Where Have All The Cruisers Gone?

[hgatsawgrs]

Duplicate post on A

We have been on over 30 cruise in the past 6 years and have gravitated to be "O suite people" for all the standard reasons( informal, value,no smoking,quality,etc) . We have just booked a last minute Azamara cruise for this fall in the Medit. We, like others have seen the positive fews being expressed about the line and with the current prices for 2008 and 2009 being quite a reduction from O we decided to do it. I was quite surprised to find how many rooms( suites and regular) are available for this fall for both O and A.

I remember the times I called to get an O suite the day the rooms showed on the computer.

I wonder if summer cruisers are seeing signs that the ships are not full? At check-in do you see the "rooms available " signs up at the front desk?

What a great time to travel if you can afford the time (and money). Even Delta had business fares at a reasonable rate for this fall.

I know all the reasons( economy, oil, stock market, etc)- I am curious if current cruisers are noticing it?

[JeanneF]

Yes, I have noticed it. It definitely is the economy, stock market, gas prices. There is not much traffic on our roads here in the U.S.

We are sailing on Oceania western mediterranean Oct. 9th Barcelona to Rome and the message board since way back in 2007 have only 2 pages filled. That is surprising, as other cruises we have been on have so many people posting. We are having a difficult time getting people together to share tours, as they are prohibitive for only 2 or 4 people. 8 makes it cost effective.

[meow!]

On one hand, fares are increasing, and cruise lines are charging fuel surcharges, etc. On the other hand, there are more special deals. Carnival is having sales of less than $200 (less than $50 per diem) for four day Caribbean cruises (with an agency which cannot be named). That includes room, meals, entertainment and service, and is likely to be cheaper than your average daily expenditure at home!

 

With all those newbuilds in the next couple of years, there is going to be a glut down the road. The fat years for cruise lines are over, and the lean years are right ahead. That is good for us customers, a few years down the road, we just may have the best opportunities of the cycle! So, be patient in your choices.

[wripro]

Let's not be so quick to gloat about tough times ahead for the cruise lines. I guarantee you that along with price reductions will come commensurate cuts in quality and service. Personally, I'd prefer to pay a bit more and keep quality high, no matter which line I am sailing on.

[orchestrapal]

wripro I completely agree with you. I just hope the future does not only hold mass market lines and way overpriced 5* lines. The intermediate lines like O, Azamara and Regent have a place in the market even if it means they raise their prices in order to maintain quality. We too wold be willing to pay the difference.

[LHT28]

On one hand, fares are increasing, and cruise lines are charging fuel surcharges, etc. On the other hand, there are more special deals. Carnival is having sales of less than $200 (less than $50 per diem) for four day Caribbean cruises (with an agency which cannot be named). That includes room, meals, entertainment and service, and is likely to be cheaper than your average daily expenditure at home!

 

 

I do not think you can compare the Carnival with Oceania no matter how cheap the price is.

I would NOT go back to Carnival or any other mass market line after cruising with O.

 

There are still some aspects of O I like better than the things I have read about Azamara that will keep me away.

I am willing to pay the extra $$

 

Lyn

[meow!]

double posting -- please delete

[meow!]

I am not suggesting that you go to Carnival ("activity mass market"), we won't go there ourselves, though we do cruise Celebrity ("gentle mass market"). The point I am making is that by inference, cruise lines in general will come down in price in the next several years.

 

RSSC, for example, through some agents (cannot be named) is offering as high as $700 shipboard credit and nearly free business class air upgrade on some voyages. Oceania has made its stand (due to previous nightmare with Renaissance) in not offering price cuts. However, I won't be surprised if they start offering "included gratuities", "included soft drinks" and shipboard credits and then call it "luxury cruising at premium pricing" some time down the road! Any comments?

[orchestrapal]

Meow- The point I am making is that by inference, cruise lines in general will come down in price in the next several years.

From your mouth to God's ear! We will all benefit from that move.

[meow!]

I guarantee you that along with price reductions will come commensurate cuts in quality and service.

What you have said is often true, but not necessarily always so. In lean years, cruise lines have to accept leaner profits, sometimes losses over limited lengths of time (giving back to the public some of their takes from bumper years) to stay in the competition. Businesses sometimes perform better under pressure!

 

On an unrelated note but illustrative of market forces, California housing prices are now much lower than three years ago, has the quality of the housing gone down too? Did car quality decline and auto workers perform less well with pay cuts?

[wripro]

Meow,

 

You cannot compare a fixed product like a house or a car with one that is intangible like software on a cruise. Service has already deteriorated on many of the luxury cruise lines from what it was years ago. On Silversea, for example, they have cut back on the number of waiters in the dining room, taken caviar off the all inclusive menu, gone from two suite attendants to one and the list goes on. If they cut prices they will cut service and quality. It is the only way they can survive. I want them to survive, selfishly, so I am willing to pay more to sail on certain lines.

