The worlds never ending cruise costing £91k axed leaving passengers homeless
Passengers expecting to go on a three-year cruise have been told it has been cancelled a matter of weeks before it was due to set sail.
Life At Sea Cruises offered customers the chance to snap up spaces for their first three-year package, costing more than £90,000 per passenger.
However, according to CNN, Miray Cruises, the firm’s parent company, could not afford to purchase the vessel required to embark on the round-the-world epic trip.
The journey was supposed to take in 140 cities, 375 ports and 135 countries but it’s been beset by logistical issues.
One such obstacle is that some passengers are stranded in Istanbul, despite the departure location being Amsterdam.
Earlier this month Miray changed the departure location from Turkey to the Netherlands even though some passengers were already in Turkey.
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Life At Sea Cruises, according to the New York Post, will pay for hotel accomodation for stranded passengers, as well as flights home. However, some have revealed that they sold their homes to finance the trip.
One passenger told CNN: “There’s a whole lot of people right now with nowhere to go, and some need their refund to even plan a place to go – it’s not good right now”.
The world-touring trip ran aground after it emerged that Miray couldn’t afford the vessel it needed.
According to Business Insider, Miray Cruises CEO Vedat Ugurlu, told devestated passengers in a memo: “Miray is not such a big company to afford to pay 40-50 million for a ship”.
The publication reported that it had obtained a memo revealing Life at Sea Cruises had been “facing challenges” as investors backed out.
In the letter announcing the cancellation of the cruise, Ugurlu put the financial withdrawals down to “unrest in the Middle East”.
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The ship was meant to start its journey from Turkey’s most populous city on November 1, but the trip was postponed to November 11 and the starting destination was changed to the Dutch capital.
However, the cancellation was formalised on November 17, less than two weeks before the third departure date.
One gutted passenger told Business Insider: “I’m very sad, angry and lost. I had the next three years of my life planned to live an extraordinary life, and now [I have] nothing. I’m having a hard time moving forward.”
The company has said it will issue refunds in monthly installments beginning in mid-December and lasting until late February next year.
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