Eurodam March 6 Cruise Has Been "Redeployed"

Based purely on the sail-away atmosphere as the ships pass us, I would say that the RSVP cruises are in the #2 position as far as party atmosphere. The Irish charters sound more boisterous. However, they do have the unfair advantage of bagpipers on deck, and it's kind of hard to compete with that. I guess you'd need a head to head per capita bar tab comparison....

Those dudes know how to party Brian! No doubt about it! ;)

Our all time favourite cruise was a chartered Crystal Symphony Cruise. We had the entire ship for 8 days. About 80 percent occupancy. Open bar, open everything.

Company flew in a top female vocalist for a two days. We had a party in Mykonos...they catered the town and we had our choice of about 8 restaurants. Topped off by a private concert at Ephesus. Those were 'the days' in the IT industry.

It is likely the ship was almost all sold out when OP booked it because it was a huge group. They likely sold cabins passed the maximum HAL will permit for a group and HAL then required they have to charter or have no more cabins. They took the charter option.

First of all I am booked on the Gospel Cruise ... funny I always thought it was a full charter ...

It's no consolation to the OP, but this specific cruise had its own thread in June in which both hattack and I said that it would be a full charter (and the OP duly got bumped): Eurodam Gospel Music Charter.

And this has been identified as a full charter in the charters list since 20 March 2015 - see this post - and appeared in the list itself on 26 April 2015. We should all be grateful that CJcruzer maintains that list so well.

CJcruzer does an outstanding job in keeping up with the HAL changes and keeping this board advised, thank you for doing that....I went back and reread the OP and can understand the OP disappointment because that was the 2nd time this year a cruise was pulled from underneath the OP...I would be alittle down also....hopefully the 3rd time will be a charm

I would challenge your premise...charters are only guaranteed revenue when the final payment is made 90 days before sailing by the organizer and the organizer turns over it's guest manifest to the cruiseline 30-45 days prior to sailing.....there is an extensive vetting process on the part of the cruiseline prior to withdrawing a ship out of revenue service...among the key factors is the impact of that action will have on existing booked customers....cruiselines have access to sophisticated yield management & inventory booking history tools so on any given date they can run a cost/benefit analysis fleetwide to determine when to accept a charter...I would bet that if a ship is booked at or near 50% when approached for a charter 9 out of 10 times the answer will be no....or...the cruiseline would make the charter so prohibitly expensive, not even Oprah could afford it....lol.....for contractual & logistical & planning purposes most charters are arranged at least 9 months out

 

By contract when charter organizers miss key payment dates they could lose their charter and the cruise line will demand to be paid in full and draw on the letter of credit that the organizer must post...cruise line has it's $$$$...they use social media and their loyalty program to fill up the ship at steep discounts that is all gravy to the bottom line...more charters fail then succeed on an annual basis...organizers can go bankrupt on their charter if they are not careful

I will use HAL's highest grossing charter customer, RSVP, as an example.

Cruises are sold out months in advance. Bar revenue is off the charts. I recall a RSVP cruise many years ago, when HAL ran out of liquor. Since then, they've stocked extra and brought on additional bartenders and waiters to keep the pax well served.

If HAL isn't making money, they wouldn't keep chartering with them. RSVP has been a loyal HAL customer for at least thirty years. The passengers from past cruises, are loyal to HAL, and don't like cruising other lines.

Excellent example, thanks .......The Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise charters the HAL Westerdam every year for the past few years and it is wildly successful for both the promoter & HAL....most successful music charters utilize the same ship (or class) and most guests return every year and stay in the same cabin so the crew looks forward to hosting them

Most very large groups on regular sailings on a yearly basis are potential full charter candidates

The only failed charter that I know of was at the beginning of the financial downturn where certain insurance company cancelled because it would not have looked good for a baiedl-out company to host a charter for employees. It was offered to Atlantis and sold out to Atlantis alumni and never even got to be offered to the general public. Paul Gaugin knew that Atlantis could sell it on short notice and offered them a good deal. I am sure the insurance company forfeited a bug chunk of money too.

Thanks, Peter.

That was my reason for asking. I suspected there are not that many where hosts bail out of a charter. If one needs to go back about 8 or so years to find an example, it isn't a common occurrence.

Anyone know of a more recent such event on a mass market cruise line?

Thanks, Peter.

That was my reason for asking. I suspected there are not that many where hosts bail out of a charter. If one needs to go back about 8 or so years to find an example, it isn't a common occurrence.

 

Anyone know of a more recent such event on a mass market cruise line?

 

If you go back to post 20 you will see a suggestion to search on the RCI board for "Freedom of the Seas May 3-10, 2015" Maxwell & Friends 7 Seas Cruise "

I did and it makes for interesting reading about group charter where the organisers failed to pay RCI and the cruise was cancelled. People are fighting to get their money back. That cruise was scheduled for May of this year.