Do NOT book with this company they have cancelled a dinner cruises with us with only 3 hours notice. I must stress looking into the coastal weather reports there was NO bad weather on the Waikiki shore. To add more insult to the incident we were told by viator tour company that they were informed in the morning that the weather was apparently “not suitable” yet we were not called until late afternoon. Prince Kuhio cruises,I suspect, cancelled this cruise because they did not have enough bookings and used a fake weather report as a way of not committing to their pre-bookings. When I emailed to show my anger with them I received the most rude phone call I’ve ever had by the captain (captain John) and told me to “stop my rambling” and it “didn’t matter what inconvenience it had caused me”. He also claims that he had passenger safety as he’s main concern yet he took a tour out in the morning for a whale watching where half of them, and I quote, “threw up during the tour” if he knew so much about the water he would never have taken that tour out in the first place
Do NOT book with This unprofessional company.
Réponse de l'hôte
Apr 2022
There is an old saying in business that “the customer is always right”, but sometimes that just isn’t the case. At Prince Kuhio Tours we take our responsibility and obligation for customer safety extremely seriously and accusations to the contrary are going to be firmly addressed. Let’s first mention a couple of outright fabrications presented by Mr. Egan. Firstly. He initially claimed to us that we had cancelled two trips on him, but our booking system only showed a single booking and when requested, Mr. Egan has so far has failed to present proof of a second booking. Secondly, we have not, and do not communicate with Viator regarding any operational aspects of our business, so any insinuation that we told Viator that the weather was “not suitable” is a complete falsehood. Now to the serious part. We have been accused of cancelling a trip because we didn’t have enough passengers and presenting a façade excuse of “bad weather” to our customers. Apparently, Mr. Egan has looked “into the coastal weather reports there was NO bad weather on the Waikiki shore”… whatever that means… and determined that it was perfectly reasonable for the vessel to leave port as scheduled. Fortunately for maritime safety everywhere, competent professional mariners don’t consult Mr. Egan. The senior officers on the Prince Kuhio that day have close to a century in maritime experience and are imminently qualified to assess the sea state at any given time. Also, the Prince Kuhio is docked in clear view of the ocean where we cruise and a “real time” assessment of the sea state is easily done. Combine this qualitative information with constant feedback with other tour operators and an intimate familiarity with the local waters and it should be easy to see how enough information is available to us to make necessary decisions regarding whether it is safe to take our passengers to sea. On the day in question, the seas during the morning Breakfast Cruise were rough and got worse as the day progressed. Mr. Egan seems to believe that because some passengers got sea sick (which happens a lot when people not used to the water go out on a boat.. that’s why we recommend preventive measures in our booking confirmation docs) that we put our passengers in an unsafe situation and therefore we are incompetent and don’t care about safety. Again, the angry rantings of an ignorant, disgruntled individual. When it comes to decisions regarding the sea state, the seas off Honolulu can change relatively quickly so we closely watch the situation and make a judgement call at what we consider to be the latest reasonable time, usually about three hours prior to departure. When we do have to cancel a cruise, we immediately offer everyone a re-booking on ANY other cruise we have at any time. If a customer declines a re-booking, they will receive a full refund. As any logical person can surmise, we don’t like to cancel trips because we lose money doing so, but we absolutely put customer safety and comfort ahead of our profits. If that makes us a “terrible company” then we will accept that, but it also makes us a responsible company. The final fictional items to address are the “fake weather report” and “did not have enough bookings”. We did not present or imply that a “weather report” had anything to do with the cancellation and the passenger manifest included 28 people, nearly triple our minimum cruise requirement, at the time of cancellation. Of those 28, we re-booked 10 and refunded 18. Not a particularly good deal for us. I tried to include the manifest but I can’t add pics to this response. I will email a sanitized copy to anyone who requests it. And lastly, there is one truth to Mr. Egan’s statement. Our verbal conversation with him degenerated quickly and we probably could have handled it differently, but when someone repeatedly and aggressively calls your integrity and commitment to customer safety into question, sometimes you have to take a stand. At Prince Kuhio Tours, we take a great deal of pride in what we do and we stand by, and stand up for, how we do it.