[LHT28]

We have already seen the larger cruise companies lower prices & then charge for every thing once on board.

Some have implemented a daily "Service Charge" because many cruisers remove the tips for "freestyle cruising" stating they did not receive service from the same waiters so why tip.

 

Many lines have Ice cream, coffee, pizza, fast food & specially restaurants which come with a fee for use.

 

I am sure if you read through the other forum you can see the other complaints that have arisen.

JMHO

I cannot see in the future with the cost of gas, oil, food & wages rising the lines can lower their prices without losing some of the quality in food or service.

Then go the passengers

 

Lyn

[meow!]

Meow,

 

On Silversea, for example, they have cut back on the number of waiters in the dining room, taken caviar off the all inclusive menu, gone from two suite attendants to one and the list goes on.

Yes, Silversea cut off free flowing caviar a few months ago, that is unfortunate. When we were on the Shadow last December, there were two cabin attendants. Did they cut that too? (I haven't read that on the Silversea board.) Service in the dining room was fine and the Philippino staff were jovial (their home currency, unlike the euro, devalued with the US$), were they changed or cut back too? This is the first time I read this!

[2kiwis]

Duplicate post on A

We have been on over 30 cruise in the past 6 years and have gravitated to be "O suite people" for all the standard reasons( informal, value,no smoking,quality,etc) . We have just booked a last minute Azamara cruise for this fall in the Medit. We, like others have seen the positive fews being expressed about the line and with the current prices for 2008 and 2009 being quite a reduction from O we decided to do it. I was quite surprised to find how many rooms( suites and regular) are available for this fall for both O and A.

I remember the times I called to get an O suite the day the rooms showed on the computer.

I wonder if summer cruisers are seeing signs that the ships are not full? At check-in do you see the "rooms available " signs up at the front desk?

What a great time to travel if you can afford the time (and money). Even

I know all the reasons( economy, oil, stock market, etc)- I am curious if current cruisers are noticing it?

 

Well maybe now the cruiselines will wake up and realise that if they give non-Americans simliar benefits to the Americans they may have a much bigger market from which to fill their ships. We usually pay a lot more in $US than the Americans for the same thing. On our last cruise there were many disgruntled non-Americans on-board when they realised how much extra they had been charged. However, I suspect that most probably nothing will change, we will continue to pay a premium while specials and discounted fares abound in America to fill the ships.

[harryh]

I agree, 2kiwis, we will be looking for more equitable fares next month when Oceania release the Australia-NZ cruises for 2009-2010. We are also hoping our TA can find a solution for booking this cruise in August and getting the on board discount when we are cruising 6 weeks later - very tricky!

 

To Hgatsawgrs, we too are hooked on Oceania but can't ignore the attractive offers from Azamara, particularly now the positive reviews we have seen. Maybe it's time to take a chance.

[hgatsawgrs]

To HarryH

I'll post our comparison of A to O when we get back- Am particularly interested as to the comparison of Sky suite to PH . We have used ph recently as the cost of OS where so high and Ph was just fine.

[orchestrapal]

hgatsawgrs: We too look forward to reading your comparison of A to O as we are booked for October 2009. It was wonderful to be able to book an owners sweet without a hassle. I'm afraid that after a few more great reviews for A this may no longer be possible. Enjoy your cruise.:)

[hgatsawgrs]

To Orchestrapal

Look at Az oct 9 2008, and see how 5 of their PH's(like OS) are available today. They go for about the same as O os suites. So, it looks like the movement to A is mostly at the lower end of the room sizes(including the small suites).That is where the cost differential is the most.

I know generalizing on an example of one is dangerous, but....

It must be an interesting and difficult time to be in the marketing/pricing departments of cruise lines.

[Fontana]

Yes, I also look forward to your review on AZ, hgatsawgrs. We recently sailed on OS (paying a highly inflated $$ amount, for our PH, as did the other Aussies on board).

 

I'm not going to rush and book a cruise for next year at this stage, I think with the current worldwide economic climate, there may be some good deals available in 2009.:)

[orchestrapal]

To htagsawgrs: That is what we have been finding also. If the comparison in service, food etc is positive we will be very happy to have this alternative.

[meow!]

Just curious, what has happened to November 6, Istanbul to Rome on the Nautica? A certain agency website (cannot be named) shows that one voyage to be rather empty, with every category open, namely some 3 out of 8 owners suites, 3 out of 4 vista suites, and ALL other categories from PH1 to G with more than seven vacancies each (the maximum the tables can show). The voyage immediately before it is close to full, with only category G left, and the one still before (the one we will be on) is also nearly full, with only quite a few inside cabins available.

