Carnival Cruise Line to Absorb P&O Australia

[arxcards]

17 minutes ago, Aus Traveller said:

Carnival said P&O customers will be invited to its own loyalty program.

 

It will be interesting to see if Carnival imports our P&O Aust cruising history into their loyalty programme.

 

We cruised on Carnival many years ago but don't seem to have a loyalty number for Carnival. Maybe I will have to follow that up.

It would be great, but for that to happen they would likely disappear from Captains Circle at the same time. There would be quite a few elites that have their bubble popped, and much less demand on the laundry. 

 

There is a "Find my VIFP number link" on this page, and it is as easy as name & DOB. VIFP Club Member Cruise Deals - Learn More At Carnival I haven't ever needed to quote it during booking.

[Sparky74]

12 minutes ago, SinbadThePorter said:

 

Hmmm, two Carnival ships each in Brisbane and Sydney?

I’ll believe it when I see it.

[arxcards]

6 minutes ago, SinbadThePorter said:

 

Hmmm, two Carnival ships each in Brisbane and Sydney?

I think one of the Brisbane ships will be a floater - perhaps literally 😉 

A bit like Explorer, Brisbane for the summer, then Freo, Cairns, Auckland. Hey, maybe even Melbourne will get a turn.

[arxcards]

34 minutes ago, Aus Traveller said:

One news item on this topic says that

"While we plan to make some technology upgrades and other small changes to the two P&O Cruises Australia ships, they will continue to be geared to the unique Australian market with a familiar feel and much of the same experiences for P&O Cruises Australia guests."

 

and    Carnival said P&O customers will be invited to its own loyalty program.

 

It will be interesting to see if Carnival imports our P&O Aust cruising history into their loyalty programme.

 

We cruised on Carnival many years ago but don't seem to have a loyalty number for Carnival. Maybe I will have to follow that up.

The two current ships, sure. Maybe some more Carnivation at the next dry dock. That is the wedge though, and subsequent ships will arrive as Carnival spec ships. 

 

P&O on their site:

 

In early 2025 P&O Cruises Australia brand will be sunset and its operations integrated into sister line, Carnival Cruise Line. As a result, all itineraries on Pacific Explorer scheduled to sail after 2nd March 2025 are being cancelled.

If you are booked on one of these itineraries you will be contacted by Guest Services in the coming days with refund details. We apologise that this change has been necessary.

If you are booked to cruise before this date, your itinerary is unaffected and we look forward to welcoming you onboard soon.

We are all immensely proud of P&O Cruises Australia’s 90-year heritage of dedicated operations in the region and Carnival Cruise Line are honored to carry forward its storied legacy and continue to deliver the same onboard experiences and itineraries with the benefit of Carnival Cruise Line HUB app and loyalty program. 

Thank you for your support of P&O Cruises Australia and Carnival Cruise Line.

 

How that fits is hard to envisage. Will it mean that Adventure & Encounter are separated from the US market, from those passengers expecting a Carnival product when they book their Australian cruise. Over time, they can't continue to have two Carnival ships in a port that offer totally different franchises on their ships.

 

[reeves35]

Not exactly excited about this.  Carnival seems to send us its old ships with hideous Joe Farcus era interiors.

 

In many respects, this was always bound to happen.  Carnival Australia was an odd beast with shared back office functions but with P&O reporting through to Princess in California whilst Carnival reported through to Carnival in Miami.  This will now be clearer with a sole reporting line to Miami.

 

It will be interesting to see how the Carnival livery is incorporated into the Princess ships.  The "whale tail" is the Carnival signature but only one of the four Australian ships will actually have it.

 

Will this change accelerate a change in the fleet in the medium term? Possibly, but you wouldn't hold your breath and, even then, it would be a, by then, decade old Dream Class at best.  Unless RCCL or MSC decided to set up a year round competitor to Carnival in Australia, there remains no likelihood that Carnival will sign-off a newbuild for Australia.

[CDaze71]

I wonder if they will disassemble the P&O EDGE FACILITY on Encounter or run it free like Carnival Sky Zone on other ships. That'd be great if they kept it. 

[CDaze71]

I relation to the whale tail. When they took over from Costa the Luminosa (and overseas Firenze and Venezia), they just slapped on some Carnival colours. I'm guessing they'll do the same at some point. 

Edited June 4 by CDaze71
Spelling

[arxcards]

18 minutes ago, reeves35 said:

Not exactly excited about this.  Carnival seems to send us its old ships with hideous Joe Farcus era interiors.

