- A couple who took out their life savings to go on a canceled 3-year cruise say they haven’t got a refund.
- Kara and Joe Youssef sold their apartments and flew to Turkey to board the Life at Sea cruise, the NYT reported.
- Instead, the couple have been living in a hotel room for the past month.
A couple who sold almost everything they owned to go on the three-year Life at Sea cruise have been living in a hotel room in Istanbul, Turkey for the past month after its operators failed to find a ship.
“We sold everything we have to make this dream happen,” Kara Youssef told The New York Times. “We feel completely defeated.”
The Life At Sea cruise was canceled last minute after the owners failed to find a ship and said that investors withdrew.
The cruise, run by Turkey’s Miray Cruises, was intended to be a three-year trip featuring 140 countries and 382 ports. The company claimed on its website that there was “overwhelming demand” for the voyage.
The cheapest cabins cost about $115,500 a person in a double-occupancy cabin for the three-year voyage, rising to nearly $300,000 for a room with a balcony. The price included meals, drinks, entertainment, seminars, and medical consultations, Miray said.
Kara and her husband, Joe Youssef, told The Times that they had sold their two apartments, taken out their life savings, and given away most of their possessions to fund the trip.
The couple left for Istanbul in late October, with the cruise set to depart on November 1. It was then pushed back to November 11, with the departure port changed from Istanbul to Amsterdam, and then delayed further to November 30, before ultimately being canceled.
“They kept leading us on, making us hold out hope until the very last minute, just days before we were supposed to depart,” Kara told The Times.
As of December 28, the Youssefs had been living in a hotel in Istanbul for a month — paid for by the cruise company — and were still waiting for their $80,000 refund, The Times reported. “We could soon be homeless,” Kara told the publication.
The company had previously said it would offer buyers alternative departure dates or “expedited refunds” if it was unable to sail on December 1, Business Insider previously reported. The Times reported that Miray asked passengers to sign an agreement spreading refund payments out between December and February.
“I have received nothing yet, but I did not expect to,” Mary Rader, a retired social worker from New York, told The Times. She said she had taken $80,000 out of her retirement savings to fund the trip.
“My guess is that the company will be shut down or restructured, and anything I put in cash will never get paid out,” she said.
The cruise was originally set to take place onboard the MV Gemini, owned by Miray, but amid concerns about its capacity and suitability, it was changed to a vessel that the company called the MV Lara, though this was later sold to another cruise operator.
The planned voyage was marred by investor drop-outs, lack of interest from potential passengers, and conflict between Miray and Mikael Petterson, the Miami-based entrepreneur who first approached the cruise company with the idea for a three-year trip.
“We tried everything to find a solution, but at the end of the day we couldn’t get the investors and we couldn’t sell enough cabins,” Vedat Ugurlu, Miray’s owner, told The Times.
Some people have compared the proposed cruise to the Fyre Festival.
“They promised so much, and perhaps over-promised,” a person who pulled out of the cruise in April previously told Business Insider.
Life at Sea’s website now says that the cruise is set to depart in November 2024, though some of the web pages still list this as fall 2023. It still advertises the trip as being aboard the MV Lara. The website still lets potential passengers express their interest in the trip, though it’s unclear whether Miray intends for it to ever go ahead.
Business Insider has contacted Miray for comment.
Were you meant to travel on the Life at Sea? Contact this reporter at gdean@insider.com.
