BWIVince

The law is totally that dumb. 🙂. It looks at the transport of individual passengers vs. just itineraries. Fortunately in Crystal’s case (vs. a lot of US mass market lines), most people that tack together segments either touch another continent during their travels or return to the same US port they left from, but then cases like this do pop up from time to time. OC peppered their North American itineraries with calls at Aruba and Curacao (almost obsessively) to give everyone maximum flexibility and prevent headaches down the line, but sometimes it made the itineraries especially awkward in the process. I’m not surprised they didn’t allow the fine. 😔. The fine is supposed to be reserved for cases where the line didn’t know of or couldn’t control the passenger’s actions (and can be passed on to the passenger), and the waivers are supposed to be used in cases where the situation was unavoidable (national emergency, weather emergency, etc.). If they let too many people just pay the fine it looks like a cash grab by CBP. Vince

Larry, if I were in your shoes, I would check with Crystal on this sooner instead of later (but that's just me). When someone catches this closer to departure, assuming the law hasn't changed, they MAY just pay the fine, but they would have the right to just cancel your ticket and refund your money as the remedy for their error. 😞 It's not like the old days where they had to honor an erroneous contract at any cost. Not saying Crystal wouldn't take your position into account for their error, but I've seen suppliers do way stranger things in the past couple of years. It can't hurt to get them to explain why this is legal, or rectify it now. Vince

My mind went there for a minute too, but that authority was really limited, and expired on March 31, 2022 or when Canada lifted its restrictions, whichever happened first. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/593 Vince

Is it possible they're still staying on for the segment to Bridgetown? That would make it legal. Vince

Just underscoring what Tracie mentioned... When cruises are removed from the web's content management system, the first step is to turn everything off from active booking. I'm sure there are other cases that cause them to close bookings (one of the cases we see as waitlist on the web user side), but every time we see major changes or cancellations made it always starts with this step. This is how we know when something officially sets in motion. (Keep in mind, there are many more steps to go and can still take some time, but at least we know for sure the change is in motion.) Vince

Crystal wouldn’t have qualified for bankruptcy itself before the GHK shutdown, and Genting wasn’t interested in selling Crystal for what Manfredi and party offered. Hindsight being 20/20, if they had known how the shipyard dispute would play out, MAYBE they would have made a different decision pre-Covid, but there were multiple factors back before the pandemic in play with the GHK shutdown that were different when the offers were declined. I also don’t know that the path would have been so smooth if A&K or some other combo of investors had bought Crystal before the pandemic. If someone had bought a going concern, their investment cost would have been infinitely higher than just buying two old ships and their branding out of liquidation — and pandemic shutdowns are expensive as heck…. More expensive than restoring a damaged brand, usually. Also, people often forget Crystal’s liquidation wasn’t about Crystal or anything going on there. Genting put GHK into liquidation as a circuit breaker to keep the shipyard dispute from hurting the parent company, since the liability with the yards and its property/projects was exponentially higher than GHK was worth. Crystal was just collateral damage. Vince

That absolutely sucks... But there are some hard limits to a company going out of business, and that's one of them. 😞 Liabilities and financial records don't convey in a branding purchase. You have to look at the win of the jump start of being able to earn the next award with the new company. Vince

It’s not ridiculous, it’s unfortunately the way incorporation works in the US. A&K had the option of buying Crystal if they wished, which would have given them the entire company including all of its financial records, and all of its assets and liabilities. For a variety of smart reasons, they did NOT do this. Loyalty program data in the US is financial data. Earned awards are financial liabilities and pending awards and redemptions are maintained in a company’s financial system. There is usually an API that connects some basic info between a company’s financial system and their CRM system, but financial details (for a lot of security reasons) to some degree are always limited to the accounting system as that’s the real single source of finance truth. The CRM system is the source of truth for customer data and history — minus the financial history. Using one of my clients as a real world example, they use Salesforce as their CRM and SAP for their accounting system. Their customers can redeem loyalty points for events through my company’s event management system, which calls their CRM to get their customer info about who they are, and calls SAP to get award balances and debit them as needed. In A&K’s case, they ONLY bought the CRM data. Unlike the customer data, the financial data isn’t an a la carte asset, it comes with the purchase of the company, which would not have been a viable option for A&K (or anyone at that point). This gives them the customer sailing history (and not even great data there as Crystal had only deployed a modern CRM in GHK’s final years), NOT financial data or award data. From this, Crystal can (loosely) glean total cruises, but based on my record during the GHK era, even the total number of nights and regions sailed may be incomplete from the early NYK years…. But they have no definitive data on earned or redeemed awards. Also, I can imagine someone asking why if Crystal doesn’t have access to financial data, how can they do the EI program? A&K is a party to the assignment as a buyer of many assets, and MM&A is helping facilitate the assignment data as such, but the info MM&A is sharing with A&K is publicly available assignment data and not Crystal’s financial records. The loyalty program liability details by customer, so far a I’ve seen so far (and I may have missed something), has not been exposed in the assignment. Does that help explain it any? Vince