 

In many respects, this was always bound to happen.  Carnival Australia was an odd beast with shared back office functions but with P&O reporting through to Princess in California whilst Carnival reported through to Carnival in Miami.  This will now be clearer with a sole reporting line to Miami.

 

It will be interesting to see how the Carnival livery is incorporated into the Princess ships.  The "whale tail" is the Carnival signature but only one of the four Australian ships will actually have it.

 

Will this change accelerate a change in the fleet in the medium term? Possibly, but you wouldn't hold your breath and, even then, it would be a, by then, decade old Dream Class at best.  Unless RCCL or MSC decided to set up a year round competitor to Carnival in Australia, there remains no likelihood that Carnival will sign-off a newbuild for Australia.

Pretty tough to retrofit the whale tail onto an old Princess cowl. Especially with Adventure, as there is no way it will go under the bridge with one.

 

Carnival did sign-off on a newbuild for Australia, but then reneged. Announced in late 2015, a year later they decided we would like it better if they sent us Splendor instead, and our newbuild became Carnival Panorama. 

 

It will take more than a Carnival Miracle to get a newer ship here, but they do have the chance to rotate some when Adventure & Encounter retire. That is a few years away though.

[dizzy1948]

39 minutes ago, Sparky74 said:

I’ll believe it when I see it.

Mmm............................can't see nothing for us poor West Australians 

My booking of home port cruises (Fremantle) is like knitting - Knit one - purl one or.....miss one take one. This has been our cruising experience over the past few years. 😒 Ah well - 

[reeves35]

If ever there was an opportunity for RCCL to properly enter the Australian market, this is it.  There will be a number of loyal P&O customers who don't want to move to Carnival but currently have no other choice.  Will it happen?, probably not.

[Witchymob]

9 minutes ago, dizzy1948 said:

Mmm............................can't see nothing for us poor West Australians 

My booking of home port cruises (Fremantle) is like knitting - Knit one - purl one or.....miss one take one. This has been our cruising experience over the past few years. 😒 Ah well - 

Looks like we are back to being the forgotten people of the cruise world.  It was great when Princess came to WA for winter seasons from 2008 onwards and we cruised every year until 2018, then there was no cruise in 2019 the covid and now it seems it is back to looking for international lines stopping on their World cruises to pick up a sector maybe,if we are prepared to fly, which I probably am not. I do miss cruising there really is no holiday quite like it and the caravan is a poor second.

[jldev]

I'm not a P&O Cruiser but this is a very sad development for the Australia and New Zealand cruise industry 😞  

[ceeceeDee]

3 hours ago, MicCanberra said:

Interesting, although as Carnival Corp already owns them, it may just be re-badging, and shuffling deck chairs. May mean changes to service and crew as well.

Hopefully not gratuties

[ceeceeDee]

3 hours ago, Sparky74 said:

My initial reaction is to clutch my pearls, metaphorically speaking. 
 

DW and I have grown to appreciate the "cheap and cheerful" P&O cruises. We’ve actually been quite impressed with them lately even though my first cruise with them almost turned me off them permanently. We’ve not been back on a Carnival ship since our 2022 transPacific cruise as part of our infamous "Are We Mad?" trip. Along with many of the Australians onboard we were less than impressed with that cruise. 
 

I have lots of questions:

 

1. Will Carnival commit to multiple ships sailing in Australia year round? We currently live within driving distance of Brisbane so a ship based in Brisbane is important to us. 
 

2. Currently P&O cruises count towards us edging towards Elite Status on Princess but Carnival cruises don’t. Are they going to change this policy?
 

3. Recently Carnival fares seem to have risen significantly while P&O fares have remained reasonable. What pricing structure are they going to implement going forward. 
 

4. We enjoy sailing on slightly smaller ships even if they are a bit older. Will they be replaced with Mega ships?

 

5. Is there any chance they will tone down the garish decor for Australian tastes? I’m really not a fan of pink donuts on the walls and fried eggs on the ceiling. 
 

6. Carnival wants me to carry my mobile phone with me around the ship. P&O is happy to accommodate a Luddite like me. What are the chances?

 

7. P&O still cleans staterooms in the morning AND offers a tuner down service. Is Carnival going to reinstate this?

 

I fear I already know the answer to most of these questions. 🤷‍♂️
But at least I’ve had an opportunity to vent. I guess I'll get over it. 
 

 

Sparky I'm with you 100%. P&O has always been good for a cheap getaway. I can hear Carnival's cash registers ringing already!!!

