Have you heard about cruiselines overbooking?

[mconthehighseas]

I heard someone talking today about someone with a GTY reservation being BUMPED, because cruiselines are now overbooking, like the airlines!

 

Has anyone else heard this?

 

I am asking this HERE, because I had booked a GTY for my next Cruise! :eek: RCL's website shows that I have a stateroom, but at 50+days away, that can change??!!!!

[LibertyBelle]

Carnival has some issues with that this past season, they have a mathematical equation that tells them how many they can oversell based on the common number of rooms that cancel at 60 days when final payment is due. What they found was that no one was canceling and they were oversold. It is generally not common practice for cruise lines to oversell and I have not heard anything about RCCL every doing this. The Carnival situation was at a new home port so they were not expecting the reception they got from the market and to my knowledge the situation was taken care of. I would not worry about your cruise :)

[Firefighterhoop]

Yikes, that would be horrible to find out that your cruise was cancelled!

[JanetMarie]

that would be like getting bumped from your airline seat...hmm...are they offering another cruise?

[cei3]

The Carnival incident happened in Baltimore this summer.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=83257&highlight=Baltimore+bumping

[psw]

when you get bumped its much like an airline bump, you get offered upgrades, shipboard crdits on another ship, another date, ect...While Carnival was a grand fiasco this year out of baltimore it does happen on other lines. I preferr princess way of handleing it better than carnivals, with carnival those people had no choice, while on princess they keep calling people offering bigger and better to transfer to another date until they find enough takers..

But since you have a room number I wouldnt worry, those that got bumped in bmore that I knew didnt have room numbers assigned when they were bumped

[PlaneJoy]

Cruiselines have been overbooking for years due to the fact that you can cancel up to 60 days before departure without penalty. They do their best to predict how many cancellations they will receive and how many cabins will be filled for each sailing.

 

Carnival got caught this summer in an unpredictable situation. You have a standard "no show" or "cancellation" factor for every market, every cruise, every day of departure by season. Baltimore did not go along with the model and hence they were dealing with a very drastic over sold situation. They even cancelled a church group of 100 people that had booked a year in advance!

 

Cruiseline can pretty much "firm up" their sailings about 45 day out, where as airlines only know of the day of departure how many people don't show up. The problem with an oversold cruise though is most people can't be as flexible to change 5+ days of vacation as they can 2-3 hours flight time for being bumped.