Hi Lucy,
I have also had my flights changed to FlyJet, but yesterday I received my tickets informing me that they have also changed my hotel, I am now booked into the Hilton Luxor instead of the Meriden. I have sent Cruise Control an email asking why it has taken them 6 months to realise that the hotel is overbooked. I don't expect to get a reply, they never do. Whenever I ring I just get put in a queue but never get to speak to anyone. I wouldn't recommend this company to anybody.

Mike

If you receive the "View from the Bridge" magazine that Cruise Control send out, you may find the email address of some senior people in there. Unless they have stopped printing it due to a very high volume of complaints!!

my dad along whith many other people who were on the holiday with us are going to report cruise control, Abta are definately gonna get a complaint about them.

as for takinf 6months for them to realise the meridien is over booked i'm really not suprised, we had to wait 3 months to get abu simbel for free they made a cock up on there website so we took advantage of it, abu simbel was advertised as being in 10 free excursions so we made sure we got it for free.
we spent about £30 on phone calls ringing them.

We had a holiday (almost) booked through Cruise Control a couple of years ago, but circumstances changed and we had to cancel. The Customer Service girl I spoke to was most helpful, and we didn't even lose the deposit !!

Other members of my family have also only had decent experiences with this company. Not arguing with the previous posters, but felt it was only fair to give credit where its due.

Hello All,
I came back from a cruise 11th July 2005, was supposed to be on M/s Liberty for a week
but they had taken it out of service and not informed us until we landed at Luxor airport. We were put on another ship.
I am at this moment claiming compensation from Cuise Egypt for breaching their contract with me for not informing me of the change in my holiday ( they have been having problems with M S Liberty for months)
To contact Cruise Egypt/Control send email to: XXXXXXX



EDIT: Personal e-mail address removed from this post
David HT Mod

I would be very surprised if Cruise Control ( or the TO for whomthey were acting) didn't have, somewhere in their T & C's, a disclaimer that they may subsistute other airlines and/or cruise ships when necessary.

(For example in Thomson's current brochure, they say:

At the time of printing we plan to fly with Thomson (Thomson flights are operated by Britannia Airways Ltd) and other airlines. If we have to change your flight airline or aircraft type it does not count as a major change

)

So I would expect every other TO to say similar things ( I just happened to have thomson's brochure to hand)

So far as the change of ship is concerned this happens frequently. There are over 250 cruise ships on the Nile atthe moment, many of them brought into service in the last few years. With the downturn in travel to Egypt - War in Iraq, SARS, terrorism etc have all affected numbers - many ships are, in effect, "mothballed".

Some cruise ship operators own and run several ships, which are contracted out to a large number of TOs, both British and foreign.

With many holidays available right up to the day of departure, the ship operators frequently do not know until the very last minute how many passengers they have on each ship.

What happened to us was that Flash Tours ( the Egyptian operators of the cruise ships) had two ships due to sail, both one-third full.

They amalgamated the two parties onto one larger ( and incidentally better) ship. Everyone got a great holiday, and Flash only had operating costs for one ship to carry.

Unless the ship you were moved to was of a significantly lower standard than that originally booked - which I rather doubt knowing the standard of Nile cruisers - I doubt you have any grounds for complaint.

Dear Sancho,

My argument is, I received pictures of M S Liberty in May 05 of a suite which was in a disgusting condition, (I had booked a suite) I sent these photo's to Cruise Control/Egypt, adding that I would be getting my money back etc, etc (this was 2 months before my cruise)
So...........they knew for months of the problems they were having with the ship.
I have been offered compensation and I am awaiting the final details.
My arguement is, they knew there were serious problems, they knew they had to take the ship out of service, so I should have been informed.
They also run the MS Diamond and MS Treasure