Le Club Voyage

[Sanatee]

We're curious about what will happen with Le Club loyalty status that has been earned with both Azamara and Celebrity cruises.  A rep at Celebrity Captains Club told us that we will retain our current status there, but there will be no future reciprocity or joint earning.  Wonder if Azamara is doing the same?  One sad downside to this sale of Azamara is losing the reciprocity with Celebrity as we love both lines for different reasons and itineraries.

[laurieb]

Makes sense that there will no longer be reciprocity once the sale of Azamara is finalized.  

[uktog]

Makes absolute sense. Earnings to date determine your starting position in the future where you only get credit on the brand you sail on. 

[ECCruise]

Once the deal closes (which will be before any ship sails) I fully expect that we will be grandfathered in the tier we are currently in (in our case, Elite+ and Discoverer+).  And the clock will start again, separately, on both =X= and Azamara.

[uktog]

I think it might be interesting to see how loyalty is or is not recognised in 12-18 months time. The new President highlighted that the new owners had an affinity with brands who had a loyal customer base and liked to support that. 
So we might see a very different loyalty programme now they are free from read overs/comparisons to Royal Caribbean. 
 

By the way I’m not saying it will be more benefits just could be very different 

[ChucktownSteve]

One aspect of the "free" nights under Le Club required at least half of the cruises be sailed on Azamara.  I wonder if that will change or remain once they reach the fork in the road.

[laurieb]

On 1/24/2021 at 5:28 PM, ChucktownSteve said:

One aspect of the "free" nights under Le Club required at least half of the cruises be sailed on Azamara.  I wonder if that will change or remain once they reach the fork in the road.

It will be interesting to see how this is handled

[excitedofharpenden]

On 1/25/2021 at 12:28 AM, ChucktownSteve said:

One aspect of the "free" nights under Le Club required at least half of the cruises be sailed on Azamara.  I wonder if that will change or remain once they reach the fork in the road.

They might just do away with the free nights altogether. I did well with it when I had a few to use at once, but the "free" is often a misnomer. 

 

Phil 

Edited January 27, 2021 by excitedofharpenden

[marinaro44]

Would be nice if they drop the upgrade bidding scheme and give some kind of preference or real advantage based on Azamara Circle status.  Perhaps the software that managed the bidding business stays at RCI/Celebrity so Azamara can restart an upgrade process afresh.

[Host Jazzbeau]

39 minutes ago, excitedofharpenden said:

They might just do away with the free nights altogether. I did well with it when I had a few to use at once, but the "free" is often a misnomer. 

 

Phil 

 

The one time it should work as advertised is on the bump to Discoverer Plus – 6 free nights so even paying rack rate for a 7th night would make the cruise a bargain.  [Not coincidentally, that is the level yours truly is working towards – so I hope they don't end this benefit!]

[marinaro44]

3 minutes ago, Host Jazzbeau said:

 

The one time it should work as advertised is on the bump to Discoverer Plus – 6 free nights so even paying rack rate for a 7th night would make the cruise a bargain.  [Not coincidentally, that is the level yours truly is working towards – so I hope they don't end this benefit!]

Also works going to Platinum, and I'm still planning to use my ten.

[excitedofharpenden]

1 hour ago, Host Jazzbeau said:

 

The one time it should work as advertised is on the bump to Discoverer Plus – 6 free nights so even paying rack rate for a 7th night would make the cruise a bargain.  [Not coincidentally, that is the level yours truly is working towards – so I hope they don't end this benefit!]

Ok. I do try not to base my opinions on things I don't have experience of so my comment about free nights being anything but free does come from experience and therefore I do disagree with you. 

 

I've had six free nights and whilst it represents a reduction in the rate, no way is it free. It does depend upon your own circumstances and the rate that you pay for the cruise, but taxes and fees added on and it's not free. 

 

I was able to make use of the 10 night Platinum benefit a few years ago that Marinaro speaks of and that as I said of was the one time when it worked for me and in those good ol' days Azamara was much more flexible.  I used them on a ten night cruise and just paid taxes and fees.  

 

I now earn 3 free nights for every 750 LCV points which is totally worthless to me because of the way they are worked out on full rates for the balance and this demonstrates to me the loyalty programme regard for you actual loyalty. However, I know the score here and am long past getting upset about it. But I do like to stick with the facts as I see them. 

 

I'd be interested to hear from others who were able to make it work as you describe. I stand by my comments. 

 

Phil 

Edited January 27, 2021 by excitedofharpenden

[Grandma Cruising]

We used our four free nights on a Norway cruise and it did save us quite a lot. I think it can work on cruises for which there tend not to be promotions.

[excitedofharpenden]

16 minutes ago, Grandma Cruising said:

We used our four free nights on a Norway cruise and it did save us quite a lot. I think it can work on cruises for which there tend not to be promotions.

