What Really Went Wrong With the Failed Forever Cruise?

At least the ship itself did not sink, despite all 203 passengers and more than 150 crew members being ordered to leave it.

There were no lifeboats or emergency rescue drama. Instead, passengers watched their life savings disappear as their dream of making a permanent home at sea collapsed in spectacular fashion.

The 509-cabin Villa Vie Odyssey, operated by Florida-based Villa Vie Residences, is stranded in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, after the company said it was under “unsustainable financial pressure” and could no longer afford to purchase additional fuel.

The vessel was marketed as a never-ending cruise, sailing around the world on three-year cycles. Cabins cost between £90,400 and more than £670,000, with residents also paying a monthly charge for meals, housekeeping and internet access. Passengers, however, say the internet and televisions have been unusable for weeks.

The proposition was simple: make the ship your permanent home while visiting more than 400 ports. Life on board was to include unlimited buffets, exercise classes, trivia competitions, pickleball and nightly entertainment.

Several passengers, most of them from the United States or Canada, committed fully to the idea. They sold their houses and cars and accessed their pensions, believing they were buying an extraordinary new way of life.

It has undoubtedly been an adventure. But it has been far from the life-enhancing experience they were promised.

Randy Cassingham, 66, and his 71-year-old wife, Kit, were among those forced off the vessel this week. “We had built a house and it was our dream house,” he said. “And we decided to sell that and our car and almost all of our belongings and move onto the ship full-time, permanently. So, we don’t have a home to go to right now.”

Adding to the anger, the company offered no immediate apology despite the seriousness of the situation. Mikael Petterson, founder of Villa Vie Residences, has since said he feels like “the villain” in the story and acknowledged that the circumstances were “awful”.

This week, residents who had paid substantial sums for relatively modest cabins on the 642ft ship were given an explanation of the mounting costs. The account sounded more like a presentation from a sharp-suited financial adviser than an emergency briefing, with the company blaming the continuing conflict in the Middle East for driving up oil prices.

“On an equivalent per-cabin basis, monthly fuel expense that historically averaged approximately $1,800 (£1,350) has recently reached an estimated $6,000 (£4,500) to $8,000 (£6,000) in parts of Asia. The company cannot simply pass increases of that scale on to residents,” the company said.

That may be understandable from a financial perspective. But passengers say they should have been given considerably more warning.

Instead, Villa Vie issued a brief statement: “We are working with residents to co-ordinate disembarkation and temporary living arrangements and are supporting residents.”

The Cassinghams dispute that account. They sold their family home in Colorado and most of their possessions to pay £284,000 for a permanent cabin, along with a monthly fee of £5,200, convinced that the Odyssey would become their “forever home”.

“What’s happened didn’t come out of the blue,” Mr Cassingham said. “It was a cascade of problems piling up on one another, from the business model to mistakes by management to the mentioned crisis in fuel cost and availability, and more.”

Writing on his blog, he said he first realised the situation was deteriorating on Monday, when Kathy Villaba, Villa Vie’s chief executive, posted a message on the ship’s internal communications board.

Passengers were given just seven hours to pack their belongings and disembark. From that point, they were responsible for arranging and paying for their own accommodation and meals in the port town of Sihanoukville.

Another resident, Margaret Carrasco, delivered her own statement on what happened – and she doesn’t pull her punches.

‘I want to set the record straight and clear up any confusion out there about what the company, Villa Vie Residences, is claiming in their PR announcements,’ she said.

‘They are providing zero support to residents despite claiming they’re helping us with temporary living arrangements. That is total bull****.’

Ms Carrasco said the only help she received was from ‘our loving crew and fellow residents in getting our luggage down the gangway and onto a shuttle. We were dropped unceremoniously in the middle of town, left to our own devices.’

Sihanoukville is not the most hospitable of towns in which to be dumped.

More than 70 casinos have been built here in the past three years alone and there are plans for a new $1 billion, 65-hectare Chinese-Malaysian resort called Wisney World.

‘The town itself is now an almost-permanent construction zone. Bricks and construction materials litter the streets, the crime rate is growing and Sihanoukville’s postcard beaches are now choked with plastic bags,’ according to the website Intrepid (catchline: ‘committed to using travel as a force for good’).

Sihanoukville, which has a population of around 90,000, is known as a thriving town for human trafficking and is a hotbed for online scams – fitting, one might think, for a venture that has proved a shambles from the start.

Long Dimanche, the deputy governor of the province of Sihanoukville, is wholly sympathetic: ‘Being ordered to disembark so abruptly has left retirees and workers effectively homeless, thousands of kilometres away from their home countries.’

The cruise had long been beset with problems.

Due to set sail from its dry dock in Belfast in early spring 2024, the ship was still there four months later because of problems with its rudders and gearbox, which cost the company some £15 million more than expected. During this period, passengers were allowed on the ship during the day but at night they were booked into hotels and rented apartments.

