P&O Cruises president Paul Ludlow has said that he will “see what we can do”  for guests who had originally booked Iona’s maiden voyage, which was postponed due to shipyard delays following the coronavirus outbreak, and are looking to transfer onto the new voyage when she launches.

In a video posted on Twitter, Ludlow said: “I know how disappointed you are, especially those of you like Wendy, Kate and others who were booked on to the maiden voyage and were so looking forward to being the first ones to sail on our new flagship.

“We too are so upset but we know that Iona‘s final outfitting will continue and she will be delivered to us before too long.

“Once we know the exact schedule then we can look at the cruises.

” I can see that many of you who originally booked would like to transfer to the new maiden voyage, whenever that may be, and I will see what we can do.

“Regarding the maiden season in Norway – again at the moment we are looking at the current guidelines for travel and talking to the various ports of call and I will update you when we can.”

Ludlow shared this in one of two videos posted on Twitter, in which he answers thousands of questions sent in by customers asking about refunds, loyalty points, the suspension of sailings and how the cruise line plans to come back even stronger.

Thank you for sending 1000s of questions to our president Paul Ludlow. Paul will respond to the topics that matter most to you in two videos.

First, he answers your questions on refunds, loyalty points, and how we plan to come back even stronger. pic.twitter.com/RBwBzCmeiM

— P&O Cruises (@pandocruises) April 9, 2020

In terms of P&O Cruises’ pause in operations, which has been further extended until 15 May, Ludlow said that he hopes to give customers another update by the end of the month.

He said: “We can only work with what we know at the moment and I appreciate that that is difficult and disappointing, but we have only announced our intention to pause operations for sailings until May 15.

“We now need to work through the various restrictions and expected guidelines and come up with a realistic plan for the phasing of our ships back into service.”

In terms of refunds, Ludlow asked customers to “bear with us” as they continue to process them and apologised for the delay.

He added: “We are working through these but given the huge impact upon our business and our contact centre it’s going to take some time.

“To put it into perspective, we have a team of just over 200 people in our contact centre all working hard to answer the phone, take and amend bookings and answer any queries.

“Before this situation they responded to an average of 3,000 calls and emails a day. Now with the covid-19 issue they are working at home and that call and email volume has reached 10,000 a day at its peak.”

Visit pocruises.com/introducing-iona for more information.