I hate this new Carnival site, anyone else?

[buddylover]

Not a fan either......find it unwieldy,and hard to use. Find myself going to other .coms to search and come back with a specific set of parameters. Not 'user friendly' at all!!! I hope CCL is reading these honest posts (free market analysis for them)!!:(

[love the holliday]

It sucks !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Blackjack22]

Carnival is following best practice by driving more of the interactivity into the browser and replacing full page server swaps with targeted web services data acquisition and persistence. That makes sense given that the customers that Carnival is trying to attract to their cruise line are increasingly using Intel 6th or 7th generation-based (or Apple analog) desktop or laptop computers, or similarly high-powered tablets and smartphones, all with reliable high-speed broadband connections.

 

And yes that does mean that they care a lot less about customers who don't have these top shelf devices and services. Folks shouldn't be surprised or insulted by that; it's not personal; it's strictly business. They clearly realize that they add more to profit from targeting and catering to the folks with all that extra discretionary income to spend on the top shelf devices and services than they lose from the folks who give up on the cruise line entirely (rather than calling a travel agent or the cruise line by telephone) because they are frustrated by how the website works on their older or less high-powered equipment.

 

You need to get caught up on reading the Wall Street Journal, they've had several articles in the past month re: lack of premium internet and cable to rural customers. I think CCL has a large rural contingency who may lack "top shelf" services due to lack of availability not lack of income - or wealth. I'm a city slicker now but know plenty of landowners who could probably afford to pay double what I pay for my "top shelf" cable and internet. Not sure why they call it top shelf though, I lose connection all the time playing chess and I spend most of my time watching Amazon Prime, Netflix and PPV sports and smut despite having over 400 channels!

[bUU]

You need to get caught up on reading the Wall Street Journal

No, I don't. I'm already caught up. You need to understand that driving more interactivity into the browser and replacing full page server swaps with targeted web services data acquisition and persistence reduces the need for "premium" internet service. Furthermore, you need to understand that according to the FCC, 90% of Americans live where 25 Mbps internet service is available. If you can boost turnover from 90% of the market by 12% by using a specific approach, then that's a win even if you lose the entire rest of the market. Edited August 3, 2017 by bUU

[Blackjack22]

No, I don't. I'm already caught up. You need to understand that driving more interactivity into the browser and replacing full page server swaps with targeted web services data acquisition and persistence reduces the need for "premium" internet service. Furthermore, you need to understand that according to the FCC, 90% of Americans live where 25 Mbps internet service is available. If you can boost turnover from 90% of the market by 12% by using a specific approach, then that's a win even if you lose the entire rest of the market.

 

Thanks for the schooling Zuck :'), maybe you need to learn you some reading comprehension. The point of my previous post, which I feel I clearly stated, was that many people who have the disposable income or wealth to purchase what you call referred to as "top shelf" internet are shut out due to geographic realities not economic realities. What does that have to do with the point you are making about boosting revenue from the 90% when you've been arguing throughout the thread that the website redesign was brought about by desire to target households in a certain income range?

 

My wife and I are in the middle of the 100-300k income range you keep throwing out there as a target, but I can assure you we don't have as much discretionary income than retirees earning half as much. Heck, some days I feel like I don't have as much discretionary income as welfare queens who qualify for the earned income tax credit. We pay out the wahzoo in taxes (thanks Obama) and aggressively pay off our mortgage and student loans. If I didn't get get discounts from the casino from being such a degenerate, I doubt we'd take many vacations other than visiting the in-laws in Florida. Basing a target cruise audience strictly on income and not wealth and financial stresses is a gross over simplification for someone who claims to have such amazing business acumen and loves throwing around buzz words.

[Towel Critter]

Not thrilled with the new format, but then I didn't care for the old one either. They are designed to sell cruises, not to make life easier for the one booking... or browsing, unfortunately for us. I shop elsewhere, then when I'm ready to book I put up with... I mean go to the Carnival site to book. That way I only have to deal with it once.

 

edit: I can get 10 times the info in half the time using my favorite cruise search engine. Initials: VTG.

[bUU]

Thanks for the schooling Zuck :'), maybe you need to learn you some reading comprehension.

I've clearly touched a nerve. I apologize but your earlier rudeness prompted me to "school" you about what you didn't know. Your continuing rudeness, now combined with childish name-calling, is simply uncalled-for.

