Further comments on fuel costs

Thanks for your comments and questions on my recent blog - it's good to know people are reading this.
As a general comment, last time the cruise lines introduced fuel surcharges it was for new bookings only on all lines except for Swan Hellenic, who applied them retrospectively. Swan's customers ended up having to pay an extra £200 or so on their cruises.

So far Fred.Olsen and P&O have added fuel surcharges for next year and so we are expecting the others to follow suit soon. I'll keep you informed.

Predicting the cost of fuel.....P&O make me angry again!

P&O make me really angry, they have just launched their 2011 programme and advised customers that the early booking offers are in place until 30 June 2010.

Now they go and announce a fuel supplement for all sailings from 01 November 2010. At £2.50/day this puts the price up by £35pp on a typical 14 night cruise. How the cruise lines get away with charging a fuel supplement I don't know - this is a charge to allow for the increase in the global price of fuel.

Predicting the price of fuel is clearly not rocket science.  It has consistently increased in price over the last few years and will continue to go up over the next year. Surely P&O realised that they need fuel to run their ships and could have calculated this cost into the brochure price.

But hey, I'm not the one doing the pricing, just the person on the end of the phone trying to explain it to the customer.

This new charge applies to all bookings made from 10th May onwards, so if you want to avoid the charge book now.