Comment Submitted by Margaret J. Vincent

I would like to make comment to the statement that NCL feels that other cruise lines put it at a competitive disadvantage because they are doing one way cruises to Hawaii with a brief stop in Ensenada to fulfill the foreign port stop requirement. While the other cruise lines are foreign flagged and are not subject to the same employment laws present on the NCL cruises, NCL has done a lot to harm it's own reputation due to incredibly poor service. NCL started operating in Hawaii with a higher price point and probably could have maintained the higher price point if they provided exceptional service to their clientele. I am a travel agent and we used to sell the NCL product. We had so many complaints from NCL passengers that the company did nothing to rectify, especially for passengers on the Hawaiian cruises, that we stopped selling their product completely. In a year that other cruise line companies were making record profits, NCL has lost money. If that doesn't say something about their ability to satisfy customers, nothing will. No one forced NCL to go into the Hawaiian island market. The fact that they skirted the U.S. built ship requirement for this routing by starting construction of the ship in the U.S. and then towing the hull all the way overseas for completion, is also suspect. The biggest thing NCL could do to turn their situation around, is to provide service that would make other cruise lines envious. No business can survive solely on a complete influx of new customers. They need to nurture every bit of business they have and then let the better reputation sell itself.