Prices holding steady. What will happen tomorrow?

[Bocadude85]

I know we have atleast 26 people canceling on our upcoming April 3rd Jewel cruise, but I have not seen any additional cabins open up, further more the prices have shot way up..very curious to see how this all plays out tomorrow once all these people are allowed to cancel their cruise. 

[JamieLogical]

28 minutes ago, Arzeena said:

Will you be doing a "Live and Logical with Jamie"?

 

I think I might try. I usually like to lock my phone in the safe and forget the outside world exists on cruises, but this time I feel like I almost have a moral obligation to keep everyone posted. I will have 250 minutes of wifi, so I will see what I can do with that.

[babydaryl24]

So I was posting crazy last Thursday and all that.... but I guess my husband and I finally got some attention with our emails and social media questions because we did reach a satisfactory resolution in our case..

 

But I talked to a supervisor today who told me literally even Mr. Hommel's secretary couldn't cancel a reservation today if she wanted to. Literally EVERY SINGLE HUMAN is frozen..... and just the tone of everyone we've talked to seems really scared rather than upbeat. 😞

 

After looking at Italy's numbers for today... I would be SHOCKED if Italian cruises aren't cancelled altogether...

[Susandt]

10 hours ago, JamieLogical said:

I am sailing on the 3/15 and 3/22 sailings of the Bliss. I track pricing every day and so far, prices have not budged since the announcement of the new cancellation on Friday. Looks to me like they have "locked" pricing at least until the new policy kicks in tomorrow. After tomorrow, when people begin cancelling their bookings in droves, do you think pricing for the March and April sailings will plummet? What have you seen with the pricing on your upcoming sailings over the past few days? 

We sail 3/28, our room category is sold out but hoping it opens up so maybe we can get some obc

[Gracelyn]

7 hours ago, JandC_Cruising said:

We are on the same cruise..and right now have no plans to cancel.  Hope to see you there!

 

I've been monitoring the cabins, but frankly stopped doing it as OCDish as usual since we are in a Haven aft already and not bidding.  But I still enjoy the process of monitoring. 🙂

As of this morning, there is only one H6 open on our cruise (it magically opened up last week -- but the one open H4 filled, so perhaps they allocated a bid from an H6 to H4).

The open H6 price is within $125 of what we paid back in the fall -- but without air and free 3rd/4th guest, so no real movement in my opinion.

But the Insides and regular balconies prices dropped by several hundred, at least.  Yet even that seems similar to what you expect within 2 weeks of a cruise to just fill cabins.

 

There are 110 total "open cabins" on our ship as of this morning. This is 21 fewer than 2-1/2 weeks ago. 

I figure it will be interesting to see what happens this week with cabins -- Do more cancel or does the ship fill up?

 

 

How do you tell how many cabins are open on a cruise?

[Gracelyn]

10 minutes ago, Susandt said:

We sail 3/28, our room category is sold out but hoping it opens up so maybe we can get some obc

 We had our category open up yesterday for March sailing. NCL gave us 35$ OBC for a balcony. Our TA count get them to budge.  My sister upgraded from OV to balcony. She received all the perks. 200$ OBC but included 500 mins wifi. Not the 250 usual. She booked same time. Same TA.  

[ItsAllAboutTheSass]

6 hours ago, JamieLogical said:

 

I was hoping they would follow Carnival's example before they announced their cancellation policy Friday, because I would have loved $400 in OBC over my two sailings, but I was disappointed to see no announcement as such when NCL finally came out with their new policy. I assume if they were going to do it, they would have announced it at the same time as the new cancellation policy, they way Carnival did. But I do have an email into my PCC asking her if NCL will follow suit. I also think offering OBC to keep your booking might discourage people from using the cancellation to just try to leverage a better deal on a near-term sailing.

I'd like to see obc as well.  We dont tend to spend a lot on the ship, but this would give us a reason to try some different things within NCL.  I think the specialty dining venues are over priced but with some incentive of try one. 

[spanishguy1970]

Wow, prices for my cruise just shut up big time....the Bliss on April 19

[Cgrammy1]

10 hours ago, JamieLogical said:

I am sailing on the 3/15 and 3/22 sailings of the Bliss. I track pricing every day and so far, prices have not budged since the announcement of the new cancellation on Friday. Looks to me like they have "locked" pricing at least until the new policy kicks in tomorrow. After tomorrow, when people begin cancelling their bookings in droves, do you think pricing for the March and April sailings will plummet? What have you seen with the pricing on your upcoming sailings over the past few days? 

I'm on the 3/29 Bliss sailing. I've been

tracking prices to possibly make it a back to back. So far nothing. The price of what I booked has actually gone up.

[kaprin02]

1 hour ago, JamieLogical said:

 

I think I might try. I usually like to lock my phone in the safe and forget the outside world exists on cruises, but this time I feel like I almost have a moral obligation to keep everyone posted. I will have 250 minutes of wifi, so I will see what I can do with that.

I've seen that on at least some of the ships, NCL is providing access to CC free of charge - you don't even need to have any sort of Wifi plan to access it (like accessing ncl.com and the NCL onboard app for reservations and such).  I don't know if that will be offered on your ship, but if so, you might not even need to use any of your 250 minutes to keep us posted!  😉

[SplashOfWater]

Prices for my May 1 cruise on the Sun stayed flat all weekend and into this afternoon. I just checked again and WOW, they've jumped up a lot! Prices had dropped quite a bit about a week ago as we dipped below the 60-day mark. Now they look to have jumped back to the previous amounts or higher.

