What is up with Emerald Cruises?

Travel and Leisure

I belong to a Facebook group that is dedicated to river cruising; it's a fun way to learn about this unique way of travel, and share thoughts and experiences. Recently, there's been a few folks who have indicated that their Emerald cruise had been cancelled, with very short notice (often less than three weeks prior to embarkation). Similarly, there have been a few posts about Scenic cancellations, which is the parent company for Emerald.

So what is happening here? Some think that Emerald is simply cancelling and consolidating undersold cruises; if they are really doing this, they are supposed to be letting booked passengers know they've been cancelled 60 days notice prior to departure. There was also a perfect storm brewing earlier this year when Emerald/Scenic was hacked, causing an IT outage that took out their systems right around the time when travellers were getting ready to book post-pandemic trips, and indeed, filling potential empty rooms. But I think that there's a couple of other factors playing here too. My hypothesis is that when the pandemic hit, cruise staff had to go find other jobs; now that cruising has resumed, they all haven't returned to their pre-pandemic roles, and Emerald/Scenic struggled to fill vacant positions. Additionally, while Covid-19 doesn't pose a life-threatening risk for most of us since we are fully vaccinated, there can still be outbreaks that will take crew members out of service for 5 days or more. These factors seem to have been playing out, as I received this response from another group member, who received the following from Scenic w.r.t. their cruise cancellations:

"The whole team are excited to welcome back our river cruising guests in Europe, with over 40 cruises departing across our Scenic Group fleet (including our Scenic Space-Ships and Emerald Cruises Star-Ships), delivering guests a truly unsurpassed cruising experience on the magnificent waterways of Europe. 

Scenic Group, was required to reschedule a small number of our early season river cruises, due to an unexpected and short-term shortage of crew members, which caused a delay in the release of visa applications.

We apologise to our impacted guests, and have worked to seamlessly adjust guest’s arrangements to alternative river cruises as a priority to ensure minimal impact. Our commitment to delivering an enriching luxury river cruising experience for our guests was at the forefront of our decision making, and our crew are an integral part of this.

We continue to closely monitor these global challenges and continue to be focused on what we love to do, bringing the wonder, luxury and joy to our guest’s cruising experience, as they journey with us in Europe."

But with an Emerald cruise booked for this October, I wanted to try and determine if there was a high likelihood that ours could be cancelled as well. Is it 50%? Or something more like 10%? So with selfish intent, I asked the group who had been cancelled by Emerald, and what route and date they were embarking on the ship. Now I know that this is a totally unscientific evaluation; who knows how many guests are on these cruises that are not members of the FB group? And what percentage of the cancelled group members are actually going to go to the group page, see my post, and comment on it? While the methodology is likely flawed, I had committed to providing an update to the FB group, so let's continue.

(Updated) As of May 16, only five (5) travellers have come forward to indicate that their Emerald cruise was cancelled this season; I don't expect any more. I counted the number of cruises for April and May, and it amounted to around 69 sailings. So that's about a 7% cancellation rate - a far cry from my feared 50%. Statistically however, what has happened does not have a bearing on future cruises, as Emerald (and Scenic) may have resolved their staffing issues now. But if we look at which routes cancelled, that may be more valuable. Three were Danube trips; I thought that since the lower portion of the Danube isn't the most popular, that two of these might have been undersold, but one of the cancelled guests indicated that her sailing was nearly full! This leads me to believe that the Danube ships were/are having staffing problems rather than undersold rooms. The other two were Rhine and the 2-week Amsterdam to Budapest sailings, both in April; since no other cancellations were reported in that region after April, perhaps they sorted out the staff challenges sooner? In the end, we will never know what caused these cancellations, and the data cannot be extrapolated to other routes; e.g. despite the fact that no sailings were reported cancelled on the Douro, that doesn't mean it didn't, and can't happen.

Our Emerald Destiny ship is 80% booked for October!

So have I alleviated any concerns about my cruise being cancelled? No. Without any concrete facts and with the limited data gathered, this endeavour was a bit of a bust. However, with the Emerald booking site back up and running, I was able to mock up a booking on our sailing date, and can see that there are only 11 Panorama Balcony Suites (Cat C, B, and A) left to choose from! With a capacity of 60 available, they're at over 80% occupied in the decent rooms, making it unlikely that they'd cancel our sailing due to being undersold. I know that ships often sail with a lot more empty staterooms than this, so I am starting to feel pretty good about our early fall trip, Covid pandemic and water levels notwithstanding.

But in the end, if you want some peace of mind, it still makes sense to plan for the unexpected, and develop a contingency plan that you can "pivot" to, if necessary.