Future Booking Credits – An Easier Way?

[WK-Orlando]

Like many frequent cruisers, I am walking around with future booking credits from multiple cruise lines and have noticed that while some of the lines have made purchasing these easier to deal with on the ship others have actually made it more difficult. Question is, how badly do the lines what us to purchase these credits’ and why do they make us take valuable ship time to do it?

Example, On Princess, if you want a future credit and do not have a specific trip in mind, you fill out a form and leave it in a drop box. The credits are charged to the credit card you have on file for the cabin. Very easy but still requiring you to take the time to get the form and fill it out. Not what I want to spend my on-board time doing… but much better than what Royal Caribbean is now doing which is making you go in person with a credit card to sit at the booking desk with an over worked rep that has a long line of irritable people waiting to book when they could be having fun. On a trip I took last year (Allure of the Seas), I went through the hassle of making an appointment, sitting with the rep and got a confirmation paper in my cabin that the credit was in place. Went to use it months later and found out it was cancelled because the rep put the info into the computer incorrectly. Now, RCCL did fix this when I went to use the credit so the only hassle at that point was the extra hour on the phone while they sorted it out amongst supervisors… but at that point, my booking credit cost me three hours of my life (two on the ship and one on the phone) that I could have been doing something else… not efficient for me or the cruise line for that matter since they paid three plus man hours of staff time to match the time I spent.

Here is my real point to all of this… Why can’t we agree to purchase the credit when we book or on the website where we set up our tours or agree to pre-pay the tips? I get that we have to actually sail before the credit transaction goes through but would it not be nice to show up in the cabin and the future booking credit receipt is already there waiting and we not have to waste time messing with the booking rep on the ship who is ALWAYS over loaded with people booking specific trips? Or better yet, when we reach a certain status, say Plat on Princess or Emerald on RCL, we do away with this all together and have the right to a $100 deposit and the onboard credit every time instead of all of this paperwork and process that does nothing but generate administrative costs for the cruise line? By the time a passenger reaches this level, they know what they want and would rather do bookings at home rather than wasting time on the ship.

Just my 2c but I think everyone, cruise line included, would come out ahead. Either let us pre-buy the credits when we are opting for pre-paid gratuities/ordering tours or just make it a standing offer for the frequent cruises to cut the work load and wait times for the on-board booking agents and their always slow internet connections.

I am going to post this not through to the company stockholder relations emails but if anyone has a better path, please forward this through the pipes. There has to be someone on the corporate level that gets this and will see that there is a better, easier way to run this.

 

WK-Orlando

[orville99]

RCL doesn't require that you meet personally with the LA unless you want to make a booking on a specific cruise. If all you want are NCCs There is a "Decide Later" form in your cruise docs (page 21) that you can fill out before you ever get onboard, or there are similar forms in the C&A lounge. Just fill them out, drop them off in the box, and you're done.

[setsail]

RCL doesn't require that you meet personally with the LA unless you want to make a booking on a specific cruise. If all you want are NCCs There is a "Decide Later" form in your cruise docs (page 21) that you can fill out before you ever get onboard, or there are similar forms in the C&A lounge. Just fill them out, drop them off in the box, and you're done.

 

Very true. I would like to see them expand the LA open hours though.