As Keith noted, this varies by terminal and agency. I’ve definitely seen a whole stash of wheelchairs onboard both ships, BUT especially in almost all of the US (though not exclusively), Crystal’s crew can’t just go in the terminal and perform whatever services they feel like — it’s not their jurisdiction in most ports here. 😔 Hopefully this can be worked out with the port with some help from Crystal though, as there are plenty of operators and destination management agencies in FL and Port Everglades that offer wheelchair assistance in their portfolio. Vince

That’s great news…. But they do sound a little more like an agency than an intermediary. Vince

Having worked for an intermediary for decades, I think the dynamic is a little different here. Genting and A&K's sales networks couldn't be more different, not just because they are in different markets, but because A&K is also a supplier of different services (like destination management). I think this will naturally yield different sales relationships for Crystal than they had in the past. I certainly understand from the customer perspective where it's challenging to reset a brand relationship, but intermediaries work differently. They make money off of sales and they consolidate the business into as few channels as they can to maximize their buying power. They may not work with A&K because it doesn't make sense for their customer base and they don't do that kind of business to move the needle enough to be worth it, but they're not going to shun A&K because they have a grudge against Genting. Unlike customers who may not know the backstory of the assignment, intermediary relationships are based on the conglomerates they partner with, and know Genting from A&K intimately. That's just my read on it, for what it's worth. Vince

It might take more patience than that... 🙂 It took old Crystal 30+ years to get a handful of intermediaries. The synergy with A&K's sales network might expedite this, but it's is such a conditional process that I wouldn't hold my breath on what partnerships they sign next/soon/later/ever. Crossing my fingers for you though. 🙂 Vince

It's pretty typical for suppliers to have intermediaries in regions where they don't have their own sales orgs, so this is pretty standard but good news. It's also typical for new suppliers to go through different agencies in a given segment or region before they find one that's a good fit long-term, so it would be very normal of some of these agencies get swapped out at some points for other ones (almost always by mutual agreement). Vince

In fairness to Selvaggio, his features were slightly less Americanized, but Prego pre-dated Selvaggio by at least a decade, and he never had more than a handful of features on the Prego menu at any given time. His consultancy was more like their deal with Wolfgang Puck, and not a licensing deal like the one with Nobu (sadly). Vince

I’ve only had that technique done with shrimp once, but I’ve seen it done on Top Chef and other food shows before, and this reaction seems almost universal since it’s supposed to be pretty rare. (…which isn’t my thing either, I’m with you.) I think in North American culture especially, we’re not just used to fully cooked shrimp almost exclusively, we’re almost used to overcooked shrimp as the norm. One bite of a “rare” shrimp, and alarm bells go off and more people than not with our background find it off putting. I can remember on Top Chef once, Gail’s comment on a similar technique (though not with risotto) was something along the lines of the shrimp coming out “straight up squeaky.” 🫤. Hopefully that dish goes next, if it hasn’t already. 🤞 Vince

