Sunsail cancelled our holiday

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tmh900

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Booked for this summer to club Phokaia Turkey. Letter says a number of reasons, but does not specify. Not impressed.

Apparrently all three Turkey beech clubs are cancelled.

I guess the one in Greece will be busy!
 
Hi,
me too, all Turkey beachclub centres closed this year. Pretty poor customer service as well, phone lines still engaged after 10 minutes so gave up. Forget it and give us a refund!
Pity really with euroland so expensive this year
Steve /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif
 
Really strange. You would think that in this economic climate Sunsail would instead close their Euro based operations and keep the Turkish open. I would be very interested to understand the reasons behind this decision.
 
Tried to call them twice yesterday - once > 50 mins without getting talking to anyone. Will try again today when they open at 9 AM.
 
Interestingly on the converse side I tried to book a day skipper course through their Port Solent business this month and every boat is fully booked, so some parts of their business is doing okay!
 
I don't know the true facts but Sunsail don't always own the hotels that the clubs operate in so this may be a factor.

If there is an alternative go Greece or even Antigua as I have said many times on here before (Antigua) it takes about the same amount of time door to door.
 
Sunsail is very unlikely (IMHO) to go bust at anytime due to the size of their parent company.
TUI are a huge outfit who own Sunsail, Moorings, Thomson holidays, First Choice, Condor plus a load of others.
I think they have seen a reduction in take up and have decided to pull this offering but that doesn't help the people who have already booked.
 
Success. Took till just now to get through, but transferred to Greece (more expensive in the brochure than Turkey) at no extra charge. Same dates (but slightly later flight times).

Also got a bigger room with sea view!

Well done Sunsail.
 
Hi All, I work in the Sunsail head office and therefore wanted to post to give you full information regarding our Sunsail Clubs in Turkey and help clear up any speculation.

We are extremely disappointed that we have had to take this decision not to operate our Sunsail Clubs in Turkey this summer - our Yacht and Flotilla operations, however, will remain unaffected, as will our Clubs in Greece and Antigua. The decision has been taken for a number of reasons that impact our ability to deliver the exceptional holidays we pride ourselves on - and that our customers expect from us.

Sunsail offers a unique product which relies heavily on the use of specialist staff, for example instructors who hold RYA qualifications. Turkish law requires us to employ 20% UK staff versus Turkish staff ratio - our current model is 35% due to our standard operating procedures, so we would need to recruit and train Turkish staff to fill these specialist roles. Unfortunately our business model is not currently set up to be able to do this for 2009 and therefore we have taken the difficult decision to not operate our Sunsail Clubs in Turkey this year.

We have identified a number of alternative holiday options for customers who have already booked a holiday in Turkey with Sunsail Clubs and these customers have all been written to. The customer care line has full details of these options, and can be contacted on 02392 334599.

As you can imagine, our customer care line has been extremely busy over the last two days. We have additional staff answering calls in order to reach every customer as quickly as possible, and please be assured that booked customers will be contacted by our team at the very earliest opportunity.

Thanks, Fiona
 
Well done Fiona for having the courage to come on here and talk to your customers - nice to see that Sunsail knows where to find some of them.

Not a customer myself you understand.
 
Very wise to be open about the reasons. The decidedly cagey statement on the Sunsail website immediately encouraged just the wrong sort of speculation - perhaps that should be updated with the above info asap?.
 
I think Sunsail need to be careful not to upset the Turkish authorities, as they are still running their flotillas there. I met the Sunsail team who ran their flotillas out of Orhaniye last year. A nice bunch, but I did not spot any Turks among them.
 
On the other hand they may well have taken the choice to not make all the facts clear in such an open site to avoid inflaming the Turkish Authorities. Always remeber that they are operating in Turkey as guests, and want to continue that relationship.

On the otherhand it would seem that they could have been a trifle more clear about the problem in their letter, after all it was the letter that sparked this off.
 
Staff visas are the reason behind Sunsail not operating in Turkey. Sunsail have always sent their staff out on a free 3 month visitor visa, not the correct work visa which costs money. Last October around 50 UK staff were arrested at Club Javelin - they were held in jail overnight and deported to Greece the next day.
I cant imagine that any Sunsail employees would want to work in Turkey again at the risk of being thrown in jail,
 
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