It?s a sight I thought I would never see, but if you go to http://www.euroferries.co.uk you will see that a bookings website has replaced the very poor website we?ve been staring at for the past 10 months.
The 14th November is the first possible bookings date and it will be interesting to see how many take up that option considering the amount of changes there have been with the start of sailings. The first announcement was for a 1st March sailing, then 31st March, then as the months ticked by this date was put further back until we were promised a final 1st September date, and then now it seems that as they are taking bookings, and that 14th November is the date, which should give them enough time to do trial runs, training, etc, and of course get people booked on board.
If in January Euroferries had announced that it would take a year to get everything set-up then I?m sure things will have gone a lot smoother, they would?ve got less hassle, and there would?ve been a lot less negative press about them, but having such short deadlines hasn?t done them any favours and may have even lost them customers who have lost faith.
In my first about Euroferries all those months ago I was very happy:
??we should also be thinking of the possibility of extra tourism in the area coming over from France and if this actually goes ahead then it is fantastic news for not just Ramsgate, but Thanet, and will hopefully be a success rivalling the old ‘Sally Line‘ days??
We shall wait and see?
Makes very interesting reading, note the date of the artical.
the Euroferries saga
published on Fri 22 January 2010
In the middle of last month we reported in our regular e-brief about Euroferries, the would-be cross Channel shipping operator that has yet to make a single crossing on its much publicised Ramsgate to Boulogne route. You can read that original story here (under the heading Channel cats).
So we were interested in the news earlier this week that the catamaran that Euroferries said they would use for the service is still laid up in the Canary Islands, and no longer carries the Euroferries name and logo. The owners of the ship, Fred Olsen Lines, are reported as saying that the discussions to lease the ship to Euroferries are no longer in play. Which begs the interesting question as to quite which vessel Euroferries will deploy on their début crossing from England to France on 1 March 2010.
It is now four years since Euroferries first popped up. And for over a year they have been claiming to be “the leading fast ferry operator on the English Channel.” Quite some claim, especially as they have yet to run a ferry service of any kind. Caveat emptor is the phrase that naturally springs to mind, as would-be cross-Channel passengers contemplate with which company they should book. Even Blanchard, the first person ever to cross the Channel by balloon (in January 1785), did not need four years preparation to make the crossing from England to France.
Nicky Gardner and Susanne Kries