Seemingly exorbitant shore excursion pricing

[Jade13]

I have looked back at our notes for our excursions in South America including Rio in December 2011/January 2012 and the least on an Azamara shore excursion we went on was 6 in a vehicle (this happened on two trips as minivans are very common) and the most on a small bus was 19. We also found our guides were better able to get us quicker access to attractions with lines such as the cable car in Rio than the private guides, although many private guides lead you to believe they can get you up the line quicker, this is not the case in Rio, now they seem to have a new process for accessing the cable car once tickets have been picked up.

 

In our research, we did not find suitable reliable providers of comparative pricing offering the kind of excursion we wished (time and content)

 

Wishing you good luck in your quest for excursions

 

If an excursion is $500.00 (as mentioned earlier) and $250.00 at 50% off than Azamara should advertise the fact that the excursions will be conducted in either a minivan or small bus with maximum capacity at 19 or less so clients understand why the excursions are more expensive then what they are accustomed to (assuming this is the reasoning). This is no different than the land tour operators who advertise maximum group capacity on a 10 or 12 day tour at 18 or 24 etc. People do not want to pay these prices ($250-$500) for a day tour on a 50 seat bus.

 

I (along with others) put together private shore excursions all of the time and are able to tell others what type of vehicle and capacity we expect. This is not my full time job and if Azamara can't do this they need an overhaul of the group arranging these shore excursions. I am surprised because Celebrity gives very detailed explanations of many of their excursions and much better than other companies such as HAL. Azamara has two ships and if their marketing is based on the itineraries and excursions they should have a dedicated department handling the shoreX.

[Bill Leiber]

Hello to all -

 

I'm still awaiting an explanation from our shore excursion team about the status and the accuracy of the 50% Land Discoveries pricing that will be shown on the following voyages:

 

Journey

Nov. 14 / Repositioning Voyage with Oman & UAE

Nov. 29 / Indian Ocean Voyage

Dec. 12 / India - Singapore Voyage with Myanmar

Dec. 23 /Asia Holiday Voyage

 

Quest

Nov. 14 / Canary Islands Voyage

Nov. 28 /Four night voyage with Morocco

Dec. 02 / Atlantic Crossing with Cape Verde

Dec. 18 / South America Voyage

Dec. 27 / South America Holiday Voyage

 

 

As I mentioned on another thread, some of the tour pricing for Land Discoveries on these voyages will be based on using the most conservative minimum, which creates a higher price.

 

I'm sorry for this delay and I'll be back to you as soon as I have response.

 

Best regards,

 

Bill Leiber

________________________

Chief Blogging Officer*

Azamara Club Cruises

(*CBO is an authorized and compensated representative of ACC

[marinaro44]

Hello to all -

 

I'm still awaiting an explanation from our shore excursion team about the status and the accuracy of the 50% Land Discoveries pricing that will be shown on the following voyages:

 

Quest

Dec. 02 / Atlantic Crossing with Cape Verde

 

As I mentioned on another thread, some of the tour pricing for Land Discoveries on these voyages will be based on using the most conservative minimum, which creates a higher price.

This cruise is essentially fully-booked, so I don't understand the applicability of your "most conservative minimum" comment.

 

One way to ensure having few passengers taking these excursions is to price them outrageously. That's known as a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I assure you, Bill, that we will not book any at the prices originally posted. You might want to make that known to your land discoveries management team.

[azevedan]

we are planners and weren't about to wait that long to plan our shore excursions for a cruise to places we probably will not return again (too many other places we want to experience). We had 9 private tours planned for the 6 of us and every one was awesome and the price was very reasonable for 6.

 

beachseeker - we're the same way. I had organized a number of private tours for a cruise (not on Azamara) that we didn't end up taking, and had similar difficulties with the roll call. Azamara's doing a Panama Canal cruise in January 2014 (not formally announced yet)....is that on your bucket list? :D We'd love company!

[Bloodaxe]

This cruise is essentially fully-booked, so I don't understand the applicability of your "most conservative minimum" comment.

 

One way to ensure having few passengers taking these excursions is to price them outrageously. That's known as a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I assure you, Bill, that we will not book any at the prices originally posted. You might want to make that known to your land discoveries management team.

 

Very well said I totally agree,

 

Eric

[shaq]

This cruise is essentially fully-booked, so I don't understand the applicability of your "most conservative minimum" comment.

 

One way to ensure having few passengers taking these excursions is to price them outrageously. That's known as a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I assure you, Bill, that we will not book any at the prices originally posted. You might want to make that known to your land discoveries management team.

 

I also agree

 

Ron

[Bill Leiber]

This cruise is essentially fully-booked, so I don't understand the applicability of your "most conservative minimum" comment.

 

One way to ensure having few passengers taking these excursions is to price them outrageously. That's known as a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I assure you, Bill, that we will not book any at the prices originally posted. You might want to make that known to your land discoveries management team.

 

Hello Marinaro44 and other readers -

 

I've shared your self-fulfilling prophecy opinions about the "outrageous" pricing of our Land Discoveries with our shore excursion management team to ensure that they would understand your perspective when they explained our shore excursion pricing methodology.

 

I think it's important to recognize that there is very little correlation between whether the vessel is fully-booked and the resulting "per person" shore excursion costs. Instead, the critical factor is the percent of the booked guests who participate in our Land Discoveries program (the total size of the audience) and at this time there is a need to improve that number.

 

Further, it's difficult to forecast how this finite number of participants will breakdown and select from the total number of tours offered and which tours will be the most popular. Therefore, when we price our tours to achieve break-even, we set our minimum number at 10, 20 or 30 participants thereby impacting the "perceived" value of the resulting "sell" price. In order not to disappoint the guests who enroll in our individual tours, we adopt a conservative approach and select a "most-likely" rather than a "best-case" scenario for our participation levels.

 

In addition to the expected participation levels, our tour pricing is based on the following components:

§ Per person costs which includes fixed and variable components as quoted by the operator.

§ Currency exchange rates.

§ Expected Profit Margins.

§ Historical performance of prior year tours, tempered by seasonality.

 

For your information, a proper "cover sheet" will be added to each PDF shore excursion brochure and it will state: "Pricing in this brochure reflects the 50% Savings Price." This specific language regarding the inclusion of the 50% savings on our 2012 Land Discoveries programs is correct; however, there will be exceptions related to the following: Special event tickets (e.g., Monaco Grand Prix, Rio Carnival), and the majority of our night tour programs (because they were added so close-in to sale date and we wanted to ensure that you were given the full opportunity to review and buy with parity pricing.)

 

Hopefully, this explanation will illustrate our current thought-process in operating our Land Discoveries program and I thank you for your patience while I gathered this information.

 

Best regards,

 

Bill Leiber

________________________

Chief Blogging Officer*

Azamara Club Cruises

(*CBO is an authorized and compensated representative of ACC)