Is Princess losing

One [crew member] was so shockingly rude to me, on day 1 of the cruise, that I was tempted to formally complain.

:oWhat happened? What did he or she do?

Just looking at many posts in the last while, the downgrading of the Princess product is evident - but not just Princess.

At Princess, I believe the recent replacement of steak with hamburger on the MDR menu says something.

Moving to Celebrity - their former glorious Aqua Space cafe which used to serve fresh grilled fish - eliminated same and replaced their menu with cheap products in bowls.

I consider Princess to be a middle class product making no moves to change their product other than flirting with class segmentation and suites.

Celebrity used to be a upper middle mass line but has fallen very dramatically to be a tarted up RCL totally fixated with class segmentation & trying to attract well to do millennials.

Fortunately, there are many cruise lines to try. When one line disappoints, move to another.

Princess and HAL are having identify angst in my mind - the other mass lines are fairly secure in their vision.

Don’t get me wrong i love princess the grand class ships not these big ones they put 4000 plus people on. I am very lucky to have sailed in excess of 24 times on princess and I am only 40 i have done all lines princess is my fav. I just feel that paying a little extra is okay but If they are going to pack us on where we can’t move princess in my opinion will fall short

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Sorry... I should restate that. Celebrity is targeting a younger demographic.

Yes, so true. We hadn’t sailed on X for four years until this past October and we’re quite surprised how millennialist the line has become. We enjoyed the Modern Luxury, although I can understand how some Boomers might be annoyed with the changes. We kept remarking to one another how “old” Princess seems compared to the X vibe.

There are things that we love about each line, but we really enjoyed the evening ambience on X but missed MUTS.

Hello everyone I am a long term princess cruiser and have been lucky enough to sail many other lines. However is it me seems like princess is cutting back and other lines are giving free drink packages and better value any thoughts.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If you track prices Celebrity has routinely included drink packages, but raised their prices when they did so. Either way you pay for it. Princess is not losing when you consider that the CCL lines have in total higher occupancy than the RCL lines or the NCLH according to the last 10Q for each holding company.

I’ve been spoilt by Celebrity. I think we would have a really hard time booking a cruise without included drinks. The itinerary would have to be amazing and anything on Princess aimed at people still working is far below amazing. I can’t say I’ve seen Princess that much lower than X to be honest.

I also think when they offer free drink package it’s never really free as the cruise price most of the time is higher. As being not a heavy drinker here I prefer paying as you go and consider Princess to have the best price at seas. This is especially great with the special hour time.

I have to agree with the OP about Princess not knowing who to attract anymore and have not been very innovative the past years. The Royal,Regal and Majestic ships are nice but making an atrium 50% larger to me those not cut as being innovative.

I do like to go back to Princess as you can see with my Elite status but even when refurbishing the older ships the do not come close to the quality X does now.

I know Celebrity has changed the vibe on their ships and this has not pleased all of the clientele but as for one have been so happy about those changes minus the overcharged drink prices.

I know Princess can do better it’s time for them to come back as leaders and stop sitting on the pass glory they had.

Sea ya

Eric

Envoyé de mon iPad en utilisant Forums

Celebrity discontinued the salmon in the Aqua Spa Cafe? Well, that's another reason to not cruise them.

I wish Princess would improve their main stage entertainment. I keep reading about wonderful new shows, but they haven't been on any of the ships that I've cruised. They've been advertised for a couple of years, so perhaps there is no plan to expand them to all the ships.

Princess took a drop when they merged with Carnival. But they took a much bigger one when they were recently transferred to "HAG", Holland America Group.

 

Now they are the third tier line, behind HAL and Seabourn.

HAL management is squeezing every penny they can get out of Princess, to the detriment of the Princess product and Princess passengers.

That move was in 2013. Not exactly recently. It was also not that they were moved into an existing HAG. HAG was created when they moved both HAL, Princess and Seabourn into the new structure under Kruse. The structure makes sense since it also includes the Alaska land based operations on both HAL and Princess.

