Princess Loyalty Credit

[PescadoAmarillo]

59 minutes ago, cruising.mark.uk said:

It is.  So why do so many on here come over all emotional about what they perceive to be Princess' failure to recognise their loyalty?

I don’t think most here have been emotional.  People are just stating facts. There’s been only one emotional post that I can see that encourages people to shut up. It seems the emotion is running high on the part of those who feel their BFF, Princess Cruises, is being attacked by stating facts about the actions that the company has taken. When a person can’t state that they’ll likely cruise less because cruises will cost more without others getting defensive and attacking, THAT’s emotional. 

[VibeGuy]

3 hours ago, PescadoAmarillo said:

“When we used to cruise for 4 or 5 months each year, it took no effort on Princess's part to market to us.”

 

Precisely.  Princess never had to do conventional demand generation activities to reach my wallet.  We liked the product and other lines weren’t a consideration because laundry and loyalty commend created friction to booking elsewhere.  

“We never got last minute flash deals; in fact we were willing to pay more to lock in cabins for months at a time, cabins that didn’t need to be resold time and time again. “

Our situation is a bit different because of our work - we are low maintenance (almost any cabin with daylight worked before, now anything with fresh air access is fine) but we will gladly take whatever is sailing in a couple of weeks - no refares, no getting upset because we didn’t get visited by the upgrade fairy, no I MUST HAVE THIS SPECIFIC CABIN OR MY TRIP OF A LIFETIME IS RUINED.  We will happily pay the asking price because this is when some downtime has popped up.  But you know what?  It’s incremental revenue and those port charges are due whether the cabins are sold or not.   Princess needs some customers that take a sailing from break-even to mildly profitable. 

 

“The only things we really didn’t spend money on were photos and the spa.  Excursions were booked depending on the itinerary (in Asia, in every port).”

 

I’ve joked they should just charge me $50/sailing and agree to never suggest taking my picture again.  
 

Our onboard spend looks like our at-home spend - special dinners, beverages, lots of internet.  I admit we are not good business for art auctions, bingo or jewelry,  but seeing as we are both dudes who don’t wear jewelry, that is more demographic than first-time vs addicted cruisers.  My DH wouldn’t be caught dead in the spa or salon, whereas I require some periodic chemical assistance to bring out my natural blond. It is convenient to do it onboard when I don’t have as many demands on my time, and I don’t have to book a colorist a month or more in advance.  

 

So aside from the quirks of being two guys (neither of whom are buying jewelry for anyone and who don’t routinely wear a nice watch anymore), our daily spend is more like once a year cruisers than those cruisers I keep hearing about who bring on a box of Franzia, drink only tap water and think $30 for a ribeye is an extravagance. 
 

I admit we are not shorex buyers - we weren’t “bus ride with 48 new friends” people in the Before Times and we sure as heck aren’t now.  We have always preferred to do our own thing on our own schedule and we have the resources to self-insure our timely and safe return to the ship or to make it to the next port on our own.   I’ve said our perfect Shorex would be “have a fueled car with a cooler of water and Diet Coke waiting for us at the gangway and let us drop it back there”, but nobody takes me seriously.   
 

HAL’s loyalty program solves for the discrepancies in onboard spend rather nicely by crediting an extra night for every $nnn in spend, if I recall.   
 

“If Princess can fill every cabin with first time, big spending cruisers, more power to them. But that is not the reality of their situation right now. Someone needs to fill those ships 24/7/365, not just during school breaks and holidays. “

Yup.   This.  The fixed costs of operating the fleet need covering and losing, say, ten nights a year from your most loyal guests is an operational headwind that they don’t need.   It’s a self-inflicted injury  

 

[VibeGuy]

It’s perfectly cromulent to have an emotional reaction when a dangled perk that drove some incremental spend is yanked away.  Nobody likes being played for a fool.  I am disappointed that I got precisely one $100 Loyalty Commend when I casually figured it would be a thing for awhile.   I’m miffed that the change from sailings to days took place just as I hit my 50th sailing.  I’m resigned to my fate that 500 nights will be just more water under the keel.  
 

Disappointment, pique and resignation are not positive emotional responses, but they’re completely legitimate given what Princess has done at the unpublished ultra-loyal levels.  

