Cursed cruise: how the dream of never-ending luxury at sea became a nightmare

Personally I'm curious as to the economics of this to "just cruise less".

I get that "parking" a ship this size is expensive, but is it more expensive than sailing?

My initial thought is that since fuel has become untenable its better to spend (much) more time just parked somewhere. The article mentions sailing less, but doesn't seem to quantify that, or discuss mooring costs.

Or perhaps there are other reasons (visa etc) which limit stop-overs?

I was involved in this project from the beginning and it was an obvious cash grab, cutting corners and costs on all fronts. Their business PCs were amazon sourced windows 10 with 8GB RAM and gen 7 cpus that would not upgrade to windows 11 to save a few k dollars. The second deck was leaking water during the drydock. The crew back then was about to quit since they tried to hide a serious issue with the hull to sail on time. Fuel costs is just an excuse.

> The end came in an announcement as stark as it was brief: they had seven hours to get off. They were going no further than Cambodia.

> The Odyssey, owned by Florida-based Villa Vie Residences, had first set sail from Belfast, Northern Ireland, in October 2024 with an explicit offer: Donald Trump had been re-elected to the White House, and this was a way for those ill-disposed to the president to enjoy a four-year “skip forward”.

> For $319,998, a couple seeking such an escape could head off to the high seas for the length of a presidential term and come back from their journey to nowhere when the danger had passed – or not. For those who had simply had enough, there was a permanent residency option for a few hundred thousand more.

> At 642ft (196 metres) long, it was a relatively small ship, but at such prices, and with the world being held firmly at bay, what could go wrong? Neither the more than 200 passengers on the Odyssey nor its cruise operator foresaw the consequences of Trump’s war in Iran. The reality was, there was no escaping the US president.

> On Tuesday, Villa Vie Residences issued a statement. It had run out of money owing to the soaring price of oil. Monthly fuel costs per cabin in parts of Asia had risen to as much as $8,000 from $1,800, placing it “under unsustainable financial pressure”, it announced.

The price of oil hasn't been stable since about 1973. Look at the top graph here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_oil_embargo. Also, blaming Trump is a shit excuse - the whole premise of their sales pitch was that his second term would be a disaster. If you're an honest, competent seller of 4-year cruises - there are things like oil price futures contracts you could use, to make sure that you could deliver on your sales pitch. Vs. going broke before you've even made it half way.

And the mastermind behind the whole mess seems to admit that he was selling a boatload of make-believe from day 1:

> Speaking earlier in the week, Mikael Petterson, who launched Villa Vie Residences in 2023, accepted that he was the “villain in the story” but said he was doing everything he could to help the stranded passengers. “Nobody that’s tried residential cruising has succeeded and we have gone further than anyone else,” he said. “But I think we would have been absolutely fine and we would have seen this through, if there was no Iran war.”

Excessive consumption becomes unsustainable when the world runs up against resource limits. Go figure.

Can't say I'm feeling much empathy for the passengers here. That said: this companies' planning was piss-poor going by the article. Fuel prices go up & down, can't you hedge / insure against that somehow? Buy fuel in advance, take delivery in batches at locations A, B, C around the world. Something like that? Passengers paid $320k/pop, and best you could do is pass the hat & drop 'em off in the next port? Shame on you.

Edit: don't be surprised if that ship still sits in same Cambodian harbour years from now. With a fat (unpaid) bill attached, amid ongoing legal battles. What a waste...