 

The point of my previous post, which I feel I clearly stated, was that many people who have the disposable income or wealth to purchase what you call referred to as "top shelf" internet are shut out due to geographic realities not economic realities. What does that have to do with the point you are making about boosting revenue from the 90% when you've been arguing throughout the thread that the website redesign was brought about by desire to target households in a certain income range?

Instead of being rude you should have just explained that you didn't understand and needed it explained in a more basic manner.

 

Marketing has an impact on sales, and the specific kind of marketing has specific kinds of impact. If you appeal to a certain subset of the market, let's say those who like formal attire, by offering a cruise line that requires formal attire in the public areas in the evenings and enforces it, then you're going to boost your sales and even your margins from that specific segment of the market, those specific customers. However, as you can well imagine, if a cruise line was to do that, i.e., go back to the way things were decades ago, they would lose more customers than they'd gain, by quite a lot. So the cruise lines understand the marketplace and craft their operations to take the best advantage of the market.

 

The website changes that all the cruise lines have been making over the last few years have been aimed at enhancing interactivity, encouraging self-service, and capitalizing on the latest internet technologies. The cruise lines recognize what I wrote above: that some of the decisions they make will foster sales and margins in some segments of the market while those same decisions will have and adverse impact on other segments of the market. They choose which changes to make based on which decisions will benefit the cruise line the most. The 90% of Americans with access to 25 Mbps service or better represent such a large segment of the market that if the positive impact of a change fosters just a 12% increase in turnover from that segment, then that change would be worthwhile even if it means that the other 10% of Americans are completely blocked. This is just simple math.

 

My wife and I are ...

You seem to be taking business personally. It isn't about you. It's about the market. These are mass market cruise lines so none of us - not you, not me - none of us make the difference between profit and loss for them. You don't like what they're doing, but you are apparently (and mistakenly) projecting that that means that the cruise line is doing something wrong. That's utterly ridiculous, as is placing your impression of marketing savvy over the people who are actually paid to do that work for the cruise line. You have a vested interest in serving your own best interest, not the cruise line's, and the experienced professionals who are making those decisions for the cruise line are invariably going to do what is in the cruise line's best interest. They're going to do the simple math I outlined above that you seem to be unwilling to internalize, and make the decisions that you're criticizing, and they will make those decisions because those decisions are in the cruise line's best interest.

[Blackjack22]

I've clearly touched a nerve. I apologize but your earlier rudeness prompted me to "school" you about what you didn't know. Your continuing rudeness, now combined with childish name-calling, is simply uncalled-for.

 

Instead of being rude you should have just explained that you didn't understand and needed it explained in a more basic manner.

 

Marketing has an impact on sales, and the specific kind of marketing has specific kinds of impact. If you appeal to a certain subset of the market, let's say those who like formal attire, by offering a cruise line that requires formal attire in the public areas in the evenings and enforces it, then you're going to boost your sales and even your margins from that specific segment of the market, those specific customers. However, as you can well imagine, if a cruise line was to do that, i.e., go back to the way things were decades ago, they would lose more customers than they'd gain, by quite a lot. So the cruise lines understand the marketplace and craft their operations to take the best advantage of the market.

 

The website changes that all the cruise lines have been making over the last few years have been aimed at enhancing interactivity, encouraging self-service, and capitalizing on the latest internet technologies. The cruise lines recognize what I wrote above: that some of the decisions they make will foster sales and margins in some segments of the market while those same decisions will have and adverse impact on other segments of the market. They choose which changes to make based on which decisions will benefit the cruise line the most. The 90% of Americans with access to 25 Mbps service or better represent such a large segment of the market that if the positive impact of a change fosters just a 12% increase in turnover from that segment, then that change would be worthwhile even if it means that the other 10% of Americans are completely blocked. This is just simple math.

 

You seem to be taking business personally. It isn't about you. It's about the market. These are mass market cruise lines so none of us - not you, not me - none of us make the difference between profit and loss for them. You don't like what they're doing, but you are mistakenly insisting that that means that the cruise line is doing something wrong. That's utterly ridiculous, as is placing your impression of marketing savvy over the people who are actually paid to do that work for the cruise line. You have a vested interest in serving your own best interest, not the cruise line's, and the experienced professionals who are making those decisions for the cruise line are invariably going to do what is in the cruise line's best interest. They're going to do the simple math I outlined above that you seem to be unwilling to internalize, and make the decisions that you're criticizing, and they will make those decisions because those decisions are in the cruise line's best interest.

 

You aren't staying on point or reading my whole post. The reason for the personal antectdote is illustrate how silly you are to assume that cruise lines target an income range when that is actually a pretty useless indicator of desire and ability to spend $ on vacation. Isn't a market made up of actors who are WILLING and ABLE to purchase a good or service?

