Aiken375

We had a wonderful day tour with Favio as our guide.  He took us to SO many places that were great to see.  He took us through small alleys that no one else would even gamble on.  He also drove right to plazas where only tour guides can take you.  We were so happy that we opted for the private tour for four of us vs. taking the standard tour with 8-12 people.  It was definitely worth the extra cost.  I heartily recommend Barcelona Day Tours for anyone looking for tours in this area.  Because there is only one person serving as guide and driver, be aware the guide does not stay with you inside the venues, so you need to be sure you understand where he will be picking you up.  

Budsial and JeriGail - there were actually three threads for this cruise.  I worked with the Cruise Critic Help Desk to shut down two of the three, but now you have started yet another one!  I would strongly urge you to make all future posts to the thread entitled Viking Orion October 13, 2022 Far East Horizons (14 day) & SE Asia Horizons (28 day).  It is the only way we are going to be able to keep the posts consolidated.  

If you are trying to start a new thread strictly for people moving from Viking River to Viking Ocean that is a different story, but you need to title it accordingly.

On 4/5/2020 at 2:10 PM, Captain_Morgan said:

 

Re. the debt to equity ratio, here is a snapshot for the main players in the industry to put things into perspective for the same period.

 

Carnival Corp had a ratio of 0.38 

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings had a ratio of 0.93

Royal Caribbean had a ratio of 0.74

 

source:  https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/RCL/royal-caribbean-cruises/debt-equity-ratio

 

Bearing in mind of course that all of the above are publicly traded companies and they're much larger operations

Using your source, I was able to glean the following regarding cash on hand as of 1/1/20:

Viking $1700 million (from Moody's)

CCL      $518 million

NCL     $253 million

RCCL   $244 million

This would seem to put Viking in a much better position than the others.  

Thanks to whoever posted the info on the Forbes article.  A very interesting read indeed!  For those who don't want to take time to read it, here are some of my takeaways.  Viking has 78 ships and 9000 employees.  The company has a net worth of $3.4B, with $1.6 B in net revenue (updated data from Moody's indicates $2.0 B in net revenue for 12 months ending 9/30/19).  Their debt was $2.5B per Forbes.  That gives a debt to equity ratio of 0.73.  Not sure what is normal in the cruise industry, but this seems quite high to me.  Moody's lowered their credit rating on Viking March 30th from B1 to B2 (not sure what the full scale is).

All of the above negative stuff is somewhat balanced by these positives: their ships have 9000 staterooms that Forbes says were 98% occupied (pretty amazing to me).  Half the business is ocean ships. Italian taxpayers financed 96% of the cost of the first ocean ships, and the German government backed the cost of 57 river ships (!).  Torsten Hagen, who owns 75% of the company, graduated from Harvard with an MBA, and worked as a consultant at McKinsey, where he helped Holland America avoid bankruptcy.  His goal has always been to own THE ocean cruise line.  He used the river ships as a stepping stone to that goal.  And as we all know, he developed it so well that he was able to demand full payment sometimes as long as 18 months in advance.   The article says he loves to take chances.  Well, he certainly has one on his hands now, but I'm not sure I would want to bet against him.

Your thoughts?   

On 3/22/2020 at 7:36 PM, lackcreativity said:

We were told that our cash refund (in our case payable by check) would be within 21 business days, so I wouldn't get worried just yet.

Thanks for the 21 biz day tip.  Viking issued ours on day 20.  Have since cancelled another cruise, and they refunded it to my credit card that same day.  Good job Viking.  Hope you make it through.  We still love your ocean ships, but were significantly disappointed in our Viking River cruise.

We had a 29-day Asia cruise on the Orion that was cancelled by Viking on Feb 19th.  We moved the booking and incentive credits to a new booking in fall of 2021.  However, Viking was to refund our Laos pre-cruise extension payment to our credit card within 21days.  We are now at about 30 days and are getting quite worried.  Has anyone had any success in getting refunds from Viking over the last month?  We are now thinking we should have just cancelled for a full refund, forging the incentives that were offered.