Regent Cancelling All Turkey Ports 2016

Too bad but not surprising. I saw that Oceania is doing the same. I love Turkey and feel really sorry for those who make their living in the tourism industry.

Just received notification that our Jerusalem - Rome cruise on the Explorer has had a major itinerary change, knocking out all of the Turkish ports. This is quite upsetting - Turkey is one of my favorite countries to visit and we picked this particular cruise due to the Turkish stops - quite disappointing.

gnomie :)

We are disappointed also, but I know my mom will be very happy to hear we are going there. So much for the book I purchased on Turkey. Hopefully we will there some other time.

We just received notification last night of the changes and after careful consideration - we decided to cancel a trip we booked almost a year ago. Turkey was a big draw for the cruise and this morning we were told Egypt may well be next.

Now to look at the book and see what else there might be :(

I'm very interested in your last comment about Egypt. Did that come regent or your travel agent thinking out loud? If they pull that also, I wouldn't want to do the cruise.

Irish Witchy

It came from Regent.

I would have thought that Egypt would have been cancelled before Istanbul but Regent has access to sources that we don't have. IMO, Egypt was not a comfortable place to be. While we opted not to go into Cairo since we've been there before, other passengers talked of trash everywhere - the issues involved in having the buses stay together with armed guards inside of and outside of the bus (note: one bus broke down and all the others had to wait.... I believe the excursion returned 2-3 hours late).

As mentioned previously, Alexandria had men with machine guns in the back of trucks and we saw a couple of tanks on side streets. Of the three "iffy" places that we visited 4 months ago, Egypt was the most uncomfortable while Israel and Turkey appeared to be normal (although they had beefed up security).

For those of you still wanting to visit these places, there are some wonderful land excursions. We did Egypt by land and boat (on the Nile) and were glad that we originally saw it that way. I would have no hesitation to take a tour of Turkey but would avoid Istanbul and a couple of other places.

Once again I commend Regent for keeping abreast of the situation and taking the appropriate action (appropriate for their passengers, their crew and their ships).

I too am surprised they did not cancel Egypt. I was on the Cairo bus caravan. We had armed guards the whole time both there and in Alexandria. I wasn't scared, but Egypt in general, at least the area around Cairo, Alexandria and Port Said, is filthy. We had a land trip planned there for this year, but cancelled because my husband could not tolerate the huge piles of garbage everywhere. We have been to some other places that weren't particularly tidy in South and Central America, but Egypt was way worse.

How disappointing this must be for lots of folks. Having just been to Egypt, and having been to Istanbul in the past, I can't imagine foregoing these places. Presumably Regent would cancel Paris too, if it was a cruise port!

http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/cruises/cruiselog/2016/01/22/norwegian-regent-seven-seas-oceania-cruises-cancels-all-turkey-port-calls-2016/79130430/

As a retired Law enforcement Officer, why would any sane person what to walk into any trouble spot. I would expect all cruise lines to cancel Turkish ports. Turkey is not a friend to the west.

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As a retired Law enforcement Officer, why would any sane person what to walk into any trouble spot. I would expect all cruise lines to cancel Turkish ports. Turkey is not a friend to the west.

 

 

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I respect the years you put in as a Law Enforcement Officer. I have the highest respect for your profession. In terms of Turkey, I am a bit conflicted. Most of the country has no issues but they are a target of some militant groups (as are Israel and Egypt and a few other ports). While Regent has better intelligence than most of us have access to, I wonder why Regent still has stops in Egypt (particularly) and even Israel. On the other hand, the people of Egypt are suffering from the lack of cruise ships visiting there and there will be an economic impact on Turkey as well.

I wish there were an easy answer to this dilemma but there does not appear to be.

Cruiselvr1 - I would suggest you don't decide who is sane based on you being in law enforcemen. Like TC mention I have much respect for any one in that field, however because I may decide to travel outside of the US or the Caribbean that doesn't make me insane. These days it may be a mosquito that does you in and that could happen by staying at home in the summer of 2016.

As a retired Law enforcement Officer, why would any sane person what to walk into any trouble spot. I would expect all cruise lines to cancel Turkish ports. Turkey is not a friend to the west.

 

 

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If we didn't visit places with potential troubles we would visit very few places in the world.

I am not sure if Turkey is any less a friend than China, Russia or several other countries that I could mention that many from the USA visit.

Part of travel is discovery.

I was fortunate as part of a World Cruise in 2010 on another line to visit places that included Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait City, and several other Middle East ports, some of whom we visited before and some of whom we had never visited.

Some thought we were crazy to do this. Some thought the cruise line was crazy to offer it.

But this is one of our most memorable experiences. It confirmed some things that I thought were correct (such as the vast majority of the people we met from Iran are nice people as work colleagues and friends I had from my career whose families fled Iran after the shaw came into power) and it was eye awakening about Saudi Arabia a country that I thought was a friend but walked away with the feeling that they use us and we use them.

Yes, there are places that we might not go to based on the current environment and certainly within places (and that includes the USA) because of the potential of crime/violence/etc.

One of the reasons that I believe that many cruise lines canceled stops in Turkey is because guests were worried and were cancelling the cruise.

Ironically some are replacing Turkey with Athens Greece where only a couple of years they were cancelling Athens. Things change. Times change. And our relationship with Countries change. One day x country is our friend and another day it is not. Sometimes just like our own country it is because of the person heading the country as is the case in Turkey.

Keith

Good post, Keith.

I imagine Regent's insurance carrier has a lot of input on itinerary decisions such as these. Marine insurance premiums vary according to the changing underwriting criteria of the insurance companies.

I think you have to give Regent (and other lines which are making the same decision) the benefit of the doubt here. In the past 10-15 years, cruise lines have removed and sometimes reinstated ports due to local conditions. Acapulco, Cartagena, Ochos Rios and St. Kitts are all ports that at times where locked out and are now currently reinstated. As for Istanbul and Egypt, the circumstances as they exist today represent challenges that cruise lines must evaluate before making what is a very tough call. Last year the angst was West African ports that were skipped due to the Ebola outbreaks.

Losing a port is a bad break. In over 20 cruises, we have lost a port either before a cruise or during at least 1/4th of the time. Our last Navigator, skipped Tortola and Grand Truk due to winds. On our Sept 2016 Trans canal, they have already removed one port and added two more since we booked. However, I have never cancelled a cruise due to a change or asked for compensation because we lost a port. I expect that the cruise line will make this decision with real serious consideration to our health and safety.

Still it will be a loss if Istanbul is not eventually opened back up. My church was planning a holy land visit focused on Paul's journey that was to originate and end at Istanbul, but with discussions with the tour company and local security people (I live in the Washington DC area) it was cancelled for the same reasons Regent is not going there. I got my money back and I am extremely disappointed that I lost that trip, but I will not second guess the people that advised us. Here is hoping Turkey gets a better handle on things and we can eventually make this trip in the coming years.

We had booked a Barcelona-Istanbul cruise for July '16 on our last cruise in August of '15. In mid-November, our TA advised us that Regent had changed the itinerary - significantly - and instead of docking in Istanbul we would finish up in Haifa. As my wife and I both enjoy Istanbul, we were initially upset, but happy about going to Israel.

Now it seems that things have gotten to the point that NOTHING is going to Turkish ports, and that's a shame.

I guess I'm glad that we had time in advance to get prepared for the itinerary change, but I'm sad to see some fantastic ports getting scratched. I sure hope things eventually settle down again.