I’ve deliberately not engaged much with this debate as it doesn’t affect us. We never take alcohol on board (either at embarkation or in port), we don’t drink in our cabin or on our balcony and we feel that on board drinks prices are reasonable. They are certainly no more expensive than any pubs we use and to complain that you can buy them cheaper in supermarkets is daft IMHO. The only fair comparison is against pubs and hotels.
The choice of drinks can be quite limited in some of the bars, and indeed from room service so, even though prices are reasonable, I do have sympathy with those who enjoy a particular tipple and the only way to achieve that is to take a bottle with them.
As for the motivation for this change, I’m inclined to fall on the side of trying to drive up on board spend rather than to deter drunkenness. If it was the latter, then offering drinks packages runs contrary to that objective. Whilst many of us feel that the drinks packages are over priced (even before the possible increase) and wouldn’t drink anywhere near enough in any given day (especially on port days) to make them even remotely viable, those whose prime motivation is to get drunk every day will certainly buy them and won’t be taking bottles on board when they are getting their booze ‘free’ with their drinks packages. O.K. they might have pre-dinner drinks in their cabin but one bottle, out of their entire holiday consumption with a drinks package, will be a minimal contributor.
Those who are motivated by drinking to excess won’t be remotely deterred by the policy change. As well as access to drinks packages, the new policy would be dead easy to dodge by ‘smuggling’ bottles on board within suitcases. Let’s be realistic, they won’t be caught by doing this and there’s no consequence if they were. The sole risk is a bottle smashing if it wasn’t wrapped adequately. Whilst it’s not something I would do (for reasons stated) if a bottle of something special that you can’t buy on board was a deal breaker, even for moderate to light drinkers, then I’m sure that most people would do the same rather than ditch the cruise line.