Fred Olsen Braemar chartered for the Olympics

It's been announced today that Fred Olsen have had to completely re-schedule their cruises for July and August 2012.
The Braemar has been privately chartered by an unknown agency for the full duration of the 2012 London Olympics.

Fred Olsen 2013 now on sale

You may remember a post from a week or two in which I was talking about some exciting new itineraries coming for the west coast of Africa, (if you can't you can read it here).
I've just received a notification that they are on sale as of now!

Why no cruises to Africa?

I've been selling, living, breathing and on occasion dreaming cruises for the last couple of years now and do you know what I've noticed in that time? There are hardly any cruises to Africa.
Sure you'll get the odd World cruise that will take in the occasional port, normally Cape Town in South Africa, and you might get the odd repositioning cruise to take in a port or two but apart from that it's woefully underrepresented in the cruise world.
Why is that I wonder?

Fred Olsen drop 5% discount

Why go direct? What's the point? Why would anyone ever book direct with the cruise line?
"Well you're bias", you might say. "Of course you'd say that, you're a travel agent! All these things are true but even given that I still don't understand why anyone would book with the cruise line direct.

Freds do it again!

Fred Olsen cruise lines have been making a lot of changes recently that I've not been happy with. First of all they introduced automatic gratuities to all their cruises, then they did away with all their casual dress codes. The latest change however just seems to be penny pinching at it's worst with no benefit or even thought given to the customer.

Are Fred Olsen trying too hard?

First off, I like Fred Olsen. I like their ships, (well the Balmoral); I like the atmosphere onboard; I like their staff and normally I like the way they operate, but just lately it's started to feel that Fred Olsen are trying to be something they're not.

Who are Fred Olsen?

I'll be continuing my series of posts today looking at the different cruise lines first time cruisers might be interested in and just providing a bit of background to them with some pros and cons.
Todays post will be all about Fred Olsen.