scooby1

In Europe especially in the major locations contactless payments are very much in the majority, very very rare even in markets these days they won’t accept a card that way.

Nearly all companies focus on the shareholders and profits, the only reason they focus on the customer is to ensure they are happy but still keeping to their promise to shareholders. RCL borrowed a massive amount of money to keep afloat, they are trying to drive that down through jacking the prices of everything up. Cruise fairs up way beyond wage / price inflation Port excursions aren’t great but are costing almost 40% more than rival firms from a quick comparison. We just did an RCL cruise and even a port bus is double what we used to pay not a little up but a massive jump. RCL even say in their board report even though prices are high they are still getting large take up of these extras. They will increase and increase until people start to say no and only then rethink a little. Our cruise booked a month ago is now showing at double our booking price, that’s just crazy. Until the noose of debt is removed from their neck, prices aren’t going to go anywhere.

The think is prices seem all over the place. We booked for next year only a month ago when I look now the price has doubled, that is just crazy and if anyone pays that price good luck to them but we wouldn’t. However the cruise we we went on this year I’m going to say it but the price dropped too low. the ship was crazy full and some on the cruise you just wouldn’t expect normally, so why such a big swing. The thing o. This years cruise the silly low price was quite far out so it wasn’t as if they have a problem filling it. They have a huge amount of debt to pay back and the shareholders right demand profit but things are just crazy all over the place price wise. However when I look at NCL, P&O OR similar they are all fairly static and jump around half as much.

Pointing back to what are Royal going to do with the UK market. We went on Anthem last month for 14 days at the start of the holidays. It was good but not great, some of the people and the behaviour led a lot to be desired and it did spoil things for a lot of people and we went with children so knew what to expect a little. It was full and then some and we really didn't like having people knock on the door almost ever night and worse, never happened before on this sailing it seemed to be the norm, anyway moving on! But interestingly we have had a survey asking more detailed questions about the ship, what sort of holiday we were looking at and more detail on the good and bad and lots more space to provide opinion. Looks like they are shaping what they want to do with the market in some way. What comes out of it is another matter entirely.

From looking at the comments it's like you haven't read what I have actually said so I will leave it there. But as an insight - 15 years ago I was on a cruise around Asia in Hong Kong at the time, the person in front of me was trying to take the pictures of the buildings and lasers with the flash on. I explained how it wouldn't work and changed their settings and they took another photo and it was fantastic. The person was from the US, he instantly tried to give me some money as a tip for me helping him. I was genuinely staggered. I'm just a person helping someone I would never ever expect any money to help someone, but they were shocked that I didn't want to take the money. So I can see how ingrained the issue is.

Agreed, nobody is denying that are they, merely commenting how the behaviour and reaction to the model they follow differs by country/region. Not challenging things just explaining how different places see things differently. These threads get closed quickly because people don’t agree with either view point. I’m just trying to explain why the two views are so diametrically opposed to each other.

You definitely don’t need a drinks package, unless you are really going for it then it doesn’t work out. You can buy the odd drink, or request some of the flavoured drinks in the MDR and not need to spend a penny the water tastes great to us. Our kids would go to the MDR or Sorrentos to get nice cool flavoured drinks they never had a soda / fizzy drink at all, only in a speciality restaurant as they just aren’t fussed by them.

The problem is that in many other countries we do add a tip if and only if the service deserves it to the point you make above. The issue with the gratuities as RCL and others have them is that they are there regardless of what the service is or its quality. So in your example they both get more regardless of how hard they work or how attentive they are etc.. So I ask my room attendant to do something and they don’t do it or leave things scruffy - they get the tip anyway with RCL. I ask the waiter to change something and they forget, take an age to offer rolls or to sort drinks every night - they get the tip anyway. Or it’s only altered a little depending on what score I give, and we all know the can I have a 9 or 10 only please…! Tipping for good service we all see ok, add a charge as it it was a tip isn’t. Also we in the UK often if it’s added on by default don’t like challenging it or asking for it to be removed. We would literally rather give it to them but never go to the place again and begrudge the gratuity being added as a default. Yes is partly a culture thing mainly US is radically different to many other places in tipping being a default position, it’s just not the case in many other countries.