At the time, the Mail was keen to visit the ship in Belfast with a view to finding out how passengers were getting on. I emailed the company, but my request was flatly refused by Villa Vie Residences. It didn’t want the publicity. I wasn’t welcome.

Then, in July this year, I received an email from the company’s public relations agency saying it was ‘excited to share some big news’.

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Now, it clearly did want the publicity – and I was welcome to interview Mr Petterson.

‘Following the success of Villa Vie Odyssey, which is now more than 85 per cent sold, the company is expanding into a two-ship fleet with the announcement of its second residential cruise ship, Legacy, with residences expected to be approximately 50 per cent larger, along with expanded dining, larger public spaces, enhanced wellness facilities and additional luxury amenities.’

No chance of that now. Holly Hennessey, 70, from Florida, has been on board from the start, accompanied by her Siamese cat, Captain. She paid some £250,000 for her cabin, with a balcony, plus a monthly fee of around £5,000.

Ms Hennessey, who describes herself as a ‘cruise addict’, does not expect to get her money back but is being remarkably stoic.

‘I don’t like losing money at all but it was worth it to me,’ she said. ‘I wish different decisions were made but I got to live my dream.’

It might not have helped that the ship is more than 30 years old, having previously sailed as Braemar and part of the Fred Olsen fleet.

Villa Vie Residences reportedly spent some £17 million renovating it but, according to Judi Cuervo, another passenger who has written about her experiences on board, the ship’s age was all too apparent.

There were missing ceiling tiles, grubby windows, torn seat covers and ‘blinds askew’, Ms Cuervo said. She added that there were no safety drills during her entire nine-day stay.

Similar defects were uncovered by a woman – who wishes to remain anonymous – following a ‘try-before-you-buy’ cruise on the ship last year.

‘No heat. No air-conditioning, spotty wifi … and I’d heard about repeated toilet malfunctions aboard Odyssey in my research prior to sailing, but I believed the problem was resolved.

‘Imagine my surprise when I returned to find a full-page of Toilet Use Guidelines.’

The Daily Mail has seen those guidelines – and they don’t make for attractive reading.

‘While our team works diligently to clean the filters every two days, we’ve recently discovered a growing number of inappropriate materials causing blockages, including plastic gloves, diapers, tissues, napkins and other non-flushable items,’ it states.

In April, the company tried to levy a ‘fuel surcharge’ on passengers – but this was rejected by them.

Then, earlier in the year, the ship was forced to leave Australia sooner than planned over the issue of access to fuel. What’s more, passengers all contributed money to enable the ship to depart from Singapore in August because, according to Mr Petterson, whereas the company was paying $600-$700 per metric ton for fuel, the price soared to nearly $2,000 following the escalation of the Israeli/American war with Iran.

While passengers onboard Villa Vie Odyssey have discovered to their horror that round-the-world residential cruises are not always the happy-ever-after they’d dreamed of, even so, the yearning to live a life on sea will continue. Cruising, in general, remains extraordinarily popular, despite all kinds of disasters.

In May, there was the grim spectacle of a Dutch expedition ship, MV Hondius, stranded in the Atlantic following an outbreak of hantavirus, which killed three people – a situation made worse by the refusal of the Cape Verde islands to allow the ship into port.

Also in May, some 1,200 mainly British passengers on board an Ambassador Cruise Line ship called Ambition were quarantined in Bordeaux after 48 people reported symptoms of norovirus, a highly contagious form of gastroenteritis.

A 92-year-old British man died on the ship, not from norovirus but from a heart attack – which wasn’t great publicity either.

But still the cruise industry sails on, contributing £5.8 billion annually to the UK economy and supporting 60,000 jobs.

More than 2.4 million British and Irish holidaymakers are expected to take a cruise this year, making it the fastest growing travel sector, according to the Cruise Lines International Association.

Last year, I had my own experience of a fully residential ship when invited on to the The World for a few days, where there are 165 private apartments, ranging from studios starting at around £1.8 million to three-bedroom apartments costing £12 million.

On The World, you buy your apartment outright, just as you would a house or flat, and then decorate it as you please. It’s yours for as long as you want – and you can’t rent it out.

You come and go depending on where the ship is berthed, with itineraries planned three years in advance, including to Antarctica, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Alaska, Northwest Territories et al.

You move around the world (it’s already circumnavigated the globe nine times), but feel that the world is moving around you. You can spend the whole year on board if that takes your fancy.

The World is a floating apartment building – a condominium, as Americans like to call it, owned entirely by the supremely wealthy residents.

It’s a lifestyle choice, where your ‘preferences’ (as they are known) are noted, right down to whether you prefer your omelette runny in the middle or a little firmer.

All rather different to life onboard Villa Vie Odyssey – where passengers are no longer sailing the seven seas but left on their own with no clear direction home in a dreadful-sounding city in Cambodia.

Some of them will surely never set foot on a cruise ship again.