 

I consider Princess to be a middle class product making no moves to change their product other than flirting with class segmentation and suites.

Unfortunately, many of the changes on Princess are to remove what made Princess unique and make Princess more like other cruise lines to the point that offering a generic cruise means you might as well cruise on another cruise line for the same experience. Some examples:

a) Princess now requires you to pay for shore excursions booking in advance of the cruise at the time of booking, even before final payment for the cruise itself. It used to be an advantage in Princess' favor to allow such excursions to be paid for as part of the on-board account.

b) Bigger and bigger ships which no longer can go to many ports which previously had been a part of Princess' "award winning itineraries." A behemoth going to St. Thomas, St. Maarten and a private Island is not on an itinerary that will win any awards.

c) Replacing true baked Alaska with a sheet cake version cheapens the experience.

I don't think this is true for us at least. Our first 2 cruises were on NCL, who we do love. You always get free drinks and other perks. But the prices have shot up. We are doing a 10 day on the Crown in Dec (no perks) for half if not less of what NCL would charge. A drinks package is nice but not worth paying 2x or 3x the cruise fare for!

You only have to spend a minute on any of the cruise line boards to see most lines are cutting back. On NCL you no longer get lobster in the MDR, for instance. Every other topic on that board is people complaining about being 'nickel and dimed'. It doesn't bother me much- I find a good value cruise and pay for any extras I want, and don't pay for any I don't want. But I'm only 32 so I never sailed in the 'golden age' where it was silver service and free champagne every night.

If anyone is in the UK there was a really interesting two part documentary recently on Channel5 about the Cunard QE2. She basically moulded the modern cruise industry as we know it- including trying to gouge as much money from customers while on board as possible (and in the process making the base fare affordable to the average Joe for the first time).

It's apparent that upper management doesn't recognize or care that Princess loyalists like(d) Princess the way it was in the "old days" of a few years back, and that a lot of us have kept coming back to Princess cruise after cruise largely because of that.

I only started cruising in 2004, started with Princess, and have stayed with Princess exclusively because I like(d) the Princess product well enough to have racked up 40+ Princess cruises, plus have a couple more booked. And I know that my 40+ is a drop in the bucket compared to some other Princess fans.

It seems that Princess just keeps getting more money-grubbing all the time, and is taking away the things that helped make Princess fans happy. ie. now requiring prepayment for excursions; use-it-or-lose-it expiration date on coffee cards; etc., etc.

(Of course, if they chase away the Elites, they won't have to spent their profit $$s providing Elite perks!!)

It is my impression that all the mass lines are working to eliminate the long time/repeater guests as passengers.

The mass lines are focused on new customers - meaning 1st time cruisers - who have little idea how the cruising scam works before and during sailing. The so called "free" beverage packages and OBC - none of which is free, has been developed to lure new customers.

These newbies have no reference point of previous quality standards - which is perfect for the cruise lines - cause they can continue their product cheapening - with little to no consequence.

The long timers are more and more (but not all) onto the cruise line strategy and are increasingly moving up from the mass to the premium OR are reducing cruising and replacing it with customized land based ventures (I am doing both, my cruising is down from 1x per year to 1x in 3 years).

So Princess is playing the game the same as Celebrity and the cheapening at HAL.......

The cruise lines used to provide a year to year consistent product that you could rely on - now it is only about increasing revenues. Each cruise lines used to have a specific niche, now all the mass lines are bland with a few differences.

I would say to the OP and others, time to move on from Princess to Cunard, Oceania, Viking etc - where quality standards are high, interesting itineraries, more the older style of cruising.

Try it and see if you liked it - we moved from Celebrity to Oceania - wow what a difference.

