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Shareholder Benefit Program question


Ken the cruiser
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We recently bought 100 shares of Norwegian stock to take advantage of getting more OBC when taking an Oceania, Regent or Norwegian cruise. We have 3 Oceania cruises booked, but only received shareholder OBC for 2 of them. Regarding the 3rd cruise, a B2B, we were told "the benefit is not applicable to the combo sailing due to the promotional offer/pricing of said sailing." They also said they would have the request reviewed again closer to the sail date, probably after we pay the final bill.

 

We're thinking the "promotional offer/pricing of said sailing" is referring to the 5% discount we got when we separately booked the 2 cruises. Although we're unsure why this would matter, some of the listed exceptions mentioned in the fine print could be referring to B2B cruises. However, none of the exceptions actually refer specifically to B2B cruises.

 

We're just curious if other Oceania cruisers with shareholder benefits have encountered the same response or did you get the applicable OBC applied to your booked B2B cruise.

 

Note: The type of B2B cruise I'm referring to is one where you had to book 2 or more cruises together and received separate booking numbers rather than 2 cruises Oceania packaged together and sold them as one booking.

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We recently bought 100 shares of Norwegian stock to take advantage of getting more OBC when taking an Oceania, Regent or Norwegian cruise. We have 3 Oceania cruises booked, but only received shareholder OBC for 2 of them. Regarding the 3rd cruise, a B2B, we were told "the benefit is not applicable to the combo sailing due to the promotional offer/pricing of said sailing." They also said they would have the request reviewed again closer to the sail date, probably after we pay the final bill.

 

We're thinking the "promotional offer/pricing of said sailing" is referring to the 5% discount we got when we separately booked the 2 cruises. Although we're unsure why this would matter, some of the listed exceptions mentioned in the fine print could be referring to B2B cruises. However, none of the exceptions actually refer specifically to B2B cruises.

 

We're just curious if other Oceania cruisers with shareholder benefits have encountered the same response or did you get the applicable OBC applied to your booked B2B cruise.

 

Note: The type of B2B cruise I'm referring to is one where you had to book 2 or more cruises together and received separate booking numbers rather than 2 cruises Oceania packaged together and sold them as one booking.

 

I never heard of O allowing NCL stock discount. Or Regent. I knew that they had a deal for NCL.

Personaly I would never buy stock for some discount on a cruise...Id only buy investment grade stuff where the dividends and appreciation for the money invested would by far exceed the discount you would. :confused:

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I never heard of O allowing NCL stock discount. Or Regent. I knew that they had a deal for NCL.

Personaly I would never buy stock for some discount on a cruise...Id only buy investment grade stuff where the dividends and appreciation for the money invested would by far exceed the discount you would. :confused:

 

Yep, I agree. You'd have to pay just under $5K for 100 shares but in the past 52 weeks it had a -9.24% return. No dividends.

NCL gives a shareholder benefit for Norwegian Cruise Line, Oceania Cruises or Regent Seven Seas Cruises.

 

OTOH you'd get:

 

 

 

  • $250 On board Credit per Stateroom on Sailings of 15 Days or More.
  • $100 On board Credit per Stateroom on Sailings of 7 to 14 Days.
  • $50 On board Credit per Stateroom on Sailings of 6 Days or Less.

At the $100 OBC rate you'd have to take 50 One to two week sailings to recoup your purchase if the stock returned no gain. Not a good reason to buy as Hawaiidan pointed out. At $250 OBC you'd only have to take 20 cruises. CCL gives a much better stock return.

Edited by ChucktownSteve
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I never heard of O allowing NCL stock discount. Or Regent. I knew that they had a deal for NCL.

