A travel company who has a charter cruise ship held off the New Zealand coast with most of the crew denied visas says the government has let it down. The boat Le Laperouse was granted an exemption to come to New Zealand for cruise season, but the government says the owners were told the crew all needed to get individual visas to cross our closed borders. Immigration NZ says the ship set sail from Jakarta just two days after filing applications for 90 foreign crew, but were told twice during the journey that 61 of the crew did not meet the criteria for critical workers and had been denied visas. Wild Earth Travel is chartering the ship for cruises to the sub-Antarctic. The company believes when the ship was approved for entry, an undertaking was given to allow all the crew in too. "I really don't see what the other solution is because the crew for the ship really have to have significant training and expertise to be able to deliver the ship and the voyage," Wild Earth Travel general manager Aaron Russ told Checkpoint.