Mickey S

when you are talking about a med cruise where someone has booked international flights and perhaps made accomodations, a 100% refund leaves a tough decision. get the 100% refund to offset the cost of cancellations, or just take the cruise and miss out on the key ports. A few hundred of OBC woudl ease the pain.

I for the last 5 years at least have felt there are two operations at X. The shore side and ships, and the shore side has been a pain in the tuchis, and the ships/cruising experience has saved the tuchis of apparently more than a few shoreside people. With the screw ups-much of which is the shoreside and administration created, cruising has become less magical on X, still pretty good soone way away is to go to the smaller ship more luxury brand companies. There is another way and this ends up a big risk for cruiss in general, which is the land based traves and we are about to embarfk on a 5 week trip through Greece and Italy. So I will have a subjective basis of comparison in 7 weeks and we have not done a land based trip in almost 10 years. I have planned this one myself and now I better undersand and enjoy what goes into the planning. VS a good cruise is oretty much a non brainer. Or should be.

Just thinking, I do not watch the TV shows that some top chef or investor goes in and does a makeover of a restaurant, what if one of the myriad of streaming companies would do that for cruise line administration-it would be boring but they could spice it up with side stories as part of a made for TV programming. Just kidding around using spare time.

your e mail ends up there anyway inside a network of staff located around the country and world which might have a metric of closing out issues quickly by blowing them off. I raised what I thought was a serious issue that needed to be bumped up but it was not. I would send to legal group or investors relations to see if they think its significant but they too apparently do not care. That's the culture of the company thats driven by CEO's including the RCCL corporate CEO.

when they screw up that bad they need to be real gracious. like equal or better cruise both type of ship, itinerary and class of service. And it woudl cost little to give the customer the captains club points they woudl have received on the problem cruise.Or, if you cancell a cruise after the final payment. We did they kept our money and we got nothing zero. Not even the points which would have been a nice touch.

Royal also has had several sailings oversold. Its not like airllines where they give you a few hunded in credits and you hopefully take the next flight out.

Way back in the 70's I went on a TWA arranged trip to Portugal and Spain. One of the guys on the trip was a former pilot in "Nam" and knew a lot of the TWA pilots and upon leaving JFK he went to the Flight Deck to check out who was in the drivers seats --to, as he said, make sure it was not one of the party boy's who could not be trusted. eg, Bob Moriarity, the Marine Pilot in Nam era ( I was a co speaker with him at an event years ago) who for fun flew a Beechcraft under the legs of Eiffle Tower.

if your requirement is the best pilot you will never fly anywhere as the single best pilot only flies so many hours a week. . However, you, I assume know what I was saying.

to be blunt, I thought about placing a ships captain into the role of CEO. Why? They manage everything aboard the ship from personel to safetly to keeping the paying customers wanting to stay paying customers. Bring that hands on expertise to the front office and I think you have a real winning situation. Big PIcture.

Who do you want piloting a plane on the way to your cruise? As long as they are honestly qualified, its fne with me regardless of any criteria.

we too are venturing back to land based. It's funny in that when we had 8 hours in port it was not enough and now we will have 3-5 days in a town city, area and thats not enough. I guess its never enough. But its nice to not be on the clock in so far as the gangway being pulled up 30 minutes before departure. No so nice in that it is a spot of a challenge to visit 8 places in 5 weeks --the trains are not bad but catching the 45-75 minute flights is a pain that goes with the territory. Never let the "pain" exceed the "gain".

have to read it soon, but there are changes and its probably where they had a recent problem. eg, one of the terms of hte existing contract is they can do an oil surcharge at their discretion. So now, after you sign a contract with them and cabin service changes and food fees (upcharge for lonster rtc) might need to be spelled out thatthey can cheange the rules any thing and you cannot say tha X changed the deal. Not that it easy to fight city hall. They are pretty tone deaf there. They wear you down. How much time does anybody want to spend on this stuff. Where the cost of your vacation goes up and it does appear that gone are the days where it goes down and it gets adjusted.

anybody receive the X e mail just now where its changing hte contract effective immediately, and has the time and inclination to look at it. So now we know that when we pay and sign the contract, they are able to ignore that contract if it does not suit them. and I bet thefood issue, new charges etc are covered in thenew contract.

since it only applies to bookings made on board, I have no clue but I think it redices the pricing bemefits and OBS overall benefit and other costs. THey don't do anything now unless it improves the bottom line. And one reason would be to just get more bookings to make lenders more comfortable. A lower deposit with less risk is a way to get more future bookings.

just for the record, RCL consolidated was sailing at 103 to 104% of occupancy in 2019, 3rd and 4th in cabins. Also in 2019, RCL has ~20% profit on sales which is a great neighborhood to be in. Except since RCL is so capital intensive its ROI was not all that good. Now wth all that debt if they get back to 20% profit on sales the ROI due to leverage should be fantastic.

