A three-year cruise that would have taken travellers to 135 different countries on seven continents has been cancelled.
The cruise, which began taking reservations earlier this year with cabins starting at $29,999 a year, was cancelled after the company, Life at Sea Cruises, admitted it didn’t have a ship, CNN reported. The cruise was originally scheduled to depart from Istanbul on 1 November, but was postponed to 11 November, when it was moved to Amsterdam, and then again to 30 November.
However, on 17 November, passengers who had signed up for the multi-year voyage were told there would be no cruise after all. Instead, the company reportedly promised to refund up to hundreds of thousands of dollars to travellers who had signed up for the cruise.
The company had originally planned to buy a retired AIDA Cruises ship, but the ship was purchased by Celestyal Cruises, CNN reported. Vedat Ugurlu, the owner of Miray Cruises, which owns Life at Sea, later sent out a message telling passengers the company could not afford to buy the ship and said he was “extremely sorry for the inconvenience”.
When the cruise was announced, it was billed as a three-year voyage that would visit 375 ports and cover 130,000 miles. The voyage was to take place on a ship with spacious cabins, dining and entertainment facilities, a spa, a pool and workspaces such as a business centre.
As well as this doomed voyage, there are plenty of round-the-world voyages for travellers to sign up for, such as Silversea’s 2026 voyage, which will take travellers to 37 different countries, or Azamara’s 155-day voyage, which will take sailors to all seven new wonders of the world.