Deeply undersold Voyager sailing sold out in a day 2 months before sailing

[roquejo]

I booked an Asia Voyager cruise last Jan due to deep price drops due the poor sales of this sailing. Once the balconies became cheaper than insides for a week, then at one point JS became comparative cheaper than JS of other sailing (but still relatively expensive compared to its D1 price), in fact the cheapest JS I've seen for a 7-9 day sailing range.

 

The ports are great and rarely visited by RCCL, but what makes it cheap as it is a re-positioning Asian cruise. Normally based on my experience it is hard to fill out a Voyager class ship if it is not a round trip cruise for Asia as guest have to book an open jaw plane ticket, and the sales team cannot take advantage of those locals who live on round trip ports so don't need to buy a plane ticket as everyone has to travel by air either one way or round trip for a one way re positioning cruise.

 

So the cabin availability and price is what I initially expect, until last Thursday night, 2 months before sailing, only 44% of the cabins are sold, raising the chance that we will sailing at low capacity.

 

But lo and behold, at 10pm EST Thursday night, I did a test booking while prices were still being displayed and cannot book, but 8 hours ago, cabins are still widely avail in all categories at only 44% occupancy rate.

 

Then few hour later, it became code red, all cabins became N/A. Though I read this happens on longer days prior to selling due to TA's holding blocks of cabin, ships getting chartered etc.. but the fact that it is only 2 months prior to sailing, past final payment date, means a TA's cannot hold on to the cabins this late anymore.

 

Initially I taught it is a glitch or perhaps an inventory maintenance, but until now, it is still code red, this means a very large group of around more than a thousand was able to book and snapped the remaining 56% of the cabins of a Voyager class.

 

This is for May 14 Voyager sailing out of Tokyo... any idea what large group it is? Is it a very big sales company rewarding their agents? Is this a Japanese or Chinese company? Or a club? Or a fraternity?

 

As usual RCCL has no clue on other departments or their regional sales office's operations if you call them. They will just way that it is sold out or code red without providing much details on why it is already closed.

 

A very large group getting half of a Voyager class ship will definitely affect the sailing ambiance, so it curious, hope that group is not a noisy party all night organization.

 

So if someone has a clue on this, kindly let us know. Thanks.

Edited March 14, 2015 by roquejo

[Biker19]

It was just RCI inventory maintenance - the inventory is back. You have to give them a couple of days before checking back.

 

BTW, with that much inventory prices around bound to go down some more - it's definitely a sailing that you want to wait till after final payment to book.

[CVU]

We have had N/A a few times and had a change of itinerary and then another time the cruise was canceled.

So, wait and see........

[roquejo]

It was just RCI inventory maintenance - the inventory is back. You have to give them a couple of days before checking back.

 

BTW, with that much inventory prices around bound to go down some more - it's definitely a sailing that you want to wait till after final payment to book.

 

Nope it is still NA. This is common in China sailings. Cruises getting sold out whenever a big group comes in.

 

That is why RCCL is investing on China... sending 2 Quantum class ships Quantum and Ovation to this region. So much money here.

[Starry Eyes]

It could be a large group booking. you could google the date to see if anything pops up, though not much will come of it as you have not control over the type of guests sharing your cruise. It could be that they sold a block of cabins to a travel agent who will offer a package, including perhaps the troublesome airfare for reloc cruise. or maybe there is another explanation. Is is the "44% and code red and such coming from one of those independent websites that cannot be names here? If so, should you trust that data? After all, how would a third party really know how many reservations have been made? how would a third part (or you!) know how many gty bookings might have been made. If there were a lot of gty bookings, the cruiseline might have assigned many those booking cabin numbers...boom, to somebody watching it would look like all those cabins were "sold out" over night. or maybe the 44% was misleading: I've heard some websites give such number if 44% of cabin categories are available for booking, so whether there is one B1 is available or 100 B1’s available that websites math looks the same as the B1 category is available.

Edited March 15, 2015 by Starry Eyes

[Familygoboston]

Try google translate to figure out a translation for the date and ship name in Chinese and see what pops up- Google translate it back to English to see if you can tell what group is advertising it.

[KazAllen]

If so I have had an offer through a TA here in Aust for last minute bookings on this trip incl flights to Perth and flight home from Singapore for $1989 per person in an Oceanview Cabin.

[Biker19]

Nope it is still NA.

 

This is one of the rare failings of the fish site - it doesn't always catch lack of inventory - I check prices there and if one is listed for a category I assume that inventory is available to go with the price.

[dedosr]

How do you find out the percentages of booked or available cabins?

[The_Big_M]

...

Edited March 15, 2015 by The_Big_M

[BekkaW]

If so I have had an offer through a TA here in Aust for last minute bookings on this trip incl flights to Perth and flight home from Singapore for $1989 per person in an Oceanview Cabin.

 

It says in the original post May 14 out of Tokyo

[Biker19]

It took longer than usual but even more inventory available now - RCI must of had lots of TAs dump inventory back to them at the 60 day mark and needed a few days to sort it all out.

[roquejo]

Yes, bookings are indeed back now. Took them 3 days to do inventory management which is longer than usual. That is why I taught a large group came in.

 

Prices increased on some categories but have now stabilized correctly based on cabin premium as before they did inventory, unusual pricing occurs like balconies becoming cheaper than insides, outsides becoming equal to balcony prices or insides becoming equal with outsides at some point. Perhaps this is the reason why they disabled the sale for 3 days to sort out this erratic pricing.

 

However, the cabin availability have decreased 3% after the inventory, now only 53% are avail.

 

Unlike last time, only 3 suites left for this sailing, so looks like some suites got sold during the down time, but JS is still undersold as of the moment, so are the lower categories...

 

So if this goes on until sailing, I smell an upsell or possible free upgrades coming up for higher tier C&A members booked in this sailing.

 

Since this is a re-positioning from Japan to China.. RCCL won't cancel this sailing no matter how undersold the cabins are as Voyager has to arrive in China as scheduled for this year's sailing IT's.

Edited March 16, 2015 by roquejo

[garycarla]

Okay, so where do you find the occupancy, sold numbers?

[santawendy]

hi

what is the fish site ,does it supply the inventory of ships

Thanks

[roquejo]

hi

what is the fish site ,does it supply the inventory of ships

Thanks

 

It is mainly a cruise price drop site, it is statistically oriented as it tracks the history of price movements of a particular ship sailing date and cabin category.

 

I've been doing a comparison and found it is not very accurate, already found 2 price drops that it missed, and those are the lowest point of the price drop.

 

Since it competes with this site's price drop function, we are not allowed to post direct links to that site. As this forum masks the URL during posting to prevent this site from referring to that site.