Another_Critic Posted July 17 #3001 Share Posted July 17 2 hours ago, Engineroom Snipe said: "I want the super deluxe 4 day experience over the 7 day average experience." I want the 14 day average experience. 🙂 Have 7, 14, 12, 8, and 16 day "average" experiences currently booked. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cruiseguy1016 Posted July 17 #3002 Share Posted July 17 3 hours ago, Ocean Boy said: I think the two have always been somewhat connected. In the past anyway, cruises out of San Juan were less expensive and Adventure often had close to sailing fire sales. We have cruised out of San Juan more than any other port. There have been several times that we have been able to fly to/from San Jaun than to/from Miami or FLL. Admittedly, there have been several times that it cost more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Engineroom Snipe Posted July 17 #3003 Share Posted July 17 8 hours ago, Another_Critic said: I want the 14 day average experience. 🙂 Have 7, 14, 12, 8, and 16 day "average" experiences currently booked. I also would like a longer experience but somehow there is a hard trend towards the shorter "you only live once" high end experiences. My crystal ball is very hazy at this moment. I have been waiting for more than two years for the pendulum to swing towards moderation of cruise prices. While I saw temporary weakness earlier in the year and snagged a few good deals on older ships, Royal seems to be holding the prices high at this moment in anticipation of continued high demand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baron Barracuda Posted July 17 #3004 Share Posted July 17 20 hours ago, Engineroom Snipe said: I just read this article a few minutes before you posted. The money is in the big ships on shorter itineraries. The ship seems to be the destination and consumers seem to be less shocked with spending on board as long as the total bill is within their budget. I get the feeling like this is like a car salesman who customizes the sale upon the monthly payment. I can sell you a premium 4 day experience where you are treated like royalty or I can sell you a 7 day experience where you just another cruise passenger.I can work one vacation over a 12 month loan, "What do you want?" "I want the super deluxe 4 day experience over the 7 day average experience." Very interesting. Read the article earlier today and believe this focus on shorter sailings may be shortsighted for a couple of reasons. First, selling 3's and 4's instead of traditional 7's requires selling twice as many reservations to maintain the same occupancy level. Second, shorter sailings limit variety. Can't reach the ABC islands for instance from Miami and how often do you want to visit Coco Cay? Third, law of diminishing returns kicks in. First couple of sailings you might do all the extra charge stuff but after a while it gets stale. Do you need specialty dining on a 3 night-er. 4th, Short sailings work best when you can drive to pier. Flying is a pricey hassle that can add an extra day or two onto your short sailing. It's even worse with kids. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Engineroom Snipe Posted July 17 #3005 Share Posted July 17 2 hours ago, Baron Barracuda said: Read the article earlier today and believe this focus on shorter sailings may be shortsighted for a couple of reasons. First, selling 3's and 4's instead of traditional 7's requires selling twice as many reservations to maintain the same occupancy level. Second, shorter sailings limit variety. Can't reach the ABC islands for instance from Miami and how often do you want to visit Coco Cay? Third, law of diminishing returns kicks in. First couple of sailings you might do all the extra charge stuff but after a while it gets stale. Do you need specialty dining on a 3 night-er. 4th, Short sailings work best when you can drive to pier. Flying is a pricey hassle that can add an extra day or two onto your short sailing. It's even worse with kids. I think like you do but let me play the Devil's Advocate: Many more vacationers can squeeze in three and four day cruises into their work and personal schedules than seven or more days. Just read how many workers are taking days off while trying to pretend they are in the office. They can sneak a Monday and Tuesday into a work from ship experience while being in the office for the rest of the week. The islands are secondary. This is like an all inclusive resort where the rides, food, and experiences can occur without a car. I could reverse the flying problem by getting a cheap Red-Eye early in the morning or evening before and just wait in the air port for a few hours before going to the cruise terminal. If I miss my 9pm Thursday night flight for any reason, I get transferred into the next 11pm flight on Thursday or shift into the first available flight on Friday. I have talked to the younger crowd and they have no problem flying in on the same day early. The cruise insurance will cover missed flights and their associated expenses. They are not burning multiple leave days off if the cruise does not happen. I am not sure about the law of diminishing returns in this case. This is like going to Atlantic City, NJ, or Las Vegas, NV, for a three or four day weekend. A seven day cruise might be once or at best, twice a year for a young couple or family but a three or four day vacation can occur multiple times throughout the year. These big corporations crunch the numbers and model the customers ad nauseam to predict the best revenue stream. I love longer cruise but I can see the possibility of higher profits and higher stock dividend returns for pursuing these intense three and four day "esplurcations". Thanks for your opinion, it is valid. Someone is not listening to us longer term cruisers at Royal. They must think that we are not the main source of potential purchases as we are swimming against their advertising currents. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ocean Boy Posted July 17 #3006 Share Posted July 17 39 minutes ago, Engineroom Snipe said: I think like you do but let me play the Devil's Advocate: Many more vacationers can squeeze in three and four day cruises into their work and personal schedules than seven or more days. Just read how many workers are taking days off while trying to pretend they are in the office. They can sneak a Monday and Tuesday into a work from ship experience while being in the office for the rest of the week. The islands are secondary. This is like an all inclusive resort where the rides, food, and experiences can occur without a car. I could reverse the flying problem by getting a cheap Red-Eye early in the morning or evening before and just wait in the air port for a few hours before going to the cruise terminal. If I miss my 9pm Thursday night flight for any reason, I get transferred into the next 11pm flight on Thursday or shift into the first available flight on Friday. I have talked to the younger crowd and they have no problem flying in on the same day early. The cruise insurance will cover missed flights and their associated expenses. They are not burning multiple leave days off if the cruise does not happen. I am not sure about the law of diminishing returns in this case. This is like going to Atlantic City, NJ, or Las Vegas, NV, for a three or four day weekend. A seven day cruise might be once or at best, twice a year for a young couple or family but a three or four day vacation can occur multiple times throughout the year. These big corporations crunch the numbers and model the customers ad nauseam to predict the best revenue stream. I love longer cruise but I can see the possibility of higher profits and higher stock dividend returns for pursuing these intense three and four day "esplurcations". Thanks for your opinion, it is valid. Someone is not listening to us longer term cruisers at Royal. They must think that we are not the main source of potential purchases as we are swimming against their advertising currents. Of course, the assumption of the RCI execs is that these folks taking multiple long weekend type vacations per year will choose to do most of them on a cruise ship. Embarking and disembarking a cruise ship with 5000 other people isn't the most fun. There isn't a lot of time in between on a 3-4 day cruise to discover the aspects of cruising that we all love. Maybe the cruise execs are right but I have my doubts as to the long term sustainability. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Engineroom Snipe Posted July 17 #3007 Share Posted July 17 43 minutes ago, Ocean Boy said: There isn't a lot of time in between on a 3-4 day cruise to discover the aspects of cruising that we all love. Maybe the cruise execs are right but I have my doubts as to the long term sustainability. My crystal ball is broken. You, I, and many others are waiting for what happens long term. My predictions have been somewhat worthless at the present time. I thought there would already be a pendulum swing towards pre-covid pricing and experiences. Maybe next year........? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare rimmit Posted July 18 #3008 Share Posted July 18 Cruising has hit the tipping point. For MANY years it was under the radar for the most part for the millennial generation, and even lots of Gen X. No one wanted to be confined to a boat. Even as RCI made the ships bigger and bigger to address these issues, since there weren't that many mega ships, only a handful of people experienced it, and even those that did had no way to share their experience. With the advent of cheap fast onboard internet, tons of mega ships across multiple cruise lines, and an again millennial population that has some expendable income and values experiences and vacations way more than luxury cars and goods and cruising has exploded. It was so hard for cruises to have social media real time advertising before. Internet was cost prohibitive. Now people stream facebook live things on ships and share instantaneously. Word of mouth that cruising is great value and is no longer super boring and only for the newly wed and nearly dead population has no hit main stream levels. EVERYONE goes on a cruise now it seems, whereas before I felt people would question why I cruise so much. Cruising has changed its image over the last 14 years ever since the debut of the Oasis. Now with sooooo many mega ships, and sooo many people who have cruised on them, it's become a very desirable vacation option. Much more so than before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Engineroom Snipe Posted July 18 #3009 Share Posted July 18 9 hours ago, rimmit said: Word of mouth that cruising is great value and is no longer super boring and only for the newly wed and nearly dead population has no hit main stream levels. So funny yet true. I started cruising on my honeymoon and will keep cruising until I am nearly dead. Good add-on to the conversation about how social media has made cruising a "mainstream" vacation. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare rimmit Posted July 18 #3010 Share Posted July 18 34 minutes ago, Engineroom Snipe said: So funny yet true. I started cruising on my honeymoon and will keep cruising until I am nearly dead. Good add-on to the conversation about how social media has made cruising a "mainstream" vacation. Thanks. And to add on to that, the normalization for the upcoming generation of parents to take their kids on larger and more exotic vacations has been a boon to cruising. When I was growing up no one went to Europe until high school at the earliest. Now I can’t count how many families I know that have brought their young kids, as in 7 or younger, to Europe or on a more exotic vacation. My family is one of those and spear headed that effort. We were literally stalking the ships RCI was installing nurseries on when they began putting them on ships in 2011. In 2011 most people thought we were crazy for taking our 15 month old on TAs and to Europe. There was no tiktok or Facebook live back then. Now social media and tiktok seems to have normalized that and a lot of parents (with the means) now brings their kids to random locations around the world and not just beach vacations. RCI had a vision, and with some help from Carnival and NCL have managed in 14 years taken cruising completely mainstream. While I am forever saddened by the many service losses along the way due to that, I definitely can’t complain about the stock price. We’ve just moved on from cruising on primarily RCI as being our top priority when we cruise and that’s ok. They were ahead of their time in ship design, and now they are reaping the benefits. If you’ve ever read the tipping point by Malcolm Gladwell, it’s an excellent book, and I’d say RCI and cruising has hit that point with the mainstream and I believe their stock will continue to thrive because of that. There will be pull backs and corrections as always, but this cats out of the bag and not even a pandemic could stop it. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firefly333 Posted July 18 #3011 Share Posted July 18 Imo comparing cruises to flights are apples to oranges. A flight is transportation more so than a cruise is booked for entertainment. I will book a cruise gladly. I now hate flying. Whatever I book flight wise gets changed. My flight next may from rome to miami the price already dropped. Cant use flight credit on air europa most likely. I have flight credit on sw on both legs that dropped. I wanted to buy early bird, cant be used for anything but a new flight. I have been reading post a friend of mine is making from a princess cruise over in Norway. She flew into UK and her luggage wasnt there. They may deliver to her at the end of her cruise in time to fly home. Another bella cruise person flew last year to europe, no luggage, she didnt board. I'd bet I'm not the only one who dreads flying since covid. I honestly dont think people like me who dread flying but book cruises make the problems with flying compatible with cruise prices dropping are seeing the issues lately with flying. If a wheel falls off a plane it could risk my life. A small problem on a cruise ship might delay the ship but doesnt make me feel my life is at risk. Sweeping them into the same basket as equal and one will follow the other is not correct imo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firefly333 Posted July 18 #3012 Share Posted July 18 Looks to me like rcl is trying to form new support in the 165 level. Today it needs to hold around 135 to hold here imo. Funds and computers trade off charts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firefly333 Posted July 25 #3013 Share Posted July 25 Earnings out this morning. I'm looking for why its selling off. Beat and rise, beat and raise. Not enough of a blow out? Pe 20. Down pre market, down yesterday so someone knew ahead? Though yes was a down day. Looking for the fly in the ointment. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/royal-caribbean-q2-earnings-snapshot-104057379.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Engineroom Snipe Posted July 25 #3014 Share Posted July 25 23 minutes ago, firefly333 said: Earnings out this morning. I'm looking for why its selling off. Beat and rise, beat and raise. Not enough of a blow out? Pe 20. Down pre market, down yesterday so someone knew ahead? Though yes was a down day. Looking for the fly in the ointment. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/royal-caribbean-q2-earnings-snapshot-104057379.html A bit of nervousness going on about airlines, automotive manufacturers, lack of mortgage demand, rising consumer debt is combining with a re-balance of the tech market. I know we discussed how airlines and cruises are not perfectly correlated but maybe some stockholders are lumping cruising with airlines as they define "travel" investing. The possible rate drop in September was baked into the market months ago. Carnival just announced three more large ship builds. Royal is announcing more large ship builds. The airlines are hurting because they have overcapacity going into their more profitable time periods. Stockholders might be concerned with too much optimism about future cruise demand. I know the large ships are the future of cruising to get new customers onboard with their families but maybe the pricing, which always was an advantage to cruising, is starting to approach other vacation choices. Some of the young families might be a one and done for a few years. The older multiple cruises per year customers are succumbing to possible travel restricting medical concerns. So many moving parts to the equation and staring at the crystal ball just lets me know I am not getting any younger in the reflection. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firefly333 Posted July 25 #3015 Share Posted July 25 Adds 40 cents quarterly dividend https://finance.yahoo.com/news/royal-caribbean-restarts-dividends-four-113658287.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Engineroom Snipe Posted July 25 #3016 Share Posted July 25 2 minutes ago, firefly333 said: Adds 40 cents quarterly dividend https://finance.yahoo.com/news/royal-caribbean-restarts-dividends-four-113658287.html I think RCI knows they cannot rely on 27% surges as stated in the article year over year to entice more purchases of their share. Providing a dividend dangles a bit of incentive. Even if the shares do not have the same year over year explosive growth, investors will get more than just a cruise purchase discount with their dollars. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nelblu Posted July 25 #3017 Share Posted July 25 12 minutes ago, Engineroom Snipe said: I think RCI knows they cannot rely on 27% surges as stated in the article year over year to entice more purchases of their share. Providing a dividend dangles a bit of incentive. Even if the shares do not have the same year over year explosive growth, investors will get more than just a cruise purchase discount with their dollars. Wouldn't have been better to use the funds to pare down their immense debt. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Engineroom Snipe Posted July 25 #3018 Share Posted July 25 13 minutes ago, nelblu said: Wouldn't have been better to use the funds to pare down their immense debt. The immense debt is still years down the road and being restructured in the process. Corporations are very sensitive that not providing a dividend is an admission that the business is not heading in the right direction for stockholders. Despite all of the bravado about future record breaking bookings in 2025, is the corporation making a profit? If it is, the stockholders should be paid some type of dividend. Many investors re-balance their portfolios yearly based on dividends against the cost of holding the stock. Unless the stock is increasing in price more than 6% (or more than T-Bills and Bonds), most stockholders will rotate away from stocks which do not provide dividends, Unless they get other benefits from ownership, such as those here who get a cruise discount benefit which satisfies their needs. Why just have money locked in a stock that is not rising in value or paying a dividend? The long term debt is just that, long term. It is not going away for at least three years. The stockholders are going to get antsy if they keep hearing record breaking sales with no dividends. If you ask them to wait three years for a dividend and the stock price itself does not significantly rise, they will sell and move onto other investments hoping for a higher return. The explosive stock rise from the pandemic is over for many stocks that had bottomed out at low prices. More traditional investing instead of speculation requires dividends. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nelblu Posted July 25 #3019 Share Posted July 25 11 minutes ago, Engineroom Snipe said: The immense debt is still years down the road and being restructured in the process. Corporations are very sensitive that not providing a dividend is an admission that the business is not heading in the right direction for stockholders. Despite all of the bravado about future record breaking bookings in 2025, is the corporation making a profit? If it is, the stockholders should be paid some type of dividend. Many investors re-balance their portfolios yearly based on dividends against the cost of holding the stock. Unless the stock is increasing in price more than 6% (or more than T-Bills and Bonds), most stockholders will rotate away from stocks which do not provide dividends, Unless they get other benefits from ownership, such as those here who get a cruise discount benefit which satisfies their needs. Why just have money locked in a stock that is not rising in value or paying a dividend? The long term debt is just that, long term. It is not going away for at least three years. The stockholders are going to get antsy if they keep hearing record breaking sales with no dividends. If you ask them to wait three years for a dividend and the stock price itself does not significantly rise, they will sell and move onto other investments hoping for a higher return. The explosive stock rise from the pandemic is over for many stocks that had bottomed out at low prices. More traditional investing instead of speculation requires dividends. PR move? Paying down debt gives an immediate boost to the bottom line--jmo. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smokeybandit Posted July 25 #3020 Share Posted July 25 Long term debt is never going away. Which is fine and normal. The biggest companies in the world unsurprisingly have the most debt. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Engineroom Snipe Posted July 25 #3021 Share Posted July 25 2 minutes ago, nelblu said: PR move? Paying down debt gives an immediate boost to the bottom line--jmo. I know we are respectful enough to disagree and I enjoy your opinions. No one has the perfect answer or opinion to include me. As far as I am concerned, it is a PR move to retain stockholders. I agree. Paying down the debt might not put any money into my stockholder pocket for three years. As a stockholder, do I want to tie my money into a static investment if the stock does not gain at least 5% per year without a dividend? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firefly333 Posted July 25 #3022 Share Posted July 25 Buyers came in at 153 finally. Dropped like a rock. Watching for a bottoming if I want to buy more. I agree I wish they paid off more debt before a dividend or a tiny dividend like 10 cents. 40 cents to me too much. I'm with nelblu. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Engineroom Snipe Posted July 25 #3023 Share Posted July 25 5 minutes ago, firefly333 said: Buyers came in at 153 finally. Dropped like a rock. Watching for a bottoming if I want to buy more. I agree I wish they paid off more debt before a dividend or a tiny dividend like 10 cents. 40 cents to me too much. I'm with nelblu. Could it be Carnival's announcement of three new mega ships for 2029? Since all of the executives have large stock holdings, a way to give themselves some cash without having to have it approved? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firefly333 Posted July 25 #3024 Share Posted July 25 12 minutes ago, Engineroom Snipe said: Could it be Carnival's announcement of three new mega ships for 2029? Since all of the executives have large stock holdings, a way to give themselves some cash without having to have it approved? I dont see how carnivals announcement would affect much. It said it's doing rebranding still like that Venezia from its italian fleet rebranded as a italian flair carnival ship, going out of where else PC. The new ships wouldnt be until 2029 I think, thought it's been a couple days since I read their release. Few details these ships are so far away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smokeybandit Posted July 25 #3025 Share Posted July 25 1 hour ago, firefly333 said: I agree I wish they paid off more debt before a dividend or a tiny dividend like 10 cents. They paid off all the due debt. No reason to pay off more than they need to as they'll always carry debt. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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