As an observer I don’t feel like anyone is trying to attack anyone’s experience with travel, as much as they’re trying to identify that Prego (definitely) served Italian American-style cuisine. As an Italian American, I’m used to the Americanized cuisine, which is fine, but I’ve joked about Prego’s inauthenticity as an “Italian” restaurant for decades, even if it’s tasty enough. My cousins in Italy don’t eat anything like what was served in Prego, and almost certainly would have been offended by it. That said, Italian food is not a monolith. It has lots of regional variations, and has modernist variations just like American cuisine has. I live in a town with a celebrity chef known for his modernist techniques that are somewhat controversial and wildly popular at the same time. If you told someone his flagship restaurant was a “New American” restaurant, and you went there expecting what you’ve had before in the same genre, there’s a great chance you’d walk away saying, “I’ve had New American cruise, and that’s not it” (even though it definitely is). This feels like one of those cases, and from the menus I’ve seen it definitely feels like a modernist take on Italian cuisine. The cooking of raw shrimp with the residual heat of another plated element is definitely a modernist technique, for example. To the point about the menus, Crystal DOES appear to be listening — I’ve seen them ball up the menus at least a few times now and start over with the concept. That says, the history of Jade Garden says that a concept could go through a half dozen relaunches and never be popular, but that takes more than a year to determine. In Symphony’s case it took 13 years. Lol Vince

FWIW, as Prego it was also a tenderloin filet and not filet mignon for as long as I could go back through the menus. Vince

…And you’ll get them. Proper growth in today’s cruise industry, for a small operator without shared maritime resources of other cruise lines in a conglomerate, is a process, and you can’t just skip the middle steps and jump to the end, as Crystal learned the hard way the last time they launched an ocean ship. You can’t take industry-high fixed costs, raise overhead, and divide it among your existing customer base with incremental growth. You have got to either (a) merge to increase the base, (b) wait years until you slowly grow that base organically in your own market before ordering the next ship, or (c) harness adjacent markets for growth. Those are your proven options for a good outcome, and A&K picked option C. Vince

Tomorrow’s dinner sounds like my idea of heaven…. You’re giving the Chez some tough competition! 😁 No cicadas yet here either, though oddly we’ve been having hawks circling in the thermals above my house the past few weeks, which I’ve never seen like this in the 25+ years I’ve lived here. There doesn’t seem to be anything new for them to hunt in the neighborhood, but they’re dropping more poop on my truck in the process than ever before. 😡 I understand hawks do eat cicadas, though they’re not famous for it, so it would be funny if they’re just trying to get a jump on their emergence. 😆 Vince

I don’t know how you arranged such a magical day to open the patio, but the weather is sheer perfection today. Truly fitting of the Chez. Vince

Two thoughts… 1) Whether we agree or not, every legacy luxury line’s sales department has it in their KPI’s to lower their average age to some degree. Not that they’re going after millennials or anything, but customer acquisition is expensive, and you want some longevity out of your base. The older the base, the higher the minimum annual acquisition requirement that you’re sinking right off the bat. I totally agree in the value of courting people who have both the money and time to travel, BUT that market also comes with lots of downsides. It’s not a slam-dunk. 2). There are actual (now automated) mathematical formulas they use to calculate the go or no-go decisions on expansion for a particular sized ship in a certain market, so I don’t want to give the impression that they’re spitballing these. You can of course use really sunny, overly optimistic projections in those calculations to get the outcome you want, but you can also be pushed out like a former Crystal president was in 2001 when reality hit as inventory projections were created showing the disaster they were headed towards because of the bad assumptions. Vince.

Just like I posted back when Genting announced the details of the small vessels, Crystal desperately needs an adjacent market strategy to grow. They need other ships they can fill from other markets that don’t solely cannibalize their ocean base in order to help distribute fixed costs better than they can now, and some of these customers will cross pollinate with the ocean product and help grow that market enough to help get over that “initial jolt” of inventory exploding. This is the part that NYK was always missing. They knew they needed more ships to make the line viable, but they could never make the numbers work for a customer base of 2 ships to grow by more than a third and not completely sink the company. Within a couple years, they were able to project the customer base would support a second ship in 5 years, and by the late 90’s they projected they could support a third ship in the early ‘00s. The second ship panned out as planned, the third did not. NYK launched two subsequent new build projects, and neither one got the red light because the sales numbers didn't support it. Just like with Serenity, every indication was that they would just cannibalize the other two ships and not just grow the brand…. And neither of the other two ships was past its service life at the time, so replacing it with a costlier new ship just added more cost to an already (overall) money losing business model. The main difference between the success of the second ship and the failure of the third ship is that was that a second ship let Crystal open up new markets they couldn’t serve with just one ship (like a world cruise), while the third ship basically added inventory to the same markets Crystal was already in with the other two ships, for the most part. I know no one wants to hear the need for anything but ocean ships, but there is a reason this keeps coming back up again across owners. No one wants to repeat NYK’s error. Vince

