Riocca

Just saw a post on Facebook that the Travel Agent portal is now live so hopefully it’s close for us as well.

American company you have to think Miami time, hopefully this afternoon. Although we’re currently in Gran Canaria ready to board Onward on Saturday so the website thinks we’re Spanish.

Have to admit haven’t read one of those flyers for a while but seemed to remember originally when they started the discount it started at 4%.

It is mentioned in the details of each loyalty level:

The Loyalty club link on the new website seems to be working and there are a few subtle changes one being to the onboard booking discount, unless I’d missed something recently. New wording is as follows: The “Onboard Booking Offer” (OBO) offers a 5% savings to all guests onboard. As part of the Azamara Circle membership, Discoverer members will receive an additional 1%, Discoverer Plus 2%, and Discoverer Platinum 5% for each qualifying booking made onboard Azamara while offer is available. Under the Confirmed Booking offer, guests will receive a US$200 onboard credit (OBC) per stateroom, which will be applied to the future cruise.

Running fine, at the moment, on iOS 16 but it’s an interesting point as to how far back the web developers will go with operating system compatibility.

As that was a Royal Caribbean link my guess is that it’s not.

While work on the website I’m not sure I would trust the accuracy of the pop up pages they look like they have been copied from the old website. I noticed that the word “Club” has been removed from the suites description on the main page however not on the pop-up.

It’s just being nosy and seeing how it feels, not too worried about what’s actually on there.

Definitely work in progress, although I’m not seeing the page you posted as it looks to be further along the booking process. I am seeing the following which yesterday showed tax & fees as extra.

Lots of hard work must be going on over the weekend, the Perry Golf logos have disappeared and tax & port fees are now included in the U.K. pricing. Looking forward to finding out how the account section is going to work.

I think that the disclaimer on the pop up is telling. “Please note: While we do our best to publish accurate information, some discrepancies may appear as we finalize our new website” The email advising of the change of website did say that Azamara.co.uk would be unavailable until the 20th so as uktog says I think it’s a temporary patch. But you’re right until the 20th we won’t actually know.

Pretty sure you’re right but no way of checking now, but I think the exception was always that you could get the included wine if you had a room service meal served at the same time.

Was answered on the Azamara Onward condition thread the other day.

Most likely, if you look at the web address it’s Azamara.com not co.uk very much work in progress and there for information only so I wouldn’t take too much notice of what’s showing. For example I’ve looked at a number of cruises and they’re all marked Perry Golf, I’m sure that can’t be the case unless Perry Golf are going to have a permanent presence on all the ships.

From the following article it looks like Starlink’s maritime coverage was only completed at the end of February. https://smartmaritimenetwork.com/2023/02/20/starlink-announces-global-coverage-for-maritime-service/

Was started by Spain after the last financial meltdown to try and grab money from the booming cruise industry, others including the U.K. followed. I believe the ability to do so had been in EU law for a while but not implemented before. P&O U.K. moved their Mediterranean summer home port from Italy to Malta to try and overcome it only for Malta to decide to implement it as well.

I would presume not if purchased pre cruise but can’t be sure, if purchased onboard it would pay to ask one of the more senior administration staff.

Spanish, Italian etc VAT will be added throughout the cruise unless the itinerary includes a non EU port, this is one of the reasons Gibraltar and Montenegro feature on so many itineraries.

It depends how far in advance you book, our October 2023 cruise was originally booked in August 2021 and includes this promotion but our March 2023 cruise booked in June 2022 doesn’t. The only indication that you have this promotion is the code EXMO ESS in the promotions applied box on your confirmation.

Well it’s the 16th March and on (revised) schedule the website migration has started, the website is still available for information with a clear notice that account access and bookings are unavailable. It’s very clearly not the RC website but from what is available they have included the DNA of what we are used to, obviously there are lots of broken links and dead ends as you would expect but if this actually is the real thing it looks promising.

Over the years all these loyalty schemes have become over complicated and lost focus possibly more of a disincentive than incentive. Azamara’s scheme always seems to have suffered because it had to match the structure of Celebrity’s. The free nights element probably causes more dissatisfaction than it’s worth and the points gap between Discover Plus and Platinum is so large many people won’t even bother. We’ve sailed with lines that have no loyalty “clubs” and there’s nothing that would stop us booking with them again, other than the onboard experience. Some recognition of past passengers is appreciated but not if it’s too complicated and decisive.

Possibly because Onward has significantly more suites?

No discount for buying pre cruise in fact you lose the loyalty discount you get when buying onboard, usually second job for us once onboard after booking the speciality restaurants.

Possibly because the Azamara account is a mirror of Celebrity’s there have been reports that Celebrity points are showing but not Azamara’s. Think we will need to see how it pans out once Azamara’s website is up and running.