Richard Turen
While the river cruise industry continues its record-setting growth, more and more clients are wondering when they should be traveling Europe's most enticing rivers.
Through all the marketing hype and announcements of newbuilds, agents are rushing as quickly as possible to jump aboard this river cruise boom.
But amid all the noise comes this voice from the background, muffled but discernable, asking, "Yes, but when should I take this trip along the (fill in the blank) River?"
It is the consumer, the purchaser of the hottest product on the travel store shelves. And I'm not just talking about what Viking River Cruises is building.
The "when" question is, of course, never addressed by operators of river cruises in Europe. Their job is to fill berths, and April and October berths going empty is just as big a problem as mid-summer vacancies.
But that has not been much of a problem in the past two years, with record bookings resulting in several of the leading lines quietly touting that the season has been put to bed. The official industry position about when to go on a river cruise vacation in central Europe has been to state simply that there are advantages to almost any month you choose.
That is true. April and May sailings offer fewer crowds ashore. During the summer, there are festivals and less chance of rain. The fall is a time of lower prices, and you just can't beat the street sausage during late November and early December Christmas Market sailings.
But it might be that travel consultants will need to add still another title to their growing portfolio of stuff they need to know: vacation climatologist.
We just have to start paying attention to worldwide weather patterns because they are becoming so severe that they can seriously impact even the best-intentioned vacation plan.
Earlier this week, I received an email from Tauck saying there was high water on the Rhone and that water levels have been rising so rapidly that river navigation has "been closed."
This was a trip on which one of our favorite clients was traveling with her daughter, an important opportunity for them to spend time together. They had asked me about travel in May, and I remember saying that it was one of the months I like best along Europe's waterways because of the cooler temperatures and the likelihood of fewer tourists in the towns and villages along the way.
Now, ever since I received notice from Tauck about my clients, I have agonized over my advice. Tauck's letter went on to explain that "due to the unpredictability of river levels," certain options would be made available to my clients.
Wait a moment. Unpredictable water levels. How do I best communicate that to a client? When should I have told these clients to travel? And how should I best answer the "When should I go?" question in the future?
The quick answer is that summer travel in Europe is always best. But is it? And if it isn't wise to tour Europe in July and August, for example, just who is going to give the seller that information? No one. We have to become vacation climatologists. Sorry, but we do.
So questions remain. My clients are now living on their river ship, taking bus trips by day. This is not exactly what they had paid for and, to its credit, Tauck greeted them with a choice upon their arrival in Europe: They could continue on with their trip and receive a $1,500-per-person voucher for future travel. That seems fair, even generous, since flooding was no fault of Tauck. The second option, which 11 couples of the 60 or so onboard selected, was to return home, receiving a full refund for the unused portions of their trip.
For the second option, Tauck would include rail transportation to Paris as well as an overnight in Paris before a flight out the next day. If Tauck arranged the air, they would make any necessary changes. If the guests had done their own air, it was up to them to make changes.
So in this case, I feel the supplier has done what is appropriate. But that still leaves several unsettled questions.
Why do river cruise companies downplay the importance of weather and water-level issues when it seems to affect so many river cruise activities?
Then there are the rather important questions of "What did they know, and when did they know it?" My guests were not informed that their river cruise would be a bus tour until the day they arrived. That's not what I would expect from one of Europe's top-rated lines.
The fact is that Tauck, Uniworld, Avalon and Ama are all members of CLIA, which has touted its new Passenger Bill of Rights; it applies to guests on each of the member lines. One important provision of this document calls for timely information updates.
I do not recall that any of the member lines have proactively notified agents of pending European water-level issues in advance of their guests' departures from the U.S. There is no central clearinghouse for this kind of important information for travel agents.
Tauck's reaction to issues of water levels was to produce a rather clever animation video about Europe's "River Gods." The video explains that sometimes the river gods are in a bad mood and they don't want anyone traveling on their territory. But no worries, the video points out, your vacation will not be disappointing, as suitable land arrangements will be substituted.
Tauck: The River Gods from Matt Kaiser on Vimeo.
Other river cruise companies don't even touch the subject. Legally, it would appear that no river line is required to advise booked guests in advance about changes to their itinerary. This is covered in the fine print. River cruise companies do not have any standard compensation model for cruises that turn into bus tours.
It has become harder to know how to answer the "When should we travel?" question. But here is some information that might at least put the question in perspective:
• In 2014, midsummer temperature records that had stood for literally hundreds of years were shattered by Europe's hottest summer since records were kept.
• No one born after the year 1976 has experienced any European summer that was "colder than average."
• At the moment this is being written, river vessels from many companies sit and wait on the Upper Rhone for water levels to go down. The river's "traffic lights" are, in many cases, not working. Thousands of cruisers are affected.
• CLIA cannot tell us the number of river cruise departures that fail to operate as scheduled due to high or low water levels. One estimate I've been given is 3%, but I suspect that figure might be low.
• The captains of the vessels now stranded cannot provide any clear picture of what comes next. They simply don't know, and there is a clear breakdown in the information links between waterway management and the lines that use their services.
• We now know that portions of Europe have experienced so-called midsummer "mega-heat waves" in 2003, 2010 and 2014. In 2010, temperatures in Moscow reached daytime highs of 101 degrees Fahrenheit, causing massive fires. The death count of the 101-degree heat wave in Russia alone is now said to be 55,000 people. These were the warmest summers on record in Eastern Europe since the 1500s.
• Snow melt from the Alps swells Europe's river in late April and May. Severe heat and drought are becoming serious problems in late June, July and August. And, even if the river vessels are operating perfectly, with "just right" water levels, I wonder about counseling guests who may not be in the best of health to deal with the possibility of temperature extremes while walking ashore.
• The fall usually means the end of the drought, but rains begin and the rivers begin to swell again.
Suppliers just don't train agents to be weather climatologists. The brochures never discuss the increasing risks of high or low water or stifling summer heat. Marketing people prefer not to deal with negatives. So it falls on us to try, as best we can with limited resources, to tell our clients when to go.