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It isn’t an app but a captive webpage that the ship’s WiFi serves whenever you connect to it.

Have you not noticed the difficulty that P&O has filling its ships with traditional customers.

Unless you are on the management board of P&O then that’s just a guess. I would say that in the current circumstances that everything is up for grabs.

Other than sending the ships that used to do that frequency to the scrapyard and replacing them with those that don’t?

The only booking for the MDRs (at least on Iona at the moment) seems to be for the early times (before 6pm), and after that you have to queue. Lunchtimes it seems pointless using the app since if you just walk up to the hosts desk you will be seated anyway. The main issue with the lengthy queues doesn’t seem to be the passengers, but the staff and P&O’s IT system. They still don’t have sufficient staff so the staff are struggling to cope, and their online ‘at table’ ordering system is constantly falling over.

Yes, on the newer larger ships being introduced, with P&O having sent the older smaller ships to the scrapyard - the direction is clear. As for jeans not being suitable for formal nights - well having seen what some people were wearing last night at Iona’s ‘celebration night’ then I doubt it would be an issue.

There are fewer. It used to be two a week (plus jackets required nights and no jeans) and now it is one a week, no jackets and jeans are fine. The direction is clear.

That change is already in the process of taking place, with P&O having reduced the number of formal nights (and renaming them so they seem less formal), and removing the nights where a jacket was required. It would seem P&O already know what the majority of people actually buying tickets want and would prefer them not to go elsewhere, hence the changes they have made, and will continue to make. But eat where? Was it in the seating areas that the designers of the ships have helpfully put outside Horizon and next to the pools.

Horizon isn’t really a restaurant but a self-service cafeteria, but the issue is the design of the ships means that often to get from one outside pool area to another you have to go through Horizon. Standards haven’t gone out of the window, standards have changed, and that is exactly why the number of ‘mandatory’ black-tie nights has been reduced (mandatory because it is if you want full access to the ship). But why insist on a standard different to that which virtually every expensive UK restaurant demands? When did you last see a UK restaurant that refused customers who were not wearing a tie and jacket? Times have changed and wishing they hadn’t won’t bring them back.

You assume that the older ships will remain in the long term, which I seriously doubt they will.

Single trip policies cover cancellation from the point they are purchased, not just on the day the trip starts. However many people unwisely don’t buy the single trip policy at the time of booking, but closer to the date of travel, so leaving themselves exposed to the risk of something happening between booking and buying the policy, whereas that obviously cannot happen with an annual policy that automatically renews.

P&O is between a rock and a hard place. Going back in time my father would come home from his manual work job, change for the evening and would usually put on a tie. If we went out for a meal he would always be wearing a jacket and tie, even if it was just to a pub. Go into any office now and not only will nobody be wearing a suit, let alone a tie, most people won't actually be in the office but working remotely from home dressed in tracksuit bottoms and a sweatshirt. Go into just about any restaurant in the UK and I doubt you will find anyone wearing a tie let alone a suit. The traditional people who cruised and for many years made up the majority of their customers and enjoyed the formal evenings and 'dressing up' in general are from my father's generation. Unfortunately that generation are either dying off or have temporarily ceased cruising because of the pandemic and they are not willing to 'risk' getting on a cruise ship. This change in customer base was inevitable but the pandemic has just accelerated the process. Another issues with the older customer base not booking is they would pay the higher prices and so P&O have had to discount heavily to fill the cabins. Recently P&O have been selling select price cruises for as little as £60 per night including £11.50 onboard credit and free parking worth £150+ so effectively a little over £40 a night for accommodation, travel, three (or more) meals, entertainment, etc. Those are 'bargain bucket' prices you couldn't get in a holiday camp in the UK, so do the customers booking them expect to 'dress up' more than they would on a holiday camp. If P&O tries to do a 'Cunard' and insist on ties and jackets all the time then even selling cruises at those prices will fail and so it is trying to reach a compromise by reducing the number of formal nights to once a week on the newer ships. But the next stage that will come in the next few years will be the optional 'dress to impress' that some other cruise lines operate and will replace the single formal night, as more and more people take the view that buying and taking a Dinner Jacket or a single night isn't worth it. And there is nothing anyone can do to stop it, and the traditionalists ceasing to book because they are not getting the formality they experienced in the past will only hasten its demise.