how to contact him. We happened to be rather seasoned travellers, so it didn’t matter much.. but what if were were new to this sort of thing? No...no... no... very unprofessional and uncaring..we should sue them for mental agony sustained!
In a nutshell:
1 The SOTC tour guide were t otally unprofessional in mine and others opinions
2 They knew little
They cared nothing
And they communicated their disinterest perfectly
they were not even there when they promised they would be
NEVER, EVER again, if I can prevent it, with SOTC