Credit card debt the last 3 months has noticably declined. Retail sales , taking out the inflation factor are down. Job layoffs, are hitting tech now. Peoples budgets are being stretched and I think its a safe bet we here tend to be the in the higher income or higher net worth group than most on the country. Only meaning we might be a little out of touch with reality. If we were to slow down our spending, thats when the big recession hits. A driver on this is the wealth effect I spoke about in the prior post, which is tied to the market valuations. I know two guys who had several million in cash at SVB who thought they lost everything until the govt showed up to bail them out. And they were not alone. A wake up call. The fear was a financial Tsunami would hit. Royal the entire company has north of 4 billion in depositis. Think about that. Global business and govt are highly leveraged. Just like the cruise companies. We wilk have a bigger business "burp" somewhere soon.

Thats true, however, the travel business is still in a zone where its trying to catch up with 2 years of cancellations 18 months of no sail, and 6 months of "lite" occupancy, and the stock market, which has a way of creating a wealth effect for portfolios has helped also. I would say that also has affected bookings in the more expensive classes too. Shop Therapy anybody? another aspect is the inflating prices--book now and lock in your prices (but obviously not your services and product received). Another one is the illusion created when each booking has OBC, which on the surface can give the illusion of a less expensive cruise compared to the ones without OBC. I wonder just how much of OBC is left unused, or Blown away on expensive specialty dining or expensive shore excursions. And that contribute for heavier demand for drinks with AI, as well as a ships excursions and specialty dining. . Heck, I end up spending more due to that. Hard to explain, it just happens. how many have bought previous generation Ipads on board to use OBC. At list price.

geeze, a 7 day cruise is really 6 days -just like the 7 day resorts -and with expensive airfares if you can "amortize" those costs over a longer time frame, so much the better. I also think on balance the per day costs is higher on a 7 day vs 10 or 14 day. we had a 16 day cruise on Eclipse in Nov Dec 2019 --LA to Santiago Chile, that was perfect. Great balance between sea days and port days. Had 2 14 day cruises, also on Eclipse, out of Singapore in 2020 -first north to Vietnam and Thailand (2 nites in Bangkok) then south to Austrailia. Really like those as we can do pre and post cruise stays.

I have a few different "takes", if I can rememebr what has been stated. First, her departure coudl be all about a strategy shift we do not know about , and thus its time for her to retire. I am not going to go back and see her option based compensation before covid. However, I bet it is not insignificant. Second, I have problems with the culture of X the past few years and thats whwre I have a prpble and I cannot get an answer when I call in. Or I get 5 or 6 answers from 10 people and thats whtether or not I have used a TA. :ast three cruises I booked, and canceled, are INHO rather expensive. There were in Beyond retreat and I just did not feel they provded me with "value" for my money--Thats 101% subjective. Reflection was a far less expensive option but the wrong boring same ever other week itinerary western Med. However, when I booked them and put them on hold within 3 hours I had someone call and e mail before I transferred it to a TA saying she could offer me substantial savings --I called quickly back and e mailed and for the 10 days on hold she did not return e mails or calls with my leaving mssages. I locked it in and transfered to my TA which was flat discount off "list price" (they by accident sent me their commission sheet so with that info I felt it was a fair deal.) I have several pandemic issues but I wrte those off as extraordinary situations , howevee my canceled cruises were not offered agin so I was not a happy camper on the lack of lift and shift, but worse, they were "tone deaf" on this. They, one person at X gave me extra OBC to meet me kind of in the middle, but then took it back telling me the X inside agent did not have the authority . There is another issue that I will now take to the legal department and see what happens because I had hoped it would get to LLP but they ligerally ignored my memos on that specific issue. Decent change it coudl go class action-but I really do not want to futz around with that route. . But again since they were tone deaf--thats culture and thats the major responsibilty of the CEO. Now, this all had me doing some soul searching and it does involve the food which mostly I find to be good enjoyable " complementary" food while on board. We taking a land trip which is what we used to do. It will cost far less, and we get the opportunity to immerse ourselves where we go and that includes enjoying the local cuisine., night life, etc. We deermine what we do each day. and night. Except we will not enjoy Andrea Bocelli the night of June 10 in Rome with tickets at 1500 each, nose bleed seats--his ticket prices are mostly under 100 here in the states. .Hopeful;y I can get scalped tickes at last minute at a reasonable price. Downside of land trip-it is more difficult with the travel packing and unpacking but I built in more time than we really need everywhere but Tuscany but thats a different story. BTW I have been vocal with X that dealing with shore side staff is a consistent problem but to us once on the ship it was magical. That again is the responsibility of the CEO with the culture of the people answering the phones. And another BTW, I have called into X and Royal and had the same person answer within days and I know that from the sound of a Rooster in the background. Just my 2 cents worth, FWIW