[dizzy1948]

34 minutes ago, Witchymob said:

Looks like we are back to being the forgotten people of the cruise world.  It was great when Princess came to WA for winter seasons from 2008 onwards and we cruised every year until 2018, then there was no cruise in 2019 the covid and now it seems it is back to looking for international lines stopping on their World cruises to pick up a sector maybe,if we are prepared to fly, which I probably am not. I do miss cruising there really is no holiday quite like it and the caravan is a poor second.

Best part for us is - we booked the repositioning cruise from Freo to Adelaide. Now cancelled. Also booked and paid for the return flights Adelaide to Perth. Just had emails from P&O about refund or offer of future cruises.  (We'd booked 2 cruises) Oh, the joys of retirement, got all the time in the world to solve this little lot, seeing as we can't get on a cruise to anywhere, nowhere, somewhere!! 😜 

Edited June 4 by dizzy1948

[MicCanberra]

Push for a full refund and FCC with Carnival 

[reeves35]

From a marketing point of view, I would have to question how Carnival has handled this announcement.  Surely, they would have foreseen that not everyone would be thrilled by the announcement so it is puzzling that there was nothing new or interesting contained with it. 

 

A smarter move may have been to combine the closure (and Explorer retirement) announcement with something upbeat and positive like a fleet addition, a special series of farewell sailings...anything!  Instead, all we got was a dry piece of PR babble obviously written by a marketing department operative in Miami who probably hadn't heard of P&O Australia until being asked to write the press release. 

[ceeceeDee]

2 minutes ago, reeves35 said:

From a marketing point of view, I would have to question how Carnival has handled this announcement.  Surely, they would have foreseen that not everyone would be thrilled by the announcement so it is puzzling that there was nothing new or interesting contained with it. 

 

A smarter move may have been to combine the closure (and Explorer retirement) announcement with something upbeat and positive like a fleet addition, a special series of farewell sailings...anything!  Instead, all we got was a dry piece of PR babble obviously written by a marketing department operative in Miami who probably hadn't heard of P&O Australia until being asked to write the press release. 

Yes, the whole thing is about as exciting as a soggy, stale biscuit. The press release is hardly likely to fill die hard P&O cruisers with enthusiasm.

[pacificlover]

Luckily I am Elite with Princess having sailed many, many times with P&O and receiving the credits.  I wonder if it would be a wise move by those loyal P&O cruisers to take a Princess cruise to enable those P&O credits to be included before the change over.  Princess Elite is in my opinion the best loyalty program with bar set up and washing/ironing included.  I personally will no longer cruise with P&O or Carnival, as I have found Carnival to be not to my liking.  With my Princess perks, the extra I pay in fare price is recovered in reduced spending.

[SinbadThePorter]

9 minutes ago, pacificlover said:

I wonder if it would be a wise move by those loyal P&O cruisers to take a Princess cruise to enable those P&O credits to be included before the change over.

 

This has always been a bit confusing to me, but I thought that if you had a P&O Oz Cruisling number it was also automatically your Princess Captains Circle number.

[woodscruise]

With this news today, I wonder if the additional charges that P&O have will continue when the ships become Carnival. (This is one reason why I have not cruised P&O for a number of years). A prediction, Australia will lose at least one ship during the winter months.

[reeves35]

3 minutes ago, woodscruise said:

With this news today, I wonder if the additional charges that P&O have will continue when the ships become Carnival. (This is one reason why I have not cruised P&O for a number of years). A prediction, Australia will lose at least one ship during the winter months.

That is not a prediction, it seems to be already a fact.  Unless Luminosa no longer does Alaska seasons, there is no way this announcement is anything but a year-round capacity reduction.

 

[lyndarra]

5 hours ago, Sparky74 said:

5. Is there any chance they will tone down the garish decor for Australian tastes? I’m really not a fan of pink donuts on the walls and fried eggs on the ceiling.

I rarely notice decor while on board and certainly don't remember post cruise, except for one cruise which was garishly Egyptian themed. That may have been my one and only Carnival cruise - possibly Spirit?

[CountessCookie]

The thing which worries me is the "buisness as usual until March 2025." Maybe they don't plan any changes yet, but situations like this can be hard on staff (even if the same parent company). Mix that with customers having their last "P&O AU cruise" and I can see a change to the atmosphere onboard in the coming months.

(Or maybe I'm just salty over past experiences with things like company merges from an employees perspective 😅).

[Jim_P]

The Australian cruise industry certainly seems to be dying a fast death. It was only a couple of years ago that all the cruise lines were making big plans for Australia. Since then we've had Cunard pull out of the region,  Virgin pull out, Princess and RC reducing their fleet here and now we have Carnival and P&O merging to make a smaller fleet. Sad times for cruisers.