Personaly I would never buy stock for some discount on a cruise...Id only buy investment grade stuff where the dividends and appreciation for the money invested would by far exceed the discount you would. :confused:

 

That's fine. That's your decision. For us, we think it's a pretty darn good deal especially since this is the first year since Norwegian bought Oceania and Regent that they are offering it. We love cruising and plan on taking multiple 14+ day Oceania cruises a year in the future. So, besides getting the minor quarterly dividends from owning the stock, we will also be getting $250 OBC per cruise which equates to an additional "tax free" 5% dividend on the stock purchase price for going on each cruise. We've been doing the same thing with the Carnival stock we bought a few years ago with regards to our HAL and Princess cruises and have already received over 30% of our investment back in the form of OBC in the past 3 years besides the $100+ in dividends we get each year from that stock. So, for us it's worth the small 100 share investment.

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It's interesting how cruise lines work - they basically talk out of both sides of their mouths!

 

In your case, you can't get the shareholder obc on the separately booked, separate booking numbers, because they consider it one cruise. We, on the other hand have two cruises booked as yours, separate booking numbers, but in our case they are considered separate bookings as far as carrying non-refundable obc's left from the first cruise to the second.

 

Guess it's whatever works best for the lines bottom line.

 

Donna

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do you get your OBC for stock 100 to 250 in addition to your O club Status ( ie 200-400-500 ? or is it one or the other?

NCL was shortly at 50 now today down 2.5% and about 10% for the year.. that means a $500 loss on your investment....

Im happy with the extra OBC's my agent gives me + the O club+ the cruise basic oBC. and can easily end up with 800-1000 OBC for a 7 to 10 day O cruise And it is all spend it or loose it....

But your right its a personal thing and if your happy that is all that matters for you....its just something I would not do..

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Kinda sad that several posters only chose to criticize the OP about their decision to purchase the stock but didn't offer an answer to their question. :(

 

I'm an Oceania newbie so I don't have an answer but I did want to say that I bought Carnival Corporation stock years ago and it's been a great decision!! I bought at $25/share! Have doubled my investment with lots of Obc too.

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Kinda sad that several posters only chose to criticize the OP about their decision to purchase the stock but didn't offer an answer to their question. :(

 

I agree.

 

I read an interesting article about the acquisition of Prestige Cruise Holdings by NCLH and, according to it, a major reason was for gaining Frank Del Rio's and Bob Binder's expertise in logistics and general cruise line management.

 

When I read that article and did some due diligence, Frank Del Rio had recently purchased significant shares of NCLH, I decided to purchase enough NCLH to qualify for additional OBC. I'm a very satisfied investor and (a repeat) Oceania customer.

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I own shares of RCL & CCL. RCL doesn't like to give their shareholder benefit unless you have an inside or trans Atlantic with no benefits. They reject most requests. It appears NCL may be starting to do the same as the OP indicated about his rejection.

 

I bought RCL & CCL because I saw an uptrend in cruising and thought it would be a good investment. CCL has had a much better return than RCL which I'm about to dump. However NCL stock has substantially under performed the other two.

 

If the OP is happy with their purchase because of the Shareholder benefit, then they're entitled to feel good about it. I however would prefer to buy a stock that performed so well that it paid for my entire cruise. :D

 

Apple did that for my wife's car a few years ago. Fifty shares in two years not only allowed her to pay cash for her new car but she got her original investment back too! Now that's a shareholder benefit.

Edited by ChucktownSteve
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It's interesting how cruise lines work - they basically talk out of both sides of their mouths!

 

In your case' date=' you can't get the shareholder obc on the separately booked, separate booking numbers, because they consider it one cruise. We, on the other hand have two cruises booked as yours, separate booking numbers, but in our case they are considered separate bookings as far as carrying non-refundable obc's left from the first cruise to the second.

 

Guess it's whatever works best for the lines bottom line.

 

Donna[/quote']

 

In our case I kind of understand where Oceania is coming from as we did get a 5% discount for hooking the 2 cruises. However, I know with some other cruise lines like Azamara, they treat each hooked cruise as a separate entity and as you mentioned any unused non-refundable OBC left over from one cruise doesn't get transferred to the next. But, as you also mentioned, each cruise line has their own way of doing things. That's why asking questions on CC is such a great way to try to find about some those differences without having to always learn the hard way.

