Thank You to Holland America for Finding our Lost Luggage
We recently went on a cruise aboard the Nieuw Statendam. We were so excited and this was our first cruise. Here is a cautionary tale, but also a big shout out to Holland America for helping rescue our vacation.
Long story but it's a doozy. TLDR at the end.
We had booked flights to arrive in London (layover in Atlanta) the same day our cruise departed from Dover. I know, booking a flight to arrive the same day as your cruise embarks is risky. But we figured it wouldn't be a problem. Mistake #1.
On our first flight, the gate agent made the usual call begging people to check their carry on bags due to limited space in the bins. We decided to do that. Mistake #2.
Our first flight was delayed getting to Atlanta due to bad weather, so we missed our connecting flight to London. There were no other flights to London for about another 20 hours, meaning we would not make it to the cruise in time. So we book that next available flight to London for now and figured we'd call our travel agent afterwards to figure stuff out.
After some persuasion, the airline agent at ATL caved and got us a hotel room and meal vouchers. We then go to baggage services and ask for our bags we checked since we now had to stay in a hotel overnight. They said they would not be able to retrieve our bags, and they would be at our final destination (which at this point was still London). So most of us only had the clothes on our backs, and whatever we had in our personal items.
Our travel agent called us back when we were at the hotel. She rebooked us for a flight to Amsterdam for the next afternoon, and informed HAL we would embark in Rotterdam on day 2. Sweet, no big deal.
We get back to the Atlanta airport the next day and ask about the bags. The agent reassured us that they would all be sent to Amsterdam instead. We were smart enough to put air tags in our luggage. So when we land in Amsterdam and turn our data back on, we see 1 bag with us in Amsterdam, and 5 still in Atlanta. Not promising. We make it to baggage claim and we find the 1 bag, but no others... just what we were afraid of.
We go to the baggage services and fill out a claim. We show them the airtags showing the bags still in Atlanta, which was very helpful. We get a claim number, leave them our contact info but let them know we were going on a cruise and gave them the ship phone number too, and eventually make it to the cruise terminal in Rotterdam.
We were pretty jet lagged and pissed off about all of this. Luckily the staff at the Rotterdam cruise terminal were VERY sympathetic and helped us skip the line and get on the ship ASAP. A big reason for this was because the following day we were at sea, and the cruise terminal staff highly recommended we spend whatever time we had left in Rotterdam to buy spare clothes at a store nearby, which was excellent advice, and we did that.
HAL guest services was fantastic. We told them the situation, and they basically said "Give us your claim number and any documents and bag tags you got from the airline. We'll take it from here. Go enjoy your vacation." They said they have someone on the ship who is a lost luggage guru. They contacted the airlines, the airports, and coordinate everything. Since we would have no cell service at sea, this was a big relief.
They also gave us free express laundry until we could get our bags back, some extra onboard credit, a refund of our missed Rotterdam excursion, and a free wifi voucher so I could check email, etc. in case we got any alerts from the airline. On our day at sea, I checked the airtags and found 1 bag made it to London, 1 more made it to Amsterdam, with the rest still in Atlanta. No word from the airline yet. Later on, guest services informed us that they found all our bags and planned on getting them to Edinburgh, where we would be on day 4.
Once in Edinburgh, I checked the airtags, and sure enough, some of them were there at the Edinburgh airport! I checked again a few hours later and all but 1 were in Edinburgh. The one bag was actually sent by Atlanta back to our home airport. That airport called us confused, and we explained the situation. They asked if we wanted them to send it to Edinburgh, and we said hell no! Keep it there, we'll send someone in town to pick it up.
HAL got a local courier to pick up our luggage at the Edinburgh airport and drop it off at the port. You have no idea how thrilled I was to see the luggage tags moving along the motorway towards the port. They x-rayed the bags and brought them to guest services for us to pick up once we got back on board.
Shout out to HAL and the Nieuw Statendam guest services team for recovering our lost luggage, and helping us enjoy our vacation! 🙌
Lessons learned:
Don't book a flight to arrive the same day your cruise departs. Crap happens. Arrive a day early at least.
For me personally, I will never check a carry on bag at the gate ever again, unless it is direct and I have no connecting flights.
Put air tags in ALL your luggage. It helped us a ton in this situation.
Apparently you have the right to get your checked luggage if your delay is more than 12 hours, which we didn't know at the time. The lady at the baggage counter in Atlanta was either not aware of this, or was just lazy (this is likely the case given her demeanor). I should have asked for a supervisor. It was already like pulling teeth just to have them give us a hotel room. Having our bags given back to us right then and there would have likely prevented any of this from happening.
TLDR: had a nightmare with missing luggage in various countries. HAL guest services took over recovering it and gave us some freebies so we could relax and enjoy our vacation, and got our luggage back.