Grandeur Specialty Dining Offer Issue

Below is the text from a letter that I wrote following our cruise on Grandeur of the Seas. I received a phone call and an apology as a response. I am posting this so that others will be aware that this is happening and may want to consider this when deciding whether to pre-book specialty restaurants.

Our family returned from the Grandeur of the Seas on Friday, August 22. Overall our cruise was wonderful and the service received was excellent. Our family consists of my parents, myself and my daughter. We frequent the specialty restaurants which is what led to our recent issue on the Grandeur. I had pre-booked, 2 dinners at Chops, 2 dinners at Giovanni’s and 1 dinner at Izumi for all 4 of us. My understanding of the current dining package is that for 5 pre-booked specialty restaurant reservations, we would receive a 30% onboard credit for the total value of the reservations and this would be posted on day 1 of the cruise. On day 3 of the cruise, I reviewed my onboard account and noticed that no onboard credit had been posted. I went to guest services and found that no one there was aware of this promotion. They argued with me that discounts are only given when the restaurants are booked onboard. I then went to RC Online and printed out the PDF flyer on the promotion and went back to Guest Services to advise them of the promotion. Then after several phone calls, I was told that it would be corrected and the onboard credit would be applied. A couple of days later, I again reviewed my onboard account to find that a credit of $100 had been applied. This amount was not reflective of the 30% so I returned to Guest Services. I again had to show the PDF flyer to the associate and explain how the promotion works because they were unaware of it as well. After several more phone calls, I was told that an additional $20 of credit would be applied and that our Izumi charge of $72.00 would be reduced to reflect the 30% discount which would be $50.40. After receiving our final account statements, the Izumi charge was reduced to $57.60 which is only a 20% discount and not the $50.40 which would have correctly reflected the 30% discount.

Although this is only a difference of $7.20 which is not significant, this is indicative of a more serious issue regarding communication and implementation of company promotions. In my attempts to get this resolved, I visited Guest Services 3 times, had to go to RC Online to print out the promotion flyer and I had to explain this promotion to multiple employees. As I mentioned previously, we frequent the specialty restaurants and would like to continue to do so however this experience was definitely a negative in that regard. This is not something that I am looking forward to dealing with on future cruises. In my opinion, it is unacceptable that a guest would be more knowledgeable about an RC promotion than the employees. I wanted to make you aware of this issue so that hopefully promotion communication and roll out will be improved in the future.

Interesting info

Had never looked at that thanks

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I just had the same issue on the New Years Eve sailing. Apparently, they have not fixed the issue. Staff on the ships seem to have no idea what is being offered on the website.

We had a similar problem on our recent Adventure cruise. When I booked online it said that night 1 reservations will receive a 20% onboard credit. Once onboard they offered Portofino 20% off on night 1 (but we had already paid full price) and were not aware of the online promotion. We had a much easier time getting it straightened out though, we just mentioned it to our waitress and she was able to have it noted for our second reservation.

The bartenders who were selling the drink packages onboard also knew nothing about the holiday promo with a bottle of Domaine Chandon and glasses of Moet included in the Ultimate package, but they were able to quickly find a supervisor who knew about it.

Totally agree that they should be doing a better job to make sure everyone gets the memo!