Tipping is a culture thing, in the UK and many parts of the EU it's not the norm in fact for some it's rare. Tip for great service / food absolutely but all the time, definitely not. if you look at P&O as a rival to RCL who work out of the UK there are zero gratuities, absolutely none. You pay the fare and that's it, no expectation for more and nothing is charged as such either, it's even something they state on the website as a pro to booking with them. If RCL isn't paying enough money to the crew that is an issue with them, the expectation within the EU is staff are payed the correct amount and the gratuities / tip is a bonus and should absolutely not need to be relied upon to pay wages. In fact in the UK there is a minimum wage that must NOT include bonus / gratuities / tips in the calculation.

If a captain or one of his team of any vessel doesn't check the weather multiple times a day especially one looking after a cruise ship it would be negligence plain and simple. The facts of what the weather was predicting is irrefutable multiple sources have shown this clear of day, I'm staggered why or how anyone could defend that to be honest, more myopic view points I guess.

Was the weather predicted - Yes Did the weather even predict Hurricane force winds - Yes Did the weather talk about unprecedented rain - Yes This wasn't a completely un-expected event. What does a captain do, oh look might be hurricane force winds tomorrow, this thing its like a huge mobile sail what should I do?? Were the passengers made aware of the potential of bad weather - it seems not. Did they ensure a tug was on hand just in case - No they didn't Did they put extra lines were on and all existing at the right tension to ensure the issue was mitigated - we don't know Did they review half hourly weather to see if they need to bring in anything on deck or limit people going outside - again it appears not. Was the fact there was a drill actually going on meant they were distracted - possibly and this could have been a factor The number of people blindly defending P&O without the merest challenge is worrying at best and I could use far stronger. Yes these weather events can be un-predictable, yes sometimes they aren't as bad as can be made out, but this one was pretty darn bad and as a result a good few people have had the latter half of their holiday ruined as a result and it appears it could potentially have been avoided. One of those things, maybe, could it have been much worse..... yes and thank goodness it wasn't.

Great post, but careful with the facts it seems some only want opinion and conjecture. P&O will be doing a fully analysis of what went wrong that we won’t see but I really can’t see that they could have been more on the ball considering the prior warnings. The replay of the data and timings appear to not show that they were ready at all.

There are a lot of people on here supporting P&O and defending it, they are loyal we get that. But the weather picture on Saturday for Majorca was bad from the outset, it shouldn't have been a surprise to a captain looking after 5000 souls what the day could evolve into and to ensure they had all the mitigations in place (The link and information below was the forecast for Sunday in Majorca for clarity). Were they distracted from the drill going on I don't know. The subsequent hotel / travel experience for those that have been removed requires far more than a 20% contribution going forwards and compensation of 'just a refund for the days lost' that's down right poor for what these customers now look like they are having to go through. I'm not sure that many will understand what this sort of experience would have been like without being there, pretty scary I'm sure and diminishing some of that doesn't sit right. This is the school holidays many will be travelling with kids, this isn't all retired people on this cruise, far far from it. Does P&O have more responsibility than many are saying here, absolutely. Headline - Heavy rain, storms, hail, high winds .. Sunday really is looking as if it will be pretty awful. Starting with the rain, the amber alert - which applies to the whole island - is now effective from 6am to 9pm, so longer than had been advised previously. Aemet is warning of 60 litres per square metre in one hour and 90 over three hours. The greatest probability of this amount of rain is in the north and the west. The amber alert for storms is also for the whole of Mallorca and for the same period. As well as the thunder and lightning, Aemet is suggesting that there could be hailstones of two centimetres or more, while gusts of wind could reach hurricane force (which is around 120 km/h). https://www.majorcadailybulletin.com/weather/weather/2023/08/26/116429/mallorca-weather-for-sunday-august-27.html

2 bottles in the luggage has gone through every time without fail not issues, never any questions asked. If you need to top up mid cruise a lot of terminals seems to have mini duty free shops these days post baggage checks and its often easy to get another bottle then without RCL confiscating it if you get it in your bag quick. They do sometimes ask any wine or spirits and you just say no, they aren't going to pat you down.

I’d suggest many on that cruise would give little gratuity let alone the base amount. Tipping in the UK is the diametric opposite to the US, not be default and only when things are exceptional. Belief is staff should be paid the appropriate amount to begin with. So I’m short I wouldn’t worry and I’m sure it’s that they have a long day ahead to get guests on and off the ship and nothing more.