Jack Welsh at GE had 3 preotges viyng for CEO when Welsh retired. Jim McNerney, former Boeing chairman and CEO, joined GE in 1982 and spent 19 years at the U.S. conglomerate, holding positions including CEO of GE aircraft engines and GE lighting. Prior to joining Boeing in 2005, McNerney was CEO of Post-it notes maker 3M Co McNerney was not successful at 3M and made the decision on 737max to save 50 billion by not designing and building a new fuseloge. Bob Nardelli went to Home Depot and messed it up but received a 240 million severance package Jeff Immelt won the CEO derby and slowly screwed up GE- 3 supossedly superstars, messed up fine companies. Why--perhaps they were not great superstars. Perhaps they were great , really great, in supporting roles. Its one thing to maintain a good company without messing it up, its another thing to come in and fix things, and another thing to have an outstanding company like X apparently wss pre2010ish and slowly deteiorated and then tries to make a big splash with a controversial E class when the stuff hit the fan early 2020 when huge riskly committments were made--not just E class but Icon class too-mega ships mega costs. IMHO-there is more but we have all had enough on this subject, I think. Besides, its time to head out for dinner.

I wil take my bet that CEO's /Presidentsw do retire when the overall outlook is not so good. You put away more than you will need,you have a great retirement plan, and you look at whats happening globally for economy, where energy us getting expensive as it, when the switch to non fossile fuels will be very very expensive, if doable, and other storms (environmentalists not keen on cruising) and travel in general. and you say screw it, I am 65, I have put in my time, the last thing I want is to have to navigate thru, pun intended, another major econ downturn when we have not recovered from the pandemic downturn. I wil also opine that LLP got a bit over her ski's in managing things, although whats happened is a feat for a super person. Just about everyting possible went wrong the last 3 years. And there is a big difference in sailing in calm waters than a ferocious storm. IT is a huge test of skills. and perhaps she could not cover everything. There is not enough money out there for me to have been in that positiion.

I have another take on her leaving. It appears we are headed for a steep economic slowdown with a lower stock market. She sees it coming.Get out youngish when things are looking good, but a recession and lower market brings lower prices and lower occupancy. Its not just cruise lines with high debt levels, our banks are highly leveraged . Everybody its tightening as a precaution Commercial real estate-downtown offices, 50% refi over the next 2 years. At higher rates iff available You get the picture. I can tell you the last 4 years in most businesses have been killers.