[PescadoAmarillo]

15 minutes ago, VibeGuy said:

…whereas I require some periodic chemical assistance to bring out my natural blond.

 

16 minutes ago, VibeGuy said:

It’s perfectly cromulent…

Darn, I love you. Reading your posts is pure pleasure.
 

There!  There’s some emotion for you. 

[Coral]

17 hours ago, VibeGuy said:

 

And then they promptly discontinued night-based milestone recognition. 
 

We sat with a couple who celebrated their 500th day on the ship on this cruise that just ended this week. They said they did get acknowledged and benefits from hitting that milestone.

[VibeGuy]

1 hour ago, PescadoAmarillo said:

 

Darn, I love you. Reading your posts is pure pleasure.
 

There!  There’s some emotion for you. 

Come help debug Diamond in a few weeks.  I’m a delight at Good Spirits, I know which fork to use at table and I’ll make sure you win more trivia prizes than you know what to do with.    

I admit, you’ve been a bit of an inspiration - when I was more conventionally employed, we were a little limited to no more than three segments in a row.   Now the limit is just the ship moving somewhere one of us has warrants.  
 

 

[caribill]

56 minutes ago, Coral said:

We sat with a couple who celebrated their 500th day on the ship on this cruise that just ended this week. They said they did get acknowledged and benefits from hitting that milestone.

 

Those who had booked that 500th day before a certain date (unknown is what that certain date is) still get the celebration.

 

If you booked the 500th day after that date, no celebration. A couple who has reached 500 days on Princess has no doubt spent more than $100,000 cruising with Princess, possibly over $200,000. The celebration included stuff that cost Princess nothing (example: breakfast where the suite occupants eat breakfast) or less than $100 (example: flowers in the cabin).

[Coral]

27 minutes ago, caribill said:

 

Those who had booked that 500th day before a certain date (unknown is what that certain date is) still get the celebration.

 

If you booked the 500th day after that date, no celebration. A couple who has reached 500 days on Princess has no doubt spent more than $100,000 cruising with Princess, possibly over $200,000. The celebration included stuff that cost Princess nothing (example: breakfast where the suite occupants eat breakfast) or less than $100 (example: flowers in the cabin).

That makes more sense. They were very clear that they got the benefits.

[PescadoAmarillo]

3 hours ago, VibeGuy said:

Come help debug Diamond in a few weeks.  I’m a delight at Good Spirits, I know which fork to use at table and I’ll make sure you win more trivia prizes than you know what to do with.    

I admit, you’ve been a bit of an inspiration - when I was more conventionally employed, we were a little limited to no more than three segments in a row.   Now the limit is just the ship moving somewhere one of us has warrants.  
 

 

Do it!  We’ve never regretted spending the energy or the resources required to travel for ten years.  If DH has his way, we’ll do it again some day.
 

Alas, as hard as it is to pass up trivia prizes, cruising is not currently on my ‘to do’ list. Safe travels!

[VibeGuy]

If you had told me in The Before Times that we would ever be caught dead on a Christmas or NYE sailing, I would have very much enjoyed the conversation and then casually mentioned an excellent neurosurgeon who repairs holes in heads.   
 

Now we are people who use “winter” as a verb and have physicians in foreign countries and no longer worry about drunks on icy roads at the start of new medical deductible and copay season.  We’re going to take advantage of the soft bookings and drink hot buttered rum.   But cold.  And without butter. 

[rdsqrl]

19 hours ago, cruising.mark.uk said:

You write this as if it's a bad thing for Princess.   As a shareholder, I suspect the opposite is true.  

. . 

I'm a shareholder, too, but I still want the piddling $25 I earned for my loyalty (exactly once before they discontinued it). That's two free martinis.  As Andrew Carnegie once said, if you watch over your pennies, the free martinis take care of themselves.  Or something like that .  . 

[dazee8]

On 11/25/2022 at 8:22 AM, Coral said:

The items in the shops were awful on the Emerald. Good thing I wasn't worried about this perk as there was nothing worth buying. We were told that they are trying to sell out of inventory and "new and better stuff would be coming"......

The shops on the Discovery were disappointing with little inventory during our Thanksgiving sailing.  The gift shop crew said they were getting more items in December to fill up the shelves.  Princess missed a golden opportunity with 4K cruisers and families with limited items to purchase.