Can someone explain an overbooke cruise?

[First Time 2008]

One big difference between airlines and cruise lines is that airlines can and do manage the overbooking right there at the gate, just before departure. They can do that because they can offer passengers similar travel a few hours or a day or two later. It's quite different with cruise lines. They can't leave you at the port, after you have flown in from 2000 miles away and are there with your bags and the next comparable cruise is 11 months later.

 

Both airlines and cruise lines have predictive models that tell them how much they can oversell. And most of the time those models will be right. Occasionally they will be wrong. Airlines deal with their wrong guesses there at the gate, cruise lines seem to be more proactive and start offering buy-outs days or weeks early.

 

But how do the cruise lines know that they are going to be wrong? They can't know for sure until the day of departure, actually until the "Official All Aboard Time" when the passengers that flew in day of cruise whose flight was late missed the ship. So they have to have a predictive model that predicts they are going to be wrong, so they can offer the buy-outs. But wait, they had a model that predicted they were going to be right and allowed the oversell. Do they now have a different model that will tell them that the other model was wrong? How can that be?

 

I really wonder how cruise lines anticipate that their earlier predictions were wrong after all.

[Wendy The Wanderer]

...

But how do the cruise lines know that they are going to be wrong? They can't know for sure until the day of departure, actually until the "Official All Aboard Time" when the passengers that flew in day of cruise whose flight was late missed the ship. ...

 

Very funny! But they can't have a predictive model that will fill a cabin left empty by somebody who misses the boat because of a late flight. They just can't--think about it. And in some cases, those people fly to the next port and join the ship!