OPINION
Winter in the Caribbean is peak season for cruising. It’s much like Australia but supersized, with many times more ships sailing dozens more itineraries to hundreds more ports, for a significantly larger market.
But regardless of its size, a cruise anywhere can be subject to man-made disruptions beyond the control of anybody embarking on those ships. Even a military operation to depose a Venezuelan president such as Nicolas Maduro.
As I write this column, there are more than 80 cruise ships exploring various parts of the Caribbean. The map below taken from CruiseMapper shows many sailing extremely close to Venezuela.
Among the throng is Arvia, a 2022-built ship operated by the UK’s P&O Cruises (not to be confused with the former brand that sailed for 90 years in Australia until it was shut down last year). Right now, my mother-in-law and father-in-law are onboard.
What they booked some months back was an idyllic 14-day round-trip cruise from Bridgetown, Barbados, visiting Caribbean island nations such as Martinique, St Maarten, Grenada and St Lucia among others. Trust me when I say my wife and I are highly jealous.
One of the indirect consequences of America’s raid on Venezuela last weekend was to throw the plans of thousands of travellers into complete disarray. Utter chaos.
For my in-laws, the situation has been kinder than it has been to many others. All they’ve experienced has been a delayed flight from the UK to Bridgetown, but beyond that, the disruption has been minor. They’ve boarded the ship, settled into their cabin and are exploring its many delights.
For others, it has been a nightmare. The ship’s crew, who thought they would be showing off the best of the Caribbean to another load of eager travellers, have endured three days of repeatedly venturing out to sea by day and returning to Barbados by night to disembark travellers from the previous cruise who have had onward flights cancelled. Airspace was closed for the US operation, leaving airlines scrambling to arrange extra flights to clear their backlogs.
Onboard, my relatives tell me the crew are doing the best their can in extremely difficult circumstances. Queues at the customer service desk are lengthy, with crew walking the line answering the easy questions, if there are any.
Obviously, disruptions to travel plans can happen for a litany of reasons – a military strike is probably on the rarer and more extreme end of the scale mind you. But it highlights how important a travel agent is to the booking process and how important it is to have adequate travel insurance before you walk out your front door at home.
At one time, I could understand the appeal of booking everything yourself. A few clicks, a couple of tabs open, there’s a sense of control. You tell yourself you’re saving money and cutting out the middleman. But after years of reading and hearing about holidays unravelling in real time, I’ve come to a firm conclusion: agents aren’t a luxury anymore – they ARE the insurance.
Travel today is fragile. Flights get cancelled. Connections vanish. Cruises don’t wait. Border rules can change overnight. One delayed flight can knock over an entire itinerary like dominos, and suddenly that great deal you booked at midnight is the reason you’re sleeping on an airport floor instead of sipping a cocktail on a balcony.
I’ve seen it happen again and again. The self-bookers are always confident – until they’re not.
They’re the ones frantically refreshing airline apps when a flight disappears from the departure board. The ones on hold for three hours with a call centre on another continent, only to be told to submit an online form and wait “up to 30 business days.” The ones waving cruise documents at a check-in desk while the ship’s already pulling away because their inbound flight was cancelled and no one rebooked them in time.
Airlines don’t coordinate with cruise lines. Hotels don’t care why you didn’t arrive. Online booking platforms are brilliant at taking your money and spectacularly bad at fixing problems once something goes wrong. Everyone passes responsibility, and you’re left holding the bag – or not holding it, because it never arrived.
A travel agent, such as the team from Travel at 60, sees the whole picture. They don’t just book flights; they think about connection times, backup options, historical reliability, and what happens if something breaks. They know which fares can be changed, which ones are traps, and which airlines are notorious for cancelling the last flight of the day. They build itineraries with buffers, not blind optimism. And when something does go wrong – because sometimes it will – they act.
I’ve seen agents reroute travellers while they were at the airport, secure hotel rooms during mass cancellations, and get people onto ships or tours they absolutely should have missed. That kind of intervention doesn’t show up on a price comparison website, but it can save a holiday – or at least salvage it.
For my relatives, this all happened at the start of their holiday, which they booked with their regular agent, and as I said earlier, they did make it onboard the ship. They’re enjoying themselves and praising the crew for doing the best job they can. The Captain is making announcements regularly and keeping people as informed as possible.
Time will tell what sort of a holiday they end up having, how many ports and excursions are missed and how long it takes to clean up the mess in full. Hopefully everybody gets on their way as soon as possible and the ship can put together a jigsaw puzzle of an itinerary and provide an enjoyable voyage for those who remain onboard.
I’m not saying self-booking never works. Sometimes everything goes perfectly. But travel today isn’t designed for perfection – it’s designed for efficiency, and efficiency breaks under pressure.
When it does, I know which side of the counter I’d rather be on.
Proudly Australian owned and operated