 

It's funny, I came to this thread to make fun of some guy complaining about people acting like "big spenders" and after reading it, I can't help but want to spend the slow part of my day picking apart all of your posts.

[bUU]

You aren't staying on point or reading my whole post.

I actually am and I've been very patient with you until now, because I know it is difficult for many consumers to see things from a seller's standpoint.

 

At this point I'm tired of your puerile responses. We're done.

[Pellaz]

Not thrilled with the new format, but then I didn't care for the old one either. They are designed to sell cruises, not to make life easier for the one booking... or browsing, unfortunately for us. I shop elsewhere, then when I'm ready to book I put up with... I mean go to the Carnival site to book. That way I only have to deal with it once.

 

edit: I can get 10 times the info in half the time using my favorite cruise search engine. Initials: VTG.

 

This, exactly and in a nutshell.

 

Having found a really cool-looking cruise for October 2018 using "that other site you mentioned," I went to Carnival's site to put down a $99 deposit, since last night was the end of that particular promotion. I was unable to get the site's booking engine to cough up any fare rate that included the $99 deposit, so I gave up. We might try booking it later, we might not.

[Blackjack22]

I actually am and I've been very patient with you until now, because I know it is difficult for many consumers to see things from a seller's standpoint.

 

At this point I'm tired of your puerile responses. We're done.

 

 

Hahahah I love a person who loses an argument then misuses a word trying to appear smarter than she really is! You remind me of one of those people in law school who argued in every class about minutiae first semester then mysteriously didn't make it to second semester. Here's a little tip, it's tough to string together coherent arguments if you get bogged down making a bunch of obscure points. Be blessed homie.

[the mistral wind]

I actually am and I've been very patient with you until now, because I know it is difficult for many consumers to see things from a seller's standpoint.

 

At this point I'm tired of your puerile responses. We're done.

Oh darn it . I was having a good time reading the two of you back and forth responses.;p

[bUU]

Oh darn it . I was having a good time reading the two of you back and forth responses.;p

My patience for childishness is very low these days, and even lower for people who have no professional background in either marketing or technology but still think their gut feeling about what makes them happy has a customer must invariably be what's best for the company. This trend toward people reveling in their ignorance and ridiculing knowledge and experience is really wearing quite thin.

 

This message may have been entered using voice recognition. Please excuse any typos.

[the mistral wind]

I just tried to do a mock booking for the Magic in December - it was very, very confusing and I've done this bunches of times on the "old program" :(

"New and Improved" is a phrase that never seems to bode well .... I normally prefer to wait until it's "new and improved and the bugs worked out" before investing my time :p

I taught school for years and perhaps that's where I developed my phobia :D Every time we got a new program that we were expected to implement up and running and actually showing some promise ... somebody with a pay grade way above mine decided we needed something NEW!!! .

........... sigh ............

Some smarty pants always has to make their mark . Whether it's better or not.

[Organized Chaos]

Instead of being rude you should have just explained that you didn't understand and needed it explained in a more basic manner.

And you don't think this comment is rude? It's very demeaning and hiding it behind carefully chosen words doesn't make it less so. Why don't you just call someone stupid and get it over with, because that's what that comment says. "Here, let me dumb it down for you so you can understand." You've played this card before, but it's hard to feel for you for being on the receiving end of rudeness and childishness when you constantly try to belittle someone's intelligence as soon as they disagree with you. Most people couldn't care less about your self-proclaimed business acumen, your college degrees, your professional expertise, or your thesaurus-filled communication skills. Anything meaningful you have to say is obscured by arrogance. In the end, neither of you truly know why Carnival Corp. does what it does at every turn, so what you end up with is nothing more than opinions, just like the rest of us.

[surfergirl15]

I don't like it either!

[BamaLady#13]

I've just given up on Carnivals ability to repair the damage they did when they "redesigned" their site. When I need to check prices or do any kind of search for a carnival sailing, I go to the world famous, rhymes with niceline site. Easy to use and has the exact same prices as carnival, with a few perks like extra OBC or hotel vouchers.

[bUU]

And you don't think this comment is rude?

I admit that I'm not a turn the other cheek kind of poster. I respond in the same tone that I am posted *at* (and that's the right way to describe it: "posted at"). The reality is that there are some people here who are actually interested in sharing information and knowledge and then there's other people who are just interested in engaging in baseless bashing of experts and professionals doing their jobs properly because they don't like the result. That's not intended to be demeaning it's just an observation.