We had enjoyed great cruises on X, HAL, and Princess and actively looked for these brands as we shopped for cruises. X was our favorite but we were excited to try Princess again after a few years (10 day Panama and 7 day Regal) when a drink package promotion was available (we won't sail a Caribbean itinerary without one. I would also challenge that it does not generally offer value as the 10 night cruise would have cost us over 1000 dollars for this package which represented about 25% of our fare). We had just cruised X and HAL so had a good window to compare. We were completely disappointed in Princess and will not look to them in the future, If you would have told me I was on my first Carnival cruise I would have had my expectations met perfectly (not try to bash CCL here just report on my subjective view of them).

I know this thread was started five pages ago. But I want to say I have learned a lot by reading all five pages worth. Here is what I have learned so far

1. All Inclusive Beverage Package/OBC; are these really free or are they hidden in the overall cost

2. Food choices have changed from great to just ok

3. Entertainment is subjective to what part of the world you are cruising(I put this one In)

4. Staff can sometimes be overworked and on some ships that shows up to the passengers

5. The smaller the ship the less hectic it can be. The larger 4,000 pax ships tend to be crowded and service can suffer.

Keep it coming; I learn so much from the boards. Oh and thanks for posting these

2. Food choices have changed from great to just ok

Food choices are subjective as well. As an example, I haven't been as phased by the whole burger fiasco; there's still some form of steak on the MDR menu every night.

Frozen lobster on a cruise ship is no good anyways, so why the fuss?

We have found Princess to be more expensive than Celebrity and much more expensive than Holland America. We have found that the choices of port call to be better on Princess than the other two.

Holland America seems dedicated to chartering out their boats, and because of this, you will often find large number of individuals holding "private events" on the ships. HAL has less entertainment and tends to become dead at night. Also paucity of seating at the buffet and little shade areas at the pool.

We feel that Celebrity and Princess are both upscale. Celebrity advertises more to this effect.

Princess crew has told me that they operate separately from Carnival. The benefit of Carnival has been to bring it a big infusion of money for new ships and upgrades. I was told that without Carnival HAL would be out of business.

We have cruised from Azamara to Carnival and everything in between. There is no such thing as a perfect cruise or ship. In regards to cutbacks, the entire cruise industry is doing this to hold down costs.

We have found Princess to be more expensive than Celebrity and much more expensive than Holland America. We have found that the choices of port call to be better on Princess than the other two.

 

Holland America seems dedicated to chartering out their boats, and because of this, you will often find large number of individuals holding "private events" on the ships. HAL has less entertainment and tends to become dead at night. Also paucity of seating at the buffet and little shade areas at the pool.

 

We feel that Celebrity and Princess are both upscale. Celebrity advertises more to this effect.

 

Princess crew has told me that they operate separately from Carnival. The benefit of Carnival has been to bring it a big infusion of money for new ships and upgrades. I was told that without Carnival HAL would be out of business.

 

We have cruised from Azamara to Carnival and everything in between. There is no such thing as a perfect cruise or ship. In regards to cutbacks, the entire cruise industry is doing this to hold down costs.

The interesting thing about the cutbacks is that they really took hold during the recession years from 2007-2014. A time when cruise lines had zero pricing power and for at least the first part of that period had relatively high fuel costs. Now that the recession is over and the cruise lines have pricing power it appears that they learned one important lesson from the recession and cutbacks. That is that they can raise prices, continue with the cutbacks and still sail full. As such they have no incentive to roll them back.

:oWhat happened? What did he or she do?

At the risk of being flamed, here goes:

It was day 1 of the cruise, so of course, I was pretty excited. DH and I stopped in the internet cafe, because I like to get my loyalty minutes and get that out of the way. We were the only people in there, except for three staff people behind the desk. I didn't realize the program had changed on the Regal, so I asked one of them if they could explain it to me, and the guy said: "it's all right there on the screen, you can just read it yourself." Now, I know I can read it myself, and no, it wasn't rocket science, but I didn't think I was asking too much for one of the three guys standing around to take a minute to help me. I think I was a little extra offended because it was a buzz kill on day 1 of the cruise. Anyway, I never took any action on it, and, thankfully, I didn't have much need for the internet cafe afterwards.

The key to spa on day 1 is to show up about 5 minutes before the drawing is scheduled. You don't need to see the place.