We might be getting a little too granular…. In fairness to Ms. Levis, in industry terminology, “begin construction” is more often than not considered signing an MOU, MOI or a firm contract, since that’s when the heavy lift on the design phase begins and you start receiving firm deliverables. Cutting steel is usually distinctly referred to as such, and (for a major ocean vessel) happens a couple years after you “begin construction” — which is a marked difference with house construction where nothing seems to count until you break ground. To your point though, the ships will be a ways away. I expect we’d see the first expedition ship first, for a laundry list of reasons, which would put us at around 2027/2028 for the first ocean ship. They seem pretty far into the ocean ship project though, based on the details shared, so who knows, they may be further ahead than expected or already have agreements and be on track. A June announcement under contract would still be consistent with her original comment, but it doesn’t mean a new ocean ship is right around the corner. Vince

GMTA! Rob's post immediately brought to mind every time I've unpacked my bags in my cabin that felt like a Phoenix patio on a June afternoon (on every ship/line). 😄 Those are usually the only few hours I'm ever uncomfortable on any cruise, but I run warm and appreciate that most people would usually find that chilly, and totally concur with the messages above. Vince

This isn't a disagreement, just more of a commentary... Reading that part about the age really struck me about how history does indeed rhyme, as the old saying goes. Crystal's original demographic in the late 1980's, when marketing started, was ~45-59. Part of the reason they shifted markets to the luxury segment was because they saw the upper premium segment getting crowded, and they saw more opportunity in the luxury market, where there wasn't a line for every demographic yet. You primarily had luxury small ships with very limited amenities, you had Royal Viking with the over-60 crowd, and you had Cunard with different ships in different market, each with different customer bases. Crystal's value proposition was to take a ship of roughly RVL's scope, but turn it on its ear by offering completely different amenities that would attract 45-59 year olds that didn't feel they were a fit on RVL. I happen to have Crystal's second inaugural season brochure here on my desk, and it focuses on how active and diverse the onboard offerings are, including: A 360-degree promenade deck "specifically designed for running" (there was no seating on there originally, unlike many competitors) An indoor/outdoor pool that people can swim in rain or shine A swim-up pool bar A computerized golf simulator (these weren't wildly successful with any demographic, but younger golfers seemed to be more enthusiastic about these than older golfers at the time) A large, modern fitness facility including a dedicated aerobics facility Skeet shooting at the fantail Shows with current hit broadway content instead of focusing mainly on generational favorites like RVL Ethnic-themed alternative dining instead of the "mens club grill room" concept that the legacy lines were catering with at the time. Other lines had some of these things, but aside from the skeet shooting, none of them had these things quite like Crystal was pitching. You can imagine what the Royal Viking Star's fitness center looked like in 1989, when this was printed. Royal Viking Sun had some more of these (like a decent fitness center and a golf simulator), but the execution wasn't the same and came off with a completely different focus on a different demographic. ...And it worked! My parents were in their late 40's when Crystal launched, and this totally appealed to them. Our first cruise with Crystal was filled with passengers around their age, of course with other passengers of all ages filling in the margins. So what happened? As Crystal grew, it acquired the legacy passengers from the other lines (especially as the other lines folded and they looked for new homes), and Crystal's own original customer base aged. My parents sailed many, many lines, but they continued to also sail Crystal until they both passed. I don't think that in any way discounts the opportunity in the 45-59 luxury market. I think there IS wisdom in focusing on the 60+ group that has more time and disposable income to travel, BUT Explora isn't the first line to see opportunity in launching a new line (especially while they have fewer ships) in a "starter" base that is currently underserved. I can make a case for both -- as could Crystal. Vince