 

Most people couldn't care less about your self-proclaimed business acumen, your college degrees, your professional expertise, or your thesaurus-filled communication skills.

Like I said before there is really ridiculous Trend in this country towards ridiculing knowledge and experience in favor of feel-good ignorance and bravado. Self-ratifying claims supported only by people's gut feel is being yelled out from the mountain tops while thoughtful consideration of matters from a factual and logical and reasonable standpoint is being demeaned. Welcome to 2017. What the heck kind of world are we leaving to our children?

 

In the end, neither of you truly know why Carnival Corp. does what it does at every turn, so what you end up with is nothing more than opinions, just like the rest of us.

You're wrong; there is a fundamental difference: My explanations fit with what the cruise line is doing while the other posters' runs counter to what they're doing. That's the critical difference. I'm providing an opinion that actually explains why those professional experts are doing what they're doing while the other poster is making up nonsense in a vain attempt to rationalize criticism of those professional experts doing what they're doing, in a ridiculous attempt to claim that the complainer knows how to run a cruise line better than the cruise line. If you can't tell the difference then that's on you.

 

 

This message may have been entered using voice recognition. Please excuse any typos.

Edited August 4, 2017 by bUU

[luv2trvlnow]

Are people still seeing the new site? Because for me it has gone back to the previous site.

 

I guess this is one of those cases where Carnival had to rethink what was best for the company. There must of been too many complaints and it affected sales or the cost of obtaining those sales. Most of the time the seller wins but sometimes the customer wins. But if the customer wins it is because the seller realized their course of action was not in the seller's best interest.

 

I understand that Carnival might want to appeal to those people with high end devices because they are willing to spend that kind of money on them. But for many of them it is a status thing to have the latest and greatest. If that is the case, saying you are cruising on Carnival would not contribute to that status. Many of those people would choose a different cruise line instead of one that has a reputation for being a lower end product.

[bUU]

Are people still seeing the new site? Because for me it has gone back to the previous site.

I am still seeing the new site, on all three PC browsers, in private/incognito. What are you seeing that makes you think it has gone back to the "previous site"?

[debster11]

I seem to have the old site. I had the new but for some reason it changed back a couple of weeks ago.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

[bUU]

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

Ah! Maybe this is the difference!

[luv2trvlnow]

I am still seeing the new site, on all three PC browsers, in private/incognito. What are you seeing that makes you think it has gone back to the "previous site"?

OK.

When I click on the tile for the cruise the screen that displays is "How many staterooms do you want?" You choose that, then click on "Continue".

Next screen: is How many people are cruising?

Next screen:Tell us about yourself.

Next screen: Which type of room.

And so forth. This is what I call the old site.

I do not get the screen with boxes on the top to change things and a place further down the page to choose your cabin type. If I didn't do it in the right order it would default to lowest choice on certain options like the cabin type. I have a deluxe ocean view booked on my 14 day Breeze cruise next year. It would default back to a regular ocean view room if I didn't do things in the correct order and then I would have to go back in and change it. It didn't let you know what the order should be. It would have been nice if once you choose your option it would remain. I would have to check the final screen to make sure my choices had not changed. This is what I call the new site.

[Bimmie Girl]

I have complained about the new site since the beginning of when they changed it. Like to sail them but I turn to other cruise sites to find the "Carnival Cruise" I want then call Carnival rep I use to book it.

[Organized Chaos]

I understand that Carnival might want to appeal to those people with high end devices because they are willing to spend that kind of money on them. But for many of them it is a status thing to have the latest and greatest. If that is the case, saying you are cruising on Carnival would not contribute to that status. Many of those people would choose a different cruise line instead of one that has a reputation for being a lower end product.

Are you referring to Carnival redesigning the site to be more mobile friendly? If so, it doesn't take an expensive, high end, status symbol device to view a mobile website. Sure, Apple products are considered high end and have prices to reflect that, but many carriers often offer deals on iPhones, new ones and older ones, to make them reasonably priced and sometimes even free (a current BOGO free offer comes to mind). On the other side of the smartphone aisle, there are a lot of much cheaper Android phones. One of my family members just switched over to a smartphone not long ago with Cricket Wireless and their Samsung device only cost them $20. It can view Carnival's mobile site just as easily as my iPhone. So while they may have tried to redesign the site to be more mobile friendly, that doesn't mean it's specifically designed for expensive smartphones owned by people who consider them status symbols. A mobile website is a mobile website, regardless of which smartphone you view it on.