Do ships ever sail less than full?

I know that I have read a lot of posts where people say that there is no upgrading on the ship because all cabins are sold out. As I watch a particular cruise that we are interested in, which is now less than 40 days out, I notice that there are a TON of cabins left. So, for those of you that know, does a ship EVER sail less than full? Or are there always a lot of last minute bookings?

Cruise lines will have last minute sales to fill the ship and make offers for those booked to "move up" making the less expensive cabins easier to sell.. Yes, they don't always sail completely full, but nearly so.

40 days is a long time in the cruise selling industry.

Princess has this down to a science and consistantly sells out their cruises.

Of course there will always be empty cabins for any number of reasons but they do sail pretty full most of the time.

To answer the OPs question, it is Yes, ships will sometimes sail with many empty cabins. On HAL this happened to us when we took a 62 day Grand Cruise on the Prinsendam in 2012. Although the ship had a capacity of about 800, we never had more then 585 on any leg of our cruise. This did generate some discussion onboard between some of us and a few officers. HAL marketed this particular cruise at relatively high prices (typical of Prinsendam pricing) and did very little aggressive pricing until inside the final payment period (when all who had booked could not hope to get a price adjustment). But the last minute bookings did not materialize so we had lots of empty cabins. Ironically, this is the cruise where we were offered an upsell for Only $9,999 to a nice suite. We made a counter offer of $5000 which was denied. That particular suite was not sold for the cruise and was eventually used to house some of the Guest Entertainers (for only a few days).

On Princess we have had plenty of empty cabins on some past transatlantic repositioning cruises.

Hank

Yes, there are often a couple of empty cabins. There may be people who cancel the cruise at the last minute or just don't show for it

As the previous poster has said, it does happen. But, not often.

I was on a Royal Viking Line trans-Atlantic voyage from New York to Copenhagen in 1980. The ship's capacity was 500. We had 250. What a grand cruise that was!

In Spring 2011 Princess oversaturated the Caribbean: two ships 7 days from FLL, two ships 10 days, one ship true 14 days, one ship 7 days from SJU, one 14 days from Barbados, plus the 2 ships doing the Panama Canal. I was on Star Princess' last sailing of the season--which has turned out to be her very last Caribbean sailing at all--and was only about 70% full. Never a wait for Anytime Dining, no tender tickets needed after just a couple groups, great seats for the shows without needing to turn up early. (And supposedly the sailing before had even more than 30% unsold cabins despite being the last week of Spring Break and being even more heavily discounted than mine--same cabin would have been $50 p/p less had I been able to sail 10 days earlier).

We sailed on a 4 day cruise for veterans that sailed about 1/2 full. The next cruise, however, was filled to capacity.

So, yes they do sail with empty cabins.

Trans-Atlantics often sail at less than capacity.

When were on Princess to Eqypt after the revolution there the ship had a 675 less passengers than lower berth capacity, so probably over 300 cabins unsold.

The two sailings I've been on that come to mind were ones that were very empty and so Princess opened them up to crew members' families at the last minute. Both times, there were so many of them onboard! I wish they would've just upgraded all the fully paying passengers and offered the lower categories to the families at reduced rates, but they didn't do that.

About 200 passengers didn't make our holiday cruise in 2010/11 on the Golden due to the bad weather in the UK messing up their flight(s), and then trying to get to the ship in very rainy weather here in LA. The captain even held up the sailing for over four hours. The Brits we ran into on the cruise all seemed to have made their own travel arrangements that involved flying out at least a few days early or leaving from Paris. We never heard that any of them ended up getting on the ship later (which would have meant flying to Hawaii), but the PVSA may have prevented them from boarding in Hawaii anyway.

If there's still cabins available before the cruise, and all of the guarantees have been assigned, the cruise line will email offers.

We are going on the Star, May 4 the for a 5 day cruise from LA to Vancouver. Just checked to see how full it is and found, 144 inside, 140 outside, 183 balcony , 74 mini suites and 15 full suites still open. That is 556 cabins still available with 12 days to go. I don't think it is going to sail full!!

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I know that I have read a lot of posts where people say that there is no upgrading on the ship because all cabins are sold out. As I watch a particular cruise that we are interested in, which is now less than 40 days out, I notice that there are a TON of cabins left. So, for those of you that know, does a ship EVER sail less than full? Or are there always a lot of last minute bookings?

Yes, they do. Surprisingly enough, we were on the Royal 3 weeks ago, and I'm sure they had at least 15% empty cabins. It was surprising to me.

We are going on the Star, May 4 the for a 5 day cruise from LA to Vancouver. Just checked to see how full it is and found, 144 inside, 140 outside, 183 balcony , 74 mini suites and 15 full suites still open. That is 556 cabins still available with 12 days to go. I don't think it is going to sail full!!

 

 

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That explains the email we just received regarding last minute deals. Unfortunately, wrong side of the continent.

Princess doesn't do upgrades once on board. I think I have seen a sign at Passenger Services stating that the cruise is sailing full, even when it is obvious that there are many unsold cabins. Don't think Princess wants the hassle.

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I just got off the Ruby this morning and we sailed with just a tad over 2800 people which is about 300 passengers short of "normal". Using simple math at 2 people per cabin, there was approximately 150 available cabins on our trip.

That explains the email we just received regarding last minute deals. Unfortunately, wrong side of the continent.

This email comes out every couple of weeks, like I said its one of the ways they sell space as the cruise date nears.

We are going on the Star, May 4 the for a 5 day cruise from LA to Vancouver. Just checked to see how full it is and found, 144 inside, 140 outside, 183 balcony , 74 mini suites and 15 full suites still open. That is 556 cabins still available with 12 days to go. I don't think it is going to sail full!!

 

 

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Where do you find these statistics? Were on the Golden May 24, and i was told it was wide open, trying to negotiate a upgrade every other day or so. Just curious has to how you find this info on exact number of rooms.

Thanks

Lucas

No easy way, search for the cruise on Princess.com and go through the steps to book a cabin on line, they will show you what cabins are available in each category and deck. You just have to have too much time on your hands and be curious.

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If you mean 100% full - all the time. If you mean less than mostly full - it depends upon the cruise.

DON

Apparently our Coral cruise in December was about 300 under capacity. I noticed there were tons of vacant cabins. We were upgraded from an inside to balcony and it was wonderful.

Yes, they do. Surprisingly enough, we were on the Royal 3 weeks ago, and I'm sure they had at least 15% empty cabins. It was surprising to me.

Perhaps people are reading the reviews of that ship and acting accordingly.

Hank

Full is a relative term. There are always a few cabins left open for operational reasons (passenger load balancing in a muster zone, allowance for handling cabins with problems, last minute cancellations, etc).

That said, cruise lines, etc use very sophisticated yield management systems to minimize unsold cabins using a variety of tactics.

You are more likely to see unsold cabins on the longest runs, simply because less people have the flexibility to sail that long. Long repo cruises especially, because the line doesn't even have the option of rerouting the ship to increase demand, because it has to be somewhere else.

More than a 5% capacity sail is rare, but it does happen at times.