Absolutely.  Cruises with no promotions attached are best because they can't roll anything back, but even then they aren't free nights because you pay taxes and fees. Which is the point I was trying to make. If they go then I won't miss them now. 

 

Phil 

[Host Jazzbeau]

40 minutes ago, excitedofharpenden said:

Ok. I do try not to base my opinions on things I don't have experience of so my comment about free nights being anything but free does come from experience and therefore I do disagree with you. 

 

I've had six free nights and whilst it represents a reduction in the rate, no way is it free. It does depend upon your own circumstances and the rate that you pay for the cruise, but taxes and fees added on and it's not free. 

 

I was able to make use of the 10 night Platinum benefit a few years ago that Marinaro speaks of and that as I said of was the one time when it worked for me and in those good ol' days Azamara was much more flexible.  I used them on a ten night cruise and just paid taxes and fees.  

 

I now earn 3 free nights for every 750 LCV points which is totally worthless to me because of the way they are worked out on full rates for the balance and this demonstrates to me the loyalty programme regard for you actual loyalty. However, I know the score here and am long past getting upset about it. But I do like to stick with the facts as I see them. 

 

I'd be interested to hear from others who were able to make it work as you describe. I stand by my comments. 

 

Phil 

 

You are not disagreeing with what I said.  I used the word 'free' because Azamara does, but I characterized the deal as a 'bargain.'  I have never seen an Azamara sale where you could get a cruise for 1/7 the original rack rate – so even with paying the taxes and fees and 1 night it would still be a 'bargain' compared to any other deal for that cruise.  I also said 'the one time it would work as advertised' because I knew that the 3 night deals rarely work out as bargains when there's a sale.

[oddjob16]

A bargain when using free nights is possible, but I think there are at least a fair amount of people that gave up in the quest for such a deal. We are happy with our four nights which will be used on a 7 night cruise. The original price was acceptable and we are ok with the final.(3/7 of 3000€ p. p.)

[Riocca]

31 minutes ago, excitedofharpenden said:

Absolutely.  Cruises with no promotions attached are best because they can't roll anything back, but even then they aren't free nights because you pay taxes and fees. Which is the point I was trying to make. If they go then I won't miss them now. 

 

Phil 

Phil, never been able to work out how it works but sometimes the deals confound, we used 3 “free” days to book a 7 night cruise for October 2020 as part of a b2b and the deal was ok. Obviously it didn’t happen but we cancel before the balance was due taking the deposits as FCC and our 3 days were reinstated. Decided to book a 10 night cruise for September 2021 hoping that it would be ok by then, although that’s doubtful at the moment. There was a BOGOHO deal on when we booked and Azamara were allowing us to use both the FCC from our deposits and from our cancelled March cruise. However ever hopeful I asked our TA to get a price using the “free” days not expecting much, to my surprise Azamara came back with a price £900 lower!! Needless to say we booked it 😄

[tgg]

21 hours ago, Host Jazzbeau said:

 

The one time it should work as advertised is on the bump to Discoverer Plus – 6 free nights so even paying rack rate for a 7th night would make the cruise a bargain.  [Not coincidentally, that is the level yours truly is working towards – so I hope they don't end this benefit!]

 

One of the conditions of this "free night" program is:

 

": **Note: To earn complimentary nights, members must have sailed with Azamara^® within the last three years, 50% of their voyages must be with Azamara, and must have moved up in tier on or after January 1, 2015."

 

When the program was announced, we had already reached Discoverer Plus level, with most of the sailings on Azamara.  Although we had 1000 points, we would have to "earn" another 2000 to reach Platinum. 

 

Our loyalty was rewarded with NOTHING. Those who moved from 700 to 750 points got 6 free nights. 

 

 

Edited January 28, 2021 by tgg

[Host Jazzbeau]

Sorry they didn't grandfather you in, but that isn't unusual.  One rule that should change is the 'sail within three years' – that should be extended to account for the no-sail period [as many cruise lines and airlines are doing with their qualification dates]

[Baynanno1]

Free nights are not free!

Firstly, one can only use them on the high rack rate, which we never pay when booking our cruises.

 

We used our four nights on a three night, absolutely ridiculously expensive cruise sandwiched in between two 9 night cruises we wanted to do, so that worked well for us.

 

We used our six nights in 2018, booking Norway for 2019, because "Norway is never discounted" . . . wrong . . . that year it was discounted and we would have been better off had we used those six nights on a different cruise . . . oh well . . . we live and learn . . . and have some distance to go to the next level.

[uktog]

I had three free nights to use having gone over 3750.  Every cruise I had priced ( even 7 nighters) was more expensive using the nights than not using them.  The 3 nights are rarely a perk of value, at 6 or 10 nights it might be or might not be.