Speaking to the crew the ship was close to capacity I believe it had over 4800 guests onboard and theoretical max is about 4900 so you can see why there were so many issues. We have kids and have to go in the holidays and had been out of Southampton before on an RCL ship and it was a delight. However this most certainly wasn't. I'd read a previous thread of sailing out of the UK and didn't see the same. Having been on this one we won't be taking a Southampton cruise in the holidays again unfortunately.

Yeah it wasn't the best from that prospective, never ever had anything similar before but that sort of behaviour was daily. Really took the edge off the cruise that should have been special, nobody at RCL seemed to give a damn from those that raised it with them which was a shame. Some seemed to have taken the Adults only Solarium to be there's and many passengers were frustrated that RCL team didn't want to tackle it. We just avoided it in the end but the shouldn't have had to. We won't be going on that sailing from the UK again.

It was a great itinerary and good ship but very very busy as a cruise for us. Didn't quite meet up with our expectations unfortunately. Won't go into too much detail, we were at guest services once and I've never heard someone so upset with the way their cruise was going and how bad the felt the behaviour of some other guests were. Mainly some of the kids or I should say young adults seemed to have been the issue. Not sure how you felt about some of those parts.

Yeah agreed, we just came back off Anthem and it was Very Very full almost at full capacity and it felt it but people are willing to pay. There were cabins available at the very end a little cheaper but if you had kids you couldn't book the ship is full. We have looked for a cruise next year this time with another company and already it's showing full for kids. They are getting booked up earlier and faster than ever before and if you wait for that bargain, it 'might' come but you might also lose out.

They will be holding some things back but the reality is that bookings for flights and on land holidays is way up. In the UK Jet2 has a 35% increase in bookings, RCL is the same. The bounce back is significant and like it or not more people seem to have the money or want to cruise. RCL are going to want to maximise income for shareholders it's as simple as that. If people are still willing to pay for the high trip costs, holidays and more then they love that and many people are. Will it back off, time will tell but not anytime soon.

If they can make money from a market they will, can only assume they aren’t making the profits they want out of the UK market. All new ships are going to the US / Caribbean only it seems or maybe out of Barcelona, Wonder did that. The UK, Southampton, just one ship and any dregs they can throw our way. No problem with that personally just go with another cruise company simple as that.

Royal would do well adding another ship out of Southampton that does some more interesting itineraries to give more options. The P&O comparison is fair though, yes the ships generally aren't as good, Azura is shockingly bad in some many ways, design and the vibrations if you get a rear cabin and horrendous. But in saying all of that the food and service we thought were fine and we went with kids in a school holiday. Also good to hear the comments from people that said they didn't know it was a school holiday - when it literally says it EVERYWHERE when you search and book, that makes me laugh a lot. RCI can still make good money out of the UK / Northern Europe routes but they need to offer something a little different. Have Anthem go south in the summer and Navigator go north / Scandinavia etc. would be great for those that don't just want the sun as an alternative. Come on Royal, throw us another ship or at least two..!

I think Southampton or another port in the UK deserves a second ship from RC. Anthem and a Voyger class ship to a few more destinations would be great. RC could do with mixing up some of the current itinerary year on year. You look and thing ooh what have they got for next year and things are almost identical. If they tweaked things a bit more it would be better for those that keep coming back. Add a second ship for a few more options would be great.

In the UK tips are considered very differently and certainly not a default. If you get good food and service then yes you might tip. But if the service / food isn't then you pay the bill and that is that. Which is why we have always removed gratuities and we DO pay for good service and ask for envelopes to put it in. For me what is the incentive to make this a special holiday / meal / banter etc. if you think you are going to get a tip regardless of effort, doesn't seem right. Some cruise lines don't ask for tips they are included, P&O based out of the UK don't, this is straight off the website at the bottom. Great service comes as standard Tipping isn't needed on our ships so you can relax knowing good service and good times are all part and parcel of your P&O Cruises holiday.

This is all due to no regrets booking. Post pandemic fewer people are putting things off and its more of a you only live once mentality. This is driving large demand to people to go longer haul, try that cruise they always thought about etc. etc. There are deals out there but overall bookings are up across the industry from many nearly collapsing, can't blame them for putting prices up its a supply and demand industry after all.