[kaprin02]

5 minutes ago, akmarshall said:

Prices for my May 1 cruise on the Sun stayed flat all weekend and into this afternoon. I just checked again and WOW, they've jumped up a lot! Prices had dropped quite a bit about a week ago as we dipped below the 60-day mark. Now they look to have jumped back to the previous amounts or higher.

Prices for our April 8 Pearl sailing have almost doubled since yesterday.  They are actually currently higher than when we booked last July.

[luv2kroooz]

1 hour ago, babydaryl24 said:

After looking at Italy's numbers for today... I would be SHOCKED if Italian cruises aren't cancelled altogether...

That's what I would think, too, as NCL casually raises the sailaway interior rate for the TA to Rome next month from $300 pp to a whopping $1,322 pp!!! Yesterday, they give it away; today, they rip you off. Just don't see this model employed by other companies. This new pricing, coupled with current conditions in Rome, ought to fill that ship in short order.....said no one ever!!

[zeppgirl]

6 hours ago, AK Dreaming said:

I'm on the Breakaway April 23th and the Getaway June 18th.  I've been checking prices too because I would like to upgrade my cabins.  No movement.

I'm on the same Getaway cruise as you and likewise, prices haven't gone down.  They are still higher than when we booked by about $2,000 for two.

[kpark895]

Just checked the pricing on my June trip to Bermuda on the Gem, and prices have also gone way up since this morning.  Looks like NCL might be thinking that if they raise prices before the cancellation policy goes into effect, people might think twice about cancelling, since the FCC won't cover any way near the cost of a cruise based on the new pricing.

Edited March 9, 2020 by kpark895

[erdoran]

18 minutes ago, blcruising said:

That's what I would think, too, as NCL casually raises the sailaway interior rate for the TA to Rome next month from $300 pp to a whopping $1,322 pp!!! Yesterday, they give it away; today, they rip you off. Just don't see this model employed by other companies. This new pricing, coupled with current conditions in Rome, ought to fill that ship in short order.....said no one ever!!

That’s laughable, as the country of Italy is closed down and as of now, I don’t think any cruise ships are even allowed to dock—and considering the itinerary goes to countries with a large number of cases, I can’t imagine any new bookings at any price!

[luv2kroooz]

4 minutes ago, erdoran said:

That’s laughable, as the country of Italy is closed down and as of now, I don’t think any cruise ships are even allowed to dock—and considering the itinerary goes to countries with a large number of cases, I can’t imagine any new bookings at any price!

I know, so maybe new bookings have been zero and they are hedging against people cancelling and then using their FCCs to get a price reduction.

 

Or maybe they are trying to create a perception of value so booked guests don't cancel?? 

 

I know I'm grasping here....

 

 

Edited March 9, 2020 by blcruising

[dasmonkey]

45 minutes ago, blcruising said:

That's what I would think, too, as NCL casually raises the sailaway interior rate for the TA to Rome next month from $300 pp to a whopping $1,322 pp!!! Yesterday, they give it away; today, they rip you off. Just don't see this model employed by other companies. This new pricing, coupled with current conditions in Rome, ought to fill that ship in short order.....said no one ever!!

 

It's all smoke and mirrors.  Nobody is clamoring to get on a ship headed to Italy right now much less at a premium price.  
Who knows exactly what they are up to but you can be assured natural market force are playing no role in their pricing.

[ray98]

I think the increases are to prevent people from canceling and turning around and rebooking at fire-sale prices. I know from the prices I watched last week I could have probably cancelled our canceled our peak summer cruise and took 3 for the same amount getting all the perks and OBC.

[JandC_Cruising]

15 hours ago, Gracelyn said:

How do you tell how many cabins are open on a cruise?

While most sites (NCL's included) limit the viewer to 15 cabins per category, there are a couple of sites that will list all the open cabins as you do a mock booking.  I just hunker down and brute force my way through each category and count the cabins 🙂 

 

[JamieLogical]

2 minutes ago, JandC_Cruising said:

While most sites (NCL's included) limit the viewer to 15 cabins per category, there are a couple of sites that will list all the open cabins as you do a mock booking.  I just hunker down and brute force my way through each category and count the cabins 🙂 

 

 

Same here, but the site I usually use isn't showing any NCL sailings before May as of this morning.

[brovol]

Thinking out loud here, and this isnt even to the level of "speculation"; but could it be possible that the cruise companies are readying themselves for a potential insurance claim to cover their losses caused by the virus?  Put pricing back to pre-discounted rates, so the claim amount is more substantial?  Again, no insight here, just theorizing on strategy.

[JandC_Cruising]

1 minute ago, JamieLogical said:

 

Same here, but the site I usually use isn't showing any NCL sailings before May as of this morning.

My site is...I'm checking our Joy 3/22 cruise right now to see if the number has gone up or down in the past day.

 

On another note, last night we noticed our family August Bermuda cruise on the Gem jumped in price by a couple $100 per category

[JamieLogical]

1 minute ago, JandC_Cruising said:

My site is...I'm checking our Joy 3/22 cruise right now to see if the number has gone up or down in the past day.

 

On another note, last night we noticed our family August Bermuda cruise on the Gem jumped in price by a couple $100 per category

 

Yeah, all of the prices have gone WAY up across the board. Even for sailings this weekend! Guess those ships are going to sail pretty empty, because they are going to get a huge amount of cancellations and there is no way they are going to fill those vacated rooms at current prices.

[AK Dreaming]

14 hours ago, zeppgirl said:

I'm on the same Getaway cruise as you and likewise, prices haven't gone down.  They are still higher than when we booked by about $2,000 for two.

I booked on the very good rate for a inside and used point to upgrade to a OV and was hoping to bid up balcony.  Hoping to win a bid to a balcony.  If Italy is still open in June.