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Would you sail on or continue to sail Royal if they went inclusive?


Plum Happy
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6 hours ago, yogimax said:

Unless there's more to this, it seems to devalue status.  We don't need unlimited drinks because we have access to the Diamond Lounge.  We already receive a reduced price for WiFi.

 

How is Celebrity responding to these issues?

To be honest Celebrity has been doing this for a while and they are just reinventing it.  To answer your question it has never gone over well with the Elites who have the happy hours.  Celebrity was my first choice since they started the included drink package. However their prices have gone up so much that it lead me to try Royal Caribbean. Even by purchasing the drink package when it hit a good sale price it was cheaper to sail an 9 day itinerary on Royal than a 7 day on Celebrity.  Having the gratuity included means you can't remove it.  Many didn't like that either.

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17 minutes ago, docruth said:

 

I’m E+, and this was our first time as senior cruisers aboard.

 

They pulled out all the stops, private bridge tour with the master, lunch with the hotel director, it just kept going and going. Private, up-front audience with a sealion pup (pulled off my scuba mask), lecture on getting too close from mama sealion, a picture by the naturalist while this was happening, no seriously though X only arranged the last part.

 

Have to wait now for the world to heal now, glad we did it back then! Next Angor 

Lol everyone higher loyalty than me around here. 

 

It does sound totally awesome.

Edited by firefly333
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5 hours ago, Ourusualbeach said:

Just in case that wasn’t a rhetorical question.....no the fares will not be reduced. 

Celebrity worked that angle as well. They offered a basic fare for those who didn't want any extras. That was in the past year or so. Now I guess it's all or nothing and I'm sure that there is a big hubbub about it on that board. The prices on Celebrity had skyrocketed before Covid and this new scheme is really poor timing. They have an older demographic that is probably not ready to jump on a cruise ship and this will discourage them even more .    

Edited by Iamcruzin
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4 hours ago, Plum Happy said:

It's not just alcoholic, specialty coffee and teas, soda is included.

Even so Royal Caribbean offers a package that includes everything except alcohol which is a much better deal than the high priced all inclusive deal.  We drink, use wifi and pay the auto grats. You really have to do the math and compare lines to see where the better deals are. For us in 2019 it was Royal Caribbean over Celebrity.  A 9 day cruise in a balcony was less than a 7 day all inclusive cruise in an ocean view on Celebrity. Both were Caribbean itineraries. We paid for one deluxe drink package, one refreshment package, Surf and Stream and gratuities.

 

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Will be looking for  cheap X European cruise for net summer now !!!

 

And I can skip The Retreat, the best benefits are inclusively available

 

If nothing else, it is time gratuities were included in all cruise fares. It's an international vacation option now, and so many people resent it, or don't understand it, that bumping the fares will cover it without controversy or short-changng hard-working staff

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1 hour ago, compman9 said:

 

If nothing else, it is time gratuities were included in all cruise fares. It's an international vacation option now, and so many people resent it, or don't understand it, that bumping the fares will cover it without controversy or short-changng hard-working staff

Agree, I think grats should be included world wide 

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I always get the 2 perks; free drinks and  free gratuities when I sail on X.  That is because their CC happy hour period (5-7p) is too early for us so we never really get to utilise that.  We never buy a drinks package on RCI as the happy hour window suits us just fine! 
Will be interesting to see what the price rise is to cover this. 

Edited by little britain
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7 hours ago, yogimax said:

This policy which would raise prices dramatically will simply lead people away from Celebrity and toward Viking, Avalon and the River Cruise companies.

I think it’s already been shown that prices are going to increase significantly across all cruise lines in the future. Are you in?

 

M8

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9 hours ago, John&LaLa said:

 

We already subsidize others😉

 

FlowRider,  iFly, bumper cars, pool slides, CATS, Adventure Ocean, North Star, etc....

 

While this is true I will gladly pay it to keep the kids occupied. On Princess and Celebrity the kids roam the hallways and ride the elevators. They are much more visible on these lines even though there are less of them during the time of year we sail.

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1 minute ago, Milwaukee Eight said:

I think it’s already been shown that prices are going to increase significantly across all cruise lines in the future. Are you in?

 

M8

It will be interesting to see what happens with prices.

 

One  could argue that the cruise lines will need to raise prices to pay down all this debt and the newly released itineraries will surely reflect that.  In the long run though pricing will fall back to supply and demand. If customers aren’t booking at those higher prices then Royal and the other cruise lines  will need to lower them to a price point that is acceptable.

 

Even with running temporarily at a reduced capacity and having scrapped a number of ships (cruise lines in general) it still remains to be seen what % of the public will be looking to book a cruise in the next year to two. 

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13 minutes ago, Ourusualbeach said:

It will be interesting to see what happens with prices.

 

One  could argue that the cruise lines will need to raise prices to pay down all this debt and the newly released itineraries will surely reflect that.  In the long run though pricing will fall back to supply and demand. If customers aren’t booking at those higher prices then Royal and the other cruise lines  will need to lower them to a price point that is acceptable.

 

Even with running temporarily at a reduced capacity and having scrapped a number of ships (cruise lines in general) it still remains to be seen what % of the public will be looking to book a cruise in the next year to two. 

I should have qualified pricing as near future. Then we can debate what is the definition of “near”. 
 

M8

Edited by Milwaukee Eight
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Celebrity has been basically doing this already.  Last time we were on we got an included  drink package, gratuitities and wi-fi.  Our next book trip on the Summit in July includes all of these (drink pkg is the premium one under the special we booked) and OBC, but in reality, you pay for it in your fare, but I don't find it more expensive than RCI without those things..  We're also Elite on X so we get a few additional perks.

 

We did find since pretty much everyone had the drink pkg that getting a drink a certain times (like sailaway) was virtually impossible as it took so long, but other times it was easy.  When we were going ashore for an excursion we just grabbed a couple of bottles of water at a bar.  

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34 minutes ago, Milwaukee Eight said:

I think it’s already been shown that prices are going to increase significantly across all cruise lines in the future. Are you in?

 

M8

They can increase but only to a certain point.  Everyone has their point they won't go to and the cruise lines know that.  They'll increase to a point that they start losing too many cruisers.  They can't go back to the old days where cruising was truly for the well off without getting rid of ships and employees and changing up their offerings to include higher quality across the board.

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1 hour ago, mugtech said:

Those of us who don't drink alcohol and enjoy cruising without WiFi will not be eager to pay for other people to do so.

The vast majority of cruisers use WiFi and it's subsidized pretty much anywhere you travel.  We stayed at the beach twice this year and it was included in both places with no option to not have it.   

 

As for alcohol, the drink packages contain every thing you could possibly want.  Water, juices, soda, coffees (including specialty), as well as alcohol so one could argue that everyone has to drink something.  People who don't drink go to all inclusives all the time.  We've never bought a drink package because it never made sense financially, but we did have one included on X and we didn't spend much more with the packages included than we would have just on a cruise on RCI. RCI won't be able to upcharge what they do now to "include" those things or the cost of some cruises would double.

Edited by BND
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26 minutes ago, BND said:

We stayed at the beach twice this year and it was included in both places with no option to not have it. 

The math of providing internet at a land based facility can be quite different from a limited BW sat connection. 

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33 minutes ago, BND said:

They can increase but only to a certain point.  Everyone has their point they won't go to and the cruise lines know that.  They'll increase to a point that they start losing too many cruisers.  They can't go back to the old days where cruising was truly for the well off without getting rid of ships and employees and changing up their offerings to include higher quality across the board.

See post # ?  I modified to near future. 😇

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