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Stock evaluations are normally partly on projections of future income. Boards of Directors are typically not happy with either falling stock prices or falling earnings. The question for we cruisers is what will FDR have to do to increase earnings to, or above, projections so to affect the stock price in a positive manner? How long is the NCL Board giving FDR to accomplish such? At the end of the day, it will be us affected most from these actions most likely.

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do you get your OBC for stock 100 to 250 in addition to your O club Status ( ie 200-400-500 ? or is it one or the other?

NCL was shortly at 50 now today down 2.5% and about 10% for the year.. that means a $500 loss on your investment....

Im happy with the extra OBC's my agent gives me + the O club+ the cruise basic oBC. and can easily end up with 800-1000 OBC for a 7 to 10 day O cruise And it is all spend it or loose it....

But your right its a personal thing and if your happy that is all that matters for you....its just something I would not do..

 

From what we read in the Terms and Conditions, there was no reference made to getting one or the other with regards to getting shareholder benefits or O Club status OBC. I think in our case as I mentioned earlier, it has to do with the 5% they gave us up front for hooking the 2 cruises.

 

As far as stock value goes, over the past 5 years the NCL stock has actually doubled in price. So the one year drop really isn't a fair comparison.

 

As far as having too much OBC, we can always find things to spend it on - gratuities, laundry, expensive wine and excursions, to mention a few. For us, our future O cruises are going to range between 20-36 days, so every little bit will help. But, we understand, it's not something everybody is going to do.

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I own shares of RCL & CCL. RCL doesn't like to give their shareholder benefit unless you have an inside or trans Atlantic with no benefits. They reject most requests. It appears NCL may be starting to do the same as the OP indicated about his rejection.

 

This is good to know about the RCL shareholder benefits and we just confirmed it by reading their terms and conditions. It's amazing what you find in the "fine print". :) With the CCL stockholders benefit program which has very few limitations, we received over $1,500 in OBC as soon as we bought their 100 shares as we had 6 HAL cruises already booked. With the NCL stock, we not only have 3 O cruises booked, but are also eyeing at least 7 other extended O cruises over the next 5 years. So we see plenty of potential with this buy as well.

 

BTW as you may have figured out by now, we purposely bought the CCL and NCL stocks to get the OBC perks rather than whether or not they were a good buy, although $50 a share +/- seemed pretty fair, and unless we stop cruising or they stop offering shareholder benefits, we have no plans of selling them so whether or not the stock fluctuates is immaterial to us.

 

Obviously, a few folks have a different opinion, but unfortunately no one so far has an answer to my original question. But then again the NCL shareholder benefit program only started for Oceania and Regent January 2017, so you wouldn't think there would be very many people that have run into this issue yet. On the positive side, a lot more people now know about the NCL shareholder program. :D

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Not sure about the 2017 date...we had NCL stock in 2016 in a portfolio, and we were given $100 OBC on our Regatta cruise last year after filling out a form. Also, if you do a search in this forum, it was described as early as 2014.

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Not sure about the 2017 date...we had NCL stock in 2016 in a portfolio, and we were given $100 OBC on our Regatta cruise last year after filling out a form. Also, if you do a search in this forum, it was described as early as 2014.

I stand corrected. It seems NCL bought PCI in late 2014. Thanks for pointing that out.

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I am a long-time Seabourn customer and have enjoyed their shareholder OBC program (with 100 shares of CCL) for many years. I just heard about Oceania's new vegan offerings and am now quite interested in Oceania and have thus started looking into this cruise line. Regarding NCLH's shareholder OBC program, I have a couple of questions for the experts on this board.

 

1. For Seabourn, I don't have to mail in my brokerage statement as proof of ownership. I just need to scan and email the relevant page (with other sensitive information, e.g. account number, redacted), and the OBC will then be posted to my upcoming cruise booking, usually within a couple of days. Can this be done for Oceania s well, or must I mail in the hardcopy?

