Never-Ending Cruise Strands 200 Passengers in Cambodia, Citing Iran War Fuel Costs

More than 200 people who had made a luxury cruise ship their permanent home were told Wednesday to pack their belongings and leave, after the company running the vessel said it had run out of money to keep it sailing.

Villa Vie Residences, a Florida-based company, suspended operations of the MV Odyssey on Tuesday while the ship sat at the port of Sihanoukville in Cambodia. CEO Mikael Petterson told CBS News the company plans to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. He put the number of people aboard at about 300, while the CBS report counted more than 200 passengers, most of them Americans.

Petterson blamed fuel. The Odyssey launched in October 2024 on a continuous voyage around the world, and the company says fuel cost about $700 a ton before the war with Iran began in late February. Since then, it has run between $2,000 and $3,000 a ton. The ship burns 700 to 800 tons of fuel a month. According to the company, the fuel bill per cabin jumped from roughly $1,800 a month to between $6,000 and $8,000, and total monthly expenses climbed from $400,000 to $2 million.

"For us, when our monthly expenses go up from $400,000 to $2 million, where are we going to get the $1.6 million?" Petterson asked. He said the company did not pass the higher costs on to passengers, slowed the itinerary to five or six days in each port in the hope that fighting in the Middle East would wind down, and kept looking for a financial partner. "We've borrowed money, we've stretched our payrolls as far as we can," he said, calling the situation a "breaking point."

For the people on board, the collapse is more than a canceled vacation. Some residents bought permanent cabins for several hundred thousand dollars, and some sold their homes to do it. Buyers were promised a 15-year minimum guarantee of residency aboard.

Benjamin Schatz, a retiree, had lived on the ship for about a year when CBS News first met him in April 2025. On Wednesday he was given only hours to pack and go. "Honestly, right now, I'm in denial and in shock, and I'm heartbroken," he said. He warned that the situation has left some of his neighbors with nowhere to go. "There are people now who are homeless and who have very little money and don't know what they're going to do."

It is not yet clear what happens to the money residents paid for cabins, or how those with no home to return to will get help. A Chapter 11 filing would place the company under court supervision and put residents in line with other creditors, though Petterson did not lay out how the process would treat them. Petterson said the company had "tried to do everything we can do" during nine months of rising costs.

The Odyssey's trouble is a direct, visible consequence of the oil shock from the Iran war, which has driven up what it costs to move ships across the globe. A business model built on a floating residence that never stops moving left Villa Vie with a fuel bill it could not outrun.