“We apologize, we’ll do better” – a Review of the Silver Whisper and Silversea Management

[DavyWavey70]

2 hours ago, chrism23 said:

Because of the level of detail of your post, and the results of my A/C post, every officer from the Hotel Director on down should be fired, and replaced by personnel from well functioning ships.

I'm with Jeff on this one, firstly, why would you hold every officer responsible for something that it entirely out of their hands? Did the officers you're calling for to be sacked plan and budget what occurred in dry dock? I Think probably not. It seems to me a like an ill thought out overreaction. I Feel so sorry for the crew that have to deal with the seemingly constant dissatisfaction on board especially whilst their hands are so tied. Please be nice to the crew, it's often not their fault that things have gone wrong. 

[UKCruiseJeff]

The apparent lack of autonomy of on-board management has been a common and accelerating theme through several threads recently.  

 

The reason why customers should be particularly alarmed at these signs is in what has been the underlying cause.  

 

It could be a number of factors but the most likely seems to be an over-control of discretionary spend by ship management.  The evidence for this has been in several threads.  The most alarming has been provisioning.  The heavy expense lines on accounts are mostly fixed costs.  The variable lines left are those that most affect the customer experience.  So cheap over-centrally controlled provisioning and the removal of on-board  discretionary funding of local supplies when items are short is a good example.  Is the line suffering from the converging trends of suppliers  insisting on stricter credit terms and the preference to emasculate ship management from making things right.  

 

This management approach strangles the life out of an enthusiastic on-board management team and crew.  They are providing a sub-standard product that they are not proud of and have had taken every potential solution taken from them.

 

Jeff

[Mayflower1]

Good Afternoon MuseCruiser - I am most interested in the opinion of your Friends that disembarked Silver Spirit on Saturday that ' You would have been pretty unhappy with this Boat '.

 

As you can observe from my Post on the Silver Spirit Round Britain Cruise Topic, in my opinion this was a very good Cruise, in relatively poor weather conditions, that displayed many of the qualities that have made us return to Silversea over many years. 

We found the Staff to be unfailingly helpful, Food & Wine Good and The Officers keen to interact with Guests. In particular the HD was both approachable, kind and proactive. The only minor irritation for us was the Entertainment which did not enthuse us but this is very subjective and I imagine many Guests enjoyed it.

It is so easy to criticise in general terms but specifics would be helpful.

[TechSurfer]

Sadly, they aren't living up to the "We will do better" promise.

We were on the Nova last week. I'll do a proper review soon, but the highlights are:

• For the first three days, the food was terrible. Really bad. The ingredients were obviously good, and the presentation was great, but it was uniformly bland and overcooked. It was a very common comment on the ship. Even a burger ordered medium-rare, confirmed, and delivered with a pin saying "medium-rare", was completely overcooked and grey.  (The food by the end of the cruise was pretty good.)
• On the second night the weather was cold, wet, rainy. No worries, but apparently they didn't plan for it and expected most of the passengers to eat top-deck at the pizza/hot-grill spot. Of couse that didn't happen and, with some of the restaurants being limited space or reservation only, SALT ran out of broccoli and other food. They served, without asking/warning, cauliflower instead of broccoli almadine. (Everything was bland and overcooked, as I mentioned above.)
• The Hotel Director was rudely adamant about this later, that they had not run out of food. Apparently they just didn't have enough prepped because they did 180 covers rather than the normal 110 covers. I couldn't make this up - I wouldn't have known to call it a "cover." He seemed to be blaming the passengers for the problem.
• The ship did not begin to disembark passengers until well past not just the posted time but past the departure time for one of the more expensive excursions. Which was subsequently canceled rather than having the start pushed out 20 minutes. Later, a crew member - I believe the Assistant Hotel Director - was equally rudely adamant that the ship was on time. The problem seems to have been gangplank related, but the ship is simply not on time if it isn't letting people off... on... time!
• They also had some problems with issuing refunds for canceled or broken excursions and even with OBCs they could see should have been credited but weren't. They don't seem to have any authority on-board, not even to promise they will fix it. Beyond that, the Assistant Hotel Director claimed it was the passenger responsibility to verify all OBCs present when boarding! As if our fares shouldn't ensure they get the stuff correct that we have letters for!

 

Much of the trip was great, but we're not paying SilverSea prices to take all these issues with the attitude. It wasn't that stuff went wrong, it's that their response was defensive and remorseless. Which does bode well for those expecting change.