Question Opinions About White Manta Liveaboard

[living4experiences]

I am planning my second trip to Raja Ampat. As a single traveler who needs my own room, I have found that the White Manta (WM) and Blue Manta (BM) have the lowest single penalty of all the boats in Indonesia, 20%. For the difference in price, White Manta is cheaper, so I'm looking at their itineraries. One of my questions has to do with their response to COVID cancellations. Because of my really bad experience with Siren/Blue-O-Two/Master Liveaboards for my 2020 bookings, I'm very untrusting of the liveaboard industry. COVID is not quite in the rearview mirror yet, so I'm hesitant to plan too far ahead. The terms and conditions of the Damai (my liveaboard trip last month) gives the customer no recourse for a disruption or cancellation of the trip.

For anyone that had a trip scheduled during the pandemic and was cancelled by WM or BM, were you offered the choice of a refund or future credit or only offered a future credit?
If you chose a refund, did you receive it in a timely manner?
Did they honor your original pricing for a rescheduled future trip and not charge you the new rates?
Did they give you a time limit to use your credit?
Did you find their offer of a refund or a reschedule to be satisfactory?

I would like to hear some candid comments and remarks, good and bad, about your experiences. I really just want to hear about the WM or BM (since it's the same company) and not other liveaboard companies (although that may be a good thread to start in a different post).

 

[living4experiences]

Thanks for sharing. What I gather here is they mean if a trip is disrupted or canceled due to THEM and because of circumstances beyond their control, a trip credit is issued to their customers/guests. However, if the guest has COVID issues, then they aren't responsible for any disruption or cancellation. In this case, you would have to claim with your travel insurance. Is that how you interpret it as well?

That is how I interpret it....if the guest cancels for any reason, they owe you nothing. Nothing surprising there. That's the way the liveaboard industry works.

I can understand that. If someone cancels at the last minute, and the op still had to provide a credit/reschedule, they are still losing out on the empty spot that they likely can't fill at the last minute and if it weren't booked by the person canceling due to health issues, they may have been able to sell that spot. If multiple people did that, it adds up in lost revenue.

Agreed.

 

[Dan]

I don’t believe anyone wanted a refund so can’t speak to that - Dan may know. The reschedule was easy - no hassles or extra charges. It was all booked through Bluewater Travel.

We had 3 guests, who wanted to back out due to health issue & rescheduling conflicts, so I found their replacements. Bluewater Travel swapped their spots with the new guests and fully refunded the 3 cancelled spots.

 

[Dan]

I would like to hear some candid comments and remarks, good and bad, about your experiences. I really just want to hear about the WM or BM (since it's the same company) and not other liveaboard companies (although that may be a good thread to start in a different post).

My group was scheduled to be on White Manta for August 2021 trip to Sangalaki. We rescheduled it to August 2022 and luckily everyone in my group was OK with the rescheduled trip. So it went smoothly.

At the time the single supplement cost was only 10% of the cost for double occupancy. They raised it to 20% this year.