 

2. For Seabourn, the shareholder OBC is the only OBC that is fully stackable (i.e. combinable) with any other OBC. For instance, I can combine it with a referral OBC (for referring a first time guest to Seabourn) or a promotional OBC (offered by the cruise agent, credit card, or cruise line). Typically the last two types of OBCs (referral or other promo) are not combinable, so I'd have to choose the better one. Is the shareholder OBC for NCLH also combinable with any other OBC for Oceania?

 

Thanks.

 

BTW, on Seabourn, if you book a B2B, you only get 1 OBC for the combined journey, not 1 per segment, even if the segments are booked separately and have separate booking numbers. Seems fair to me, as you're already getting a substantial discount for B2B bookings.

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1. For Seabourn, I don't have to mail in my brokerage statement as proof of ownership. I just need to scan and email the relevant page (with other sensitive information, e.g. account number, redacted), and the OBC will then be posted to my upcoming cruise booking, usually within a couple of days. Can this be done for Oceania s well, or must I mail in the hardcopy?

 

 

 

Thanks.

 

BTW, on Seabourn, if you book a B2B, you only get 1 OBC for the combined journey, not 1 per segment, even if the segments are booked separately and have separate booking numbers. Seems fair to me, as you're already getting a substantial discount for B2B bookings.

 

1) instructions on on the bottom right for the Shareholder OBC

http://www.nclhltdinvestor.com/index.cfm

 

Last time we booked a B2B we got 2 credits but no discount other than the part airfare credit for each segment on Oceania

The rules are in a state of flux & nothing is the same from one booking to another :halo:

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1) instructions on on the bottom right for the Shareholder OBC

http://www.nclhltdinvestor.com/index.cfm

 

Last time we booked a B2B we got 2 credits but no discount other than the part airfare credit for each segment on Oceania

The rules are in a state of flux & nothing is the same from one booking to another :halo:

 

Thanks for the useful link. I saw the form and read the FAQ, which mentioned the form and document proof can be mailed or emailed, so that makes it as simple as I'm used to on Seabourn. (Actually, on Seabourn, I don't even have to fill out a form; I just have to email them with my booking number with the attached proof of stock ownership.)

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...on Seabourn, I don't even have to fill out a form; I just have to email them with my booking number with the attached proof of stock ownership.

 

 

That's interesting.....I frequently sail on Princess and I have to either fax or snail mail my request and brokerage statement to them to get my CCL shareholder OBC. We used to be able to email it, but a few years ago they stopped that (much easier) process. :rolleyes:

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That's interesting.....I frequently sail on Princess and I have to either fax or snail mail my request and brokerage statement to them to get my CCL shareholder OBC. We used to be able to email it, but a few years ago they stopped that (much easier) process. :rolleyes:

I think the reason is that Seabourn is not linked with Princess at all operationally, even though they are both under Carnival parent umbrella. Rather, Seabourn is linked with Holland America in Seattle, and they share management, operational and technical support.

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That's interesting.....I frequently sail on Princess and I have to either fax or snail mail my request and brokerage statement to them to get my CCL shareholder OBC. We used to be able to email it, but a few years ago they stopped that (much easier) process. :rolleyes:

 

Also with Princess when you request your shareholder OBC, your brokerage statement has to be dated no earlier than 3 months prior to sailing while with HAL we've gotten our OBC approved between 9 months to almost a year out. But, like others have said, even though CCL owns them, they each still have their own rules. On the other hand if you owned RCI stock, you can only get shareholder OBC if you don't otherwise receive any when you book your cruise (e.g., if you book an inside room or a TA). Now that's just not right, but then again that's their rules.

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Also with Princess when you request your shareholder OBC, your brokerage statement has to be dated no earlier than 3 months prior to sailing while with HAL we've gotten our OBC approved between 9 months to almost a year out. But, like others have said, even though CCL owns them, they each still have their own rules. On the other hand if you owned RCI stock, you can only get shareholder OBC if you don't otherwise receive any when you book your cruise (e.g., if you book an inside room or a TA). Now that's just not right, but then again that's their rules.

 

Yep and Celebrity's (NCL) attitudes towards their cruisers is one reason, along with others, that two of my next three bookings are on Oceania.

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