It’s nice to get helpful advice from a cruise operator in advance of departure. But it can be alarming when that advice is for a cruise that you know nothing about and a ship you never booked travel on.

Skift reports that Carnival sent out an e-mail late last week intended for passengers booked on the Carnival Sunshine scheduled to depart on Sunday from New Orleans. The e-mail advised travelers that the pre-Mardi Gras parades in the city could affect traffic, so be sure to leave enough time in your schedule to board before 3:00 p.m.

Useful information. Too bad it went to people who weren’t booked on this cruise.

Recipients, including Skift’s Dennis Schaal, were left wondering what was going on. Was it a simple error, a database mix-up, or had someone stolen their ID or credit card info to book this trip?

Carnival eventually issued a retraction explaining the goof.

“I’m sorry to say that we experienced an error with one of our emails intended for guests sailing on the Carnival Sunshine, February 23, 2014. We are researching the cause of this error. Rest assured, if you are receiving this ‘retraction’ email, you are not booked on the Carnival Sunshine sailing tomorrow. Please note your personal information has not been compromised in any way.

“Please disregard our previous email. We sincerely apologize for this error and any inconvenience this may have caused.”

Schaal contacted Carnival, where a rep said the company was “getting lots of these queries. Not sure what happened,” but did later say that this was a matter of an e-mail list mix-up and not any sort of hack or data breach.

Carnival Accidentally Tells Its Email List to Get Ready for Sunshine Sailing [Skift.com]

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