Cruise Cancelled 48 hours before the departure...REALLY?

I am an international student from South Korea, and I have been waiting for this moment to take my grandparents on a Bahama cruise and was ready to provide them with the best room, food, and entertainment. Unfortunately, I was too busy and had to take care of my dad after his discharge from the 2-month hospitalization. Therefore, my brother decided to take them all the way down to West Palm Beach, Florida to get on the cruise (Approximately 650 miles away from Athens). It took them about 11 hours to get there with 3 stops( for gas, restroom, meals). When they fianally got there, the port was empty and only few cars were there looking extremely confused. My brother called the customer service center and found out that the trip got cancelled about 48 hours ago via email.

Wait, WHAT?!?! 

All they send out was a letter from the CEO, saying that they had to do this last minute decision because they got a request from FEMA(Federal Emergency Management Agency) to support their relief and recovery efforts in the U.S Virgin Islands. They have agreed to deploy their ship to St. Croix to serve as a base to feed and house the National Guard and first responders for the next 90 days. This is ridiculous. No one would be against helping and supporting the recovery efforts, but why do customers have to suffer? Our official sail date was September 24th, 2017 and I called in several times to ask if they will be operating regularly after Hurricane Irma.

They are offering a full refund option and if you do want to cruise at some point within 1 year period, you will get a $100 on-board credit. My grandparents came from South Korea to get on this cruise, who is going to pay for the air and the time/cost they had to sacrifice. This trip was planned about 4 months ago, and they just cancelled and neglected all the efforts we have made by a single click with a mouse to send out the mass email, titled "A letter from our CEO". 

I was very disappointed at the level of their handling the uncontrollable factors and customer service. I won't share the name of this cruise, but they could have done a better job of letting customers know in advance. I highly recommend them to use social media platforms to reach out to customers because the letter from their CEO was in a "Junk Mail" folder for many customers. 

Social media and advertising in 2017

Social media has had a great impact on all of us. Social media started out as a method for people to connect with each other. At this point, social media has become much more.

The impact can be bigger with the mixture of traditional marketing and social media marketing. Marketers are using traditional forms of marketing (radio, television, newspaper, etc) as well as using the Internet/social media to reach out to loyal customers and future customers.

As the number of people who regularly use many different social media platforms, the importance of the social media marketing has been growing. It i also one of the easiest and cheapest ways to raise awareness and build brand reputation.

Now, which social media platform is the most effective? Where should you invest our advertising money? Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Snapchat are the top 6 popular social media platform with a large number of active users. According to the BigCommerce, Facebook is the best social media platform to invest your money. With more than 2 billion users,  Facebook hosts over a quarter of the world’s population, providing advertisers with an unparalleled opportunity to reach virtually anyone and everyone.

Many firms and businesses are highly interested in advertising through one of the social media platforms. It is going to be interesting to watch how social media platforms will attract business and firms in order to increase the advertising revenue because each platform has the unique style and message.

Social media being a stress reliever?

As all of you may know, hurricane Irma has been a main topic past few days. Many 

people had to evacuate and damages are quite serious in many places like Florida.

It was not as bad in Athens, but many people had to stay in the dark due to the all-day power outage. It was very stressful because power outage does not usually stay this long, especially with this amount of rain. Georgia power might have reacted slowly to Athens power outage because there were so many more serious cases. 

Many schools, including the University Of Georgia, has been closed for both Monday and Tuesday. Many students and even instructors have been struggling getting access to course materials, emails, and etc. Most of UGA classes have the first exam this week and it has been a disaster for students since most of them have the course materials online. I personally have 3 exams this week and it really has been a pain to study in the dark, without any internet connection. What I found interesting is that people, mostly students, are using social media platforms to communicate with others, to release stress, and even to share their studying tips. This shows that many social media platforms have been one of the main methods of contacting others in emergencies. 

UGA has not announced their plan for Wednesday yet, but many people are expecting a normal operation; Hope this recovery process does not take too long to affect course plans.

  

Korean College Life?

Welcome back everyone!

As I promised, We will be talking about Korean College Life for next two weeks.

First, let's start off with some background of Korean SAT.

In Korea, getting into a college or a university is a big deal. Unlike here in the U.S, you only get to take SAT once before you apply to college. Official SAT date is set by the government, and it starts and ends at the same time nationwide. Due to this reason, police department must make sure that they have all the traffic control.

When you go in to the college, there are various unique traditions for each college or university. For example, there might be an initiation event where you have to memorize all the names of senior students in the act of respecting them or drinking event where you have to finish the whole bottle within certain time before leaving the event. Sometimes, these bad traditions have caused some deaths and it has been a big issue in Korea.

 

I think this is enough for some depressing facts. We will be looking into the bright side next week. Hope you have a great week!