Yes, it was a huge tactical error on our part. And I felt bad for the girl, because she was just doing her job.

On our last cruise, (in the jewelry boutique) they had started doing the drawings 30 minutes apart (for each prize) to make people stay and, hopefully, shop. The freebies are starting to become harder and harder to find. I don't mean to go too far off topic, but DH and I used to go to the art auctions and sit around to the end. It was kind of boring, but at the end we would always win a raffle prize because no one else was there. But they changed it so that instead of getting a free painting, you got a credit towards buying one. :(

I must not be looking at the right places on the web site; I certainly don't find Celebrity to be less costly than Princess. In fact, I looked yesterday--we have 3 Princess cruises booked, but I'm not sure that the last 2 will be cruised as scheduled. Looking at Celebrity was just sort of a "see what is out there" situation.

What I found was higher prices and many of the things that I most enjoyed about Celebrity no longer exist. Yes, they offer nice packages (free drinks, gratuities, internet, etc. if you purchase a high enough cabin to get all 3), but you pay for them with higher cruise fares.

Our first Princess cruise was a "try it out before we commit to a long cruise." We found everything to range from "OK" to "quite good." Our next cruise was 20 nights and was chosen for the ports--again, mostly very good. My concern is that I'm noticing some downhill slipping, along with some nice improvements. We haven't experienced the unlimited internet yet; hopefully it will be available for our fall cruise. We haven't been on a ship with any of the "new" (meaning announced in the last 3 years) entertainment. So hopefully I'm missing the upgraded things and I'll be very happy as they are rolled out.

On our last cruise, (in the jewelry boutique) they had started doing the drawings 30 minutes apart (for each prize) to make people stay and, hopefully, shop. The freebies are starting to become harder and harder to find.

I must not be looking at the right places on the web site; I certainly don't find Celebrity to be less costly than Princess. In fact' date=' I looked yesterday--we have 3 Princess cruises booked, but I'm not sure that the last 2 will be cruised as scheduled. Looking at Celebrity was just sort of a "see what is out there" situation.

 

What I found was higher prices and many of the things that I most enjoyed about Celebrity no longer exist. Yes, they offer nice packages (free drinks, gratuities, internet, etc. if you purchase a high enough cabin to get all 3), but you pay for them with higher cruise fares.

 

Our first Princess cruise was a "try it out before we commit to a long cruise." We found everything to range from "OK" to "quite good." Our next cruise was 20 nights and was chosen for the ports--again, mostly very good. My concern is that I'm noticing some downhill slipping, along with some nice improvements. We haven't experienced the unlimited internet yet; hopefully it will be available for our fall cruise. We haven't been on a ship with any of the "new" (meaning announced in the last 3 years) entertainment. So hopefully I'm missing the upgraded things and I'll be very happy as they are rolled out.[/quote']

 

I agree with this post. I too do not find Celebrity any cheaper than Princess. It's all about when and where you want to go; and that's based on supply and demand. Thanks for the post

The interesting thing about the cutbacks is that they really took hold during the recession years from 2007-2014. A time when cruise lines had zero pricing power and for at least the first part of that period had relatively high fuel costs. Now that the recession is over and the cruise lines have pricing power it appears that they learned one important lesson from the recession and cutbacks. That is that they can raise prices, continue with the cutbacks and still sail full. As such they have no incentive to roll them back.

I totally agree with your statement. Remember you could get a Caribbean cruise for a bargain. At that time food was great service was great and that is in the tough times. Now fuel is cheaper cut backs ships are bigger and getting more Money you have to love it. But let’s be honest if they fill the ships why change but I think in time it will slow down a bit hopefully some

More customer relations

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Repositioning TAs used to be a great value, even for solos, and I got hooked on them. Then a lot more people discovered them and .... VOILA!!

Now the fares are way higher, and solos get NO breaks. Double fare or no cruise!!

Yeah, I know ..... cruise companies are in business to make $$$. I'm painfully aware!