This morning P&O Cruises started with bookings of the recently announced series of short breaks from the UK this summer on the Britannia and week-long cruises on the latest cruise ship Iona. The overwhelming interest for these cruises, which are only accessible for vaccinated Brits, has been and continues to be enormous. The strong demand for bookings this morning has led to problems both on P&O Cruises website and at the associated service center, according to P&O Cruises Facebook page.
“We are very sorry but an unprecedented demand for our UK coastal cruises has caused technical issues with our systems on the website and through our contact centre. We are working to rectify this as soon as possible so please do bear with us and keep trying and we will provide a further update once the system is fully functioning.” P&O Cruises said.
This morning the company announced the sale of the coastal cruises, departing from Southampton between June and September sailing around the UK coast on P&O Britannia and P&O Iona. One hour after the initial announcement P&O Cruises said they are facing technical issues with the systems.
Shortly after the announcement comments started to pour from guests. Here are some of the comments:
“P&O are taking advantage of passengers and while there is high demand they are putting the prices up during so they can cash in more. If the original prices were agreed to cover everything and published they should stay that way. Just sums up P&O really. Somethings never change!”
“What do people expect. It was bound to happen when the sales went live. Prices do go up, it is supply and demand. Airline seats are the same, the last ones available are always more expensive. Be patient”
“The company has been burning hundreds of millions of pounds a month whilst they have been out of operation. Could your company have survived not operating at all for a year? They are a business, not a charity... they have to make money. Travel companies always have fluid pricing... it’s the laws of supply and demand. I, for one, am so excited that they are still in business and that they are taking these small steps back towards full operation. In addition, every single person I have spoken to at P&O during the last year has been wonderful. Be kind people.”
