Crystal Cruises To Reportedly Shut Down US Operations This Week

Genting Hong Kong Ltd’s Crystal Cruises is closing down its US office and is in the process of terminating employees, per a person who has information on the matter; days after two luxury liners were seized due to unpaid bills. Its parent company is considering a restructuring with provisional liquidators.

On 9 February, the company employees were let go on, said an individual, who asked not to be identified because the information had not been declared in a public forum. A video of the announcement being made to the crew on a Crystal Cruises ship details the news, per a Twitter posting done by Crew Center’s handle. The latter is a forum for cruise employees.

A vessel management major named V.Ships is expected to be the new managing company, per the announcement. Bloomberg News, however, has been unable to verify the viral video independently.

Neither Crystal Cruises nor V. Ships and Genting Hong Kong replied to the requests for comments right away.

The unexpected shutdown of Crystal Cruises’ headquarters activities follows the recent vessel seizures that took place in the Bahamas. A fuel supplier sought the action for $4.6 million as unpaid bills.

The crew status currently is more tenuous. Some members have been repatriated from the Bahamas, while some still remain on Crystal Serenity and Crystal Symphony.

The firm spoke about its loss of $1.7 billion in May as the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic raged the entire cruising industry. Its German-based subsidiary, MV Werften, has reportedly become insolvent.

Crystal Cruises had previously mentioned that it was suspending cruises through May. Its call center was shut without further notice, and it was continuing to process customer refunds, per its official website.

In Asia, Genting Hong Kong’s indirect but non-wholly owned unit named Dream Cruises Holding Ltd will continue to operate the fleet. All future Dream Cruises bookings were suspended until further notice. On the other hand, Hong Kong sailings of Genting Dream was reportedly canceled through 16 Fberuary owing to the territory’s social distancing norms.

In a tribute to the Crystal brand, their headquarters employees started putting up a Crystal logo instead of personal images as their profile pictures on social media platforms.

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