Thread: Cruise Line's Response to Lost Baggage Disappoints Passenger

Given that the media provided one side to the story I thought you might like to know what goes on behind the scenes at a Purser's Office in managing lost luggage. There is actually a Purser who is nominated to manage lost luggage for the the entire cruise. This starts for them about 18:00 on embarkation night when they begin to manage the bags that have not been tagged correctly, cabin switches, etc. get them retagged and contact cabin stewards to come and get the bags. Many cabin stewards will come off their own bat to double check if a guest mentions they are still missing a bag. Around 20:00 the reports of lost luggage start coming in. Now depending on a number of things this may just be a few bags of those that appear to have gotten lost on board, but did you also know the Pursers desk manage luggage lost by the airline. Some ships have over 100 reports if a flight has been delayed. They then set about contacting all the airlines to follow up if the bag has been found and organising for it to be delivered to the next port of call. They are on hold for the same lenght of time as any other person who is calling and it can take a couple of hours to get through to all airlines. At the same time they are continuing to check bags that get brought to the office and receive any new reports. At approximately midnight you normally have all bags reported. The Lost luggage Purser will then walk all guest corridors to check and see if anything may have been missed. They then return to the Purser's office and send a report to housekeeping letting them know what bags are missing. Housekeeping provide this report to all cabin stewards in the morning so they can check all the rooms when they are servicing them. A report is also sent to the agent in the next port of call so they can go to the airport and collect any luggage that has been forwarded on.

The next day the lost luggage Purser is in the office by about 8:00am and following up with any guests experiencing lost luggage as well as calling the airlines. If they arrive into port then calls are made also to the ship's agent to ensure they are collecting the luggage. Around 14:00 if nothing has been received and it is a formal night those guests who's luggage was lost on board will receive a voucher for formalwear. For bags that have not been found and were lost on board a notice is prepared for each cabin to request the guests to double check their belongings and to request they double check their luggage. The lost luggage purser then continues to contact guests and airlines until the end of the cruise. They may involve providing set levels of compensation (similar to what the airlines do) and providing head office's details to follow up in the future. If there is another port of calls and bags are still being waited on they will continue to organise for bags to be flown on.

Now this may be surprising to you, or not :-) But I would say this happens at least once on every cruise and for all off the lines. There is normally at least one ship leaving Miami port every single day of the year, Port Canaveral has a few, Port Everglades has a huge run and I would say that every single time a ship leaves a port there is a guest on board who has a similar situation as the couple in the video. It is not necessarily through carelessness, sometimes human error, sometimes guest error, sometimes baggage handler error. Did you know that there have been guests who have reported their bags lost on board only to find that they picked the wrong bag up at the luggage carousel at the airport, they left it at home, they left in the trunk of their car, they argued with the luggage handler on the pier, they didn't tag it, that they checked it in at the wrong pier and it ended up on another ship and that it has been stolen by another guest. Yes, it's true security actually had to have a conversation with a guest as to why she had taken the suitcase and was now wearing the clothes around the ship!

Now the fact that you haven't heard about it in the news that much before is because a high percentage of the time, the guest does walk away feeling that as much as possible has been done to resolve the situation, the Purser's spend a lot of time with the guests with lost luggage on board. Why? Because it is a truly difficult situation and does have a massive impact on their holiday - and because the Pursers really do feel for them. If they are disatisfied then we do suggest that they go to Head Office to discuss further.

Life insurance really is a life saver! Travel agents and I'm sure Pete will agree play a huge role in educating the general public about the importance. It is very unlikely, unless in extremely unusual circumstances that the cruise line will exceed the standard compensation rate - why? Too many variables? There are so many grey areas. What was the value of the items in the bag? Was it indeed lost by the ship? Or was it lost by the guest? Also consider the cruise liine you are travelling with. Also good point from Scrapper Jen, if you are paying $300 for a 5 day cruise then it is unlikely that you will receive a high level of compensation.

Now it is possible that Carnival could have done something a little more. A bottle of wine perhaps to acknowledge their anniversary. However, as much as we don't always like it Carnival were well within their contractual rights and I would suggest they have already done some other things - unless things have changed the gift shop discount is not the norm - I have a feeling this couple may already have spent quite a bit of time with the Chief Purser..... :-)

Hope, thank you for the behind the scenes look at what happens when bags go astray.

That is quite a big job! Can you imagine the difficulty when this happens on one of the huge mega ships!

Thanks, Hope! Great information. I found the reasons how people forget/lose their luggage very interesting. I remember years ago when you picked up your luggage at the baggage claim, you had to show your claim tickets to an employee who verified the numbers to insure you weren't taking another person's bags. Of course, they've done away with that because of costs and probably because the number of problems just don't support the necessity, not to mention the extra line people had to stand in. But I can honestly say in the many many flights we've taken and the thousands of flights our clients have taken, we've only had one reported problem of missing bags. There were 3 single women doing a Mediterranean cruise and all 3 bags did not arrive in Rome. They had booked the airfare through the cruise line and they were not much help. As usual, the cruise line routed them through the cheapest flights and instead of flying non-stop from Washington to Rome, they were routed through Philadelphia where they had to change planes and carriers. Nancy spent an hour on the phone tracing them and found the bags in Philadelphia. She got the bags 'red tagged', meaning they were on the next plan to Rome no matter the carrier, and we actually got the bags delivered to the ship before it left port. Needless to say, they were very happy. But as I said, the air was booked through the cruise line, yet they were no help whatsoever.

It always gets me that the chances of this happening are very slim, yet when it does happen, the press loves to blow it out of proportion. They always want to make a big deal about it because it's a negative story and 'sells papers'. A good reporter would have followed up on this and gotten the other side of the story so as to prepare a more balanced report instead of a one-sided report. As Hope alluded to, there's probably alot more to this story they're not telling us.

I still feel sorry for this couple, especially given it was such an important wedding anniversary. And I agree with Hope that had they purchased the travel insurance, it would have made the whole thing less painful. Small price to pay for the peace of mind.

It would be interesting to hear the other side of the story.

Pete

moral of the story ALWAYS buy travel insurance.