 

So what is wrong with that November 6 voyage? Any reason? What will Oceania do with it, change policy and discount, or stick to policy and sail half empty?

[sacway]

We just returned home yesterday after our fantastic 10-day Insignia cruise, bookended with terrific 3-day stays in Barcelona and Rome.

 

Can't help but dread the sardines-in-a-can, peanuts, and potential problems for each cruise's air transport coming and going. And had our concerns validated with this latest return. We'd booked our flight months in advance, and set up a 1 pm flight so we could have breakfast at the hotel and go to the airport at a reasonable hour. Unilaterally, the airline changed our reservations some weeks out as they do for many; cancelling and renumbering flights at will, or at the bidding of their yield management software. Our "new" flight was scheduled for 9:30 am which meant we had to get up well before 6 am to get to the airport and check in. Once at the airport, we were informed the airline had delayed our flight three hours (I spoke with one of the pilots on another flight, he speculated perhaps that someone on our crew was ill; I had checked the flight's status online just a few hours earlier, and it did not indicate a delay; neither were we emailed of the delay at any point, though if it had come, even at 6 am, we would have received it, and at least had a decent breakfast.) We lost another hour somehow on boarding; back across the Atlantic, we lost a few minutes with delay at the arrival gate, a few minutes delay at customs, a few minutes delay at baggage, and our transfer plane had "closed" its boarding just as we arrived. Ten years ago the plane saved our seats for us knowing full well we were in transit, but now airlines apparently overbook to make sure the flights are full and then just put bumped pax up at a cheap hotel near the airport as a cost of doing business. (about 20 arrived at the hotel with us, not just from our flight.) It took nearly two hours in the airline's customer service line to get a voucher for the hotel and our boarding passes for our next-day reservations, though we knew within a few minutes of missing our plane exactly what would happen to us, since we telephoned the airline customer service dept (this did not spare us the time in line, since the processing required a paper hotel voucher.) Our airline-supplied vouchers wouldn't cover the cost of dinner which we discovered when the waiter told us we'd need to cough up $20 each to pay for our late evening meal at the only restaurant within walking distance. Our rebooked flight left at 7 am, so that meant another 5 am wake-up, combined with some 6 hours of time zone jet lag. We had to pay $8 to make two hotel phone calls to contact one neighbor en route to pick us up and to make arrangements for another way home; it would have cost the airline less than a dollar to provide us with a phone card to do the same task.

 

We were "lucky" in all this as the airline provided us transport home the next day; some people in our line were not able to get a confirmed flight till the day after. (Is it any surprise that some people, with no food and no sleep and no way home, lose all sense of personal rationality and rant at the customer service reps? Is it any surprise that these reps, who are losing jobs and pensions at a steady rate, find it hard to care much about the "lost luggage" of humanity that stands before them?)

 

For this experience, we paid nearly twice the ticket price we paid in 2004.

 

Though it's not the cruise lines' fault, it is their problem. As the cost and trouble of getting to and from ports worsen, it affects demand for cruises. Oceania's "airfare included" is only a partial solution. Limiting my selection to cruises that depart or arrive close to home is only a partial solution. I'd love to see all the world's ports, but I dread the beginning and end of each cruise and wonder if cruising is worth the trouble, regardless of how low (or high) the cost of the cruise itself may be.

[harryh]

You are right, meow, the agency website that I use to monitor these things shows many vacancies at the suite level. On checking the Nov 14 Insignia cruise Barcelona to Lisbon there are also many available suites. 5 OS, 2 VS, 6 PH1, 7 PH2, 7 PH3. The Nov1 Regatta cruise Athens to Barcelona also has many suites available although mostly at the PH level. Of the three only the Nov 6 sailing is still offering 2 for 1 fares.

 

My best guess is that these cruises are at the end of the Med season as it is winding down and perhaps not so popular, with the weather a bit cooler, although that wouldn't bother me. Enjoy your Venice to Athens cruise, we are doing Venice to Rome a month earlier.

[threeedogmedia]

Meow, can you tell me offline the web site that you are talking about that has up to date booking information on the different staterooms? It would be nice to know these things before thinking about booking a particular cruise at the last minute.

 

I'm at threeedogmedia @ Yahoo. com

 

Karen

[LHT28]

Can't help but dread the sardines-in-a-can, peanuts, and potential problems for each cruise's air transport coming and going. And had our concerns validated with this latest return. We'd booked our flight months in advance, and set up a 1 pm flight so we could have breakfast at the hotel and go to the airport at a reasonable hour. Unilaterally, the airline changed our reservations some weeks out as they do for many; cancelling and renumbering flights at will, or at the bidding of their yield management software. .

 

sorry to hear of your ordeal getting home.

I fear this is the way the airlines will be in the next while.

What airline did you use?

I would like to minimize our ordeal next year if possible.;)