We tend to look at or class of booking by looking at the entire "value" proposition. Eg, we booked in Balcony for a 2019 TA, however when the price of Aqua came down to somehting like 300 for th e two of us more than balcony, it was a no brainer. Same for suites, now retreat. a per day price is the determining factor and we are spoiled cause pre pandemic we were paying under 300 a day for aqua. Our late 2020 cruises cancelled due to pandemic were 357 for aqua per day for both of us. Now for a TA abeit on Beyond Aqua is over 600 a day. and a suite is 1500 a day. 900 a day excess for the two of us is a stretch for the value received. But going back to the management critque I mad a day or two ago, look at GE as an example. GE under Jack Welch was a Juggernaut. His success plan was to have 3 people compete to be CEO Jeff Immelt who one out, Bob Nardelli who lost and went to Home Depot as CEO And James McNerney who went to 3m. At one point the company I wa at hired people who were trained " The GE Way" but that was a flop as we had our company culture and they had theirs) Immelt won out and it took him 10 years to drive the jaugnernaut nearly into the ground. Nardelli went to Home Depot to add "professional" management to the guys who started up the company and knew how thinsgs should be. Took him 2 years to screw it up but on the upside his management contract got him 240 million large as severance. The Big lscrew up goes to McNerney. He first went to 3M and was excused after 3 years then went to Boeing and his claim to fame there was he was the decision maker on the 737-Max to not spend 50 billion to redesign the fuseloge which led to the problems with wings and engines being redesigned which screwed up airflow and they jury rigged it via the software that was less than perfect. Heck, why worry, its only a problem when the plane is airborn. These were allegedly top guys in busness world and they screwed up big time. They lost customer focus (I think GE sold its jet engine business to raise cash). How many other companies (or government agencies) are run by people under the Peter Principal, where their reputations exceed their skills, and that applies to an entire management team, or even a segment of economy like Travel and Liesure or cruising. The Pandemic and Lockdown exposed these type of people. And thats why companies lose sight of a great business strategy--customer satisfaction focus. And with X while there might be a couple of big issues now, dissatsfaction brings out all the stuff thats been deemed to be no big deal, but a bunch of no big deals add up. And I think they are just trying things or a trial and error basis . Or the axiom, " if you throw enough stuff on the wall sooner or later something wil stick )or something good happens" . My opinion but it all boils down to management teams and pre pandemic, these folks inherited companies doing well and the wrong changes were made. BTW-Viking is privately owned so they do not need to be concerned with quarterly earnings --and their sharehoders are really involved. Is that part of the difference?

18 months ago in connection with Beyonds hype, CEO Perlo said the new strategy was for X to target the Premium Large Ship segment. I found it intreguing vs the normal Premiums because that meant to me premium food choices for all, moreso for Luminae and Blu and having the big ship with a variety of venues. Expectations were raised. Then when operations restarted I read about Tommahawk Steak in OVC and started to wonder how is that affordable. I found out as prices started to escalate. My 2019 TA was 3500 in Aqua with xcellerate and premium drinks and the current price 4 years later for Aqua dependng on ship is 5-10k. Conclusion? Cruising is no longer the bargain it once was. But I thought, thats ok provided its gonna be magical. This lockdown created a multitude of operational and financial problems and it takes magical leaders to work through it all-and I am not sure the Leadershp teams have the skill sets to do it at any of the big cruise lines. Side pertinent story--I have been involved with minority investments with upper level restaurants, not real top end but better than average. I would go to lunch with the VP of Food Services and he would order 3-4 dishes, and if one did not meet his expectation he would go to the kitchen right then and show them how to do it right. The CEO when a new restaurant was opened, was ther every night for 2 weeks and what he did was look at and test what was coming out of the kitchen to make certain the staff knew the expectations. I think there is a huge disconnect in the process with X and LLP and staff have no clue how to fix it. A good step would be to become "hands on". Again part of it is staffing with a disproportionate number of untrained people. However thats why top mgt makes the big bucks they do with stock options et al. The standards of performamce have to be set and followed and those standards are translated in advertising hype and whatever to the customers and thats how our expectations are set. And reputation and X had a great rep. If a Sky Suite is 1500 a night on Beyond for a prime itinerary cruise, then the customer is expecting prime within reason of course. nothing is perfect. Same concept for a 650 a nite IV cabin on Beyond. or a 450 a nite balcony on Sil or RF. It is all a matter of standards and expectations and value perceived. what I know is land based trips are becoming a good option. But its unfortunate that as one poster here said, the Govt grasped on to cruise lines more than other businesses. Almost as if it wanted to put cruise lines out of businss. I trusted the cruise lines to do a better job of protecting the customers than CDC or NIH.

and to get a refundable deposit, the price is usually significantly higher. heads they win, tails they win. Its their bat and ball, and playing field. I also do not like doing business with a company thats like that and so far, when I have had a problem to resolve, all X has done is to toss out a few coins at me while they put me on ignore. Their way or highway-I have picked highway.