mowogo

Everyone plays games with single cabins since the business model means getting more people onboard to upsell them various items onboard means they genuinely don’t want too many cabins sailing with just a single person.

Thankfully the company is very against that idea. The ships are the amusement park. I hope the people getting that shift haven’t experienced Ocean Cay so they don’t appreciate how much the downgrade is. Ocean Cay helps balance out a lot of the issues of MSC when sailing in the main portion of the ship.

The great solo deals with the status match from hotels drew me to MSC last year. While Florida prices have gone up (though really just pricing closer to comparable class ships from other providers rather than the older generation), prices on the Meraviglia out of NYC can still be considered steals, especially the Bermuda cruises.

Change some of the meeting rooms into a WeWork style facility. Rather than try and deal with upgrading the cabins so a small percentage of guests can work, convert space to where guests that want dedicated space to work can work. Some people will want to work in a room with a view, and some of the lounges can easily accommodate that already. The key will be to provide options not dictate where and how people can work while at sea.

I’ve experienced tubs that were actually hot, I’ve had tubs that weren’t much hotter on the pool. I’ve experienced this on MSC, Carnival, and Princess. I expect to experience this on HAL as well, and any other lines I try in the future.

Figure it is 40 minute light rail ride from west lake to the airport. You can Uber to Seattle Center fairly easily and it is under 15 minutes from the port. I have Clear and Pre-Check so getting through Security isn’t an issue so I don’t need to get there 3 hours before my flight.

The problem at that size is not feeling too crowded, but how they manage the crowds. I’ve experienced a sold out ship of 3500 handle crowds better than ships operating 1,000 passengers below capacity. And the recent trend of shrinking the theaters to the point they require reservations definitely makes ships feel fuller.

Sometimes the value is in just having to pay for lodging somewhere. I’m seriously considering a MSC Magnifica 3 day because Key West and their private island for days is less than I would get for a hotel room for a single night to even have the full day in Key West available. Their private island becomes a bonus destination and is a beautiful marine reserve where even with 3,400 people on the ship, I was able to get a whole section of protected beach to myself. Cruising for value means the value sweet spot is always a moving target, and HALs ships are hit especially hard since they are smaller so have more fixed cost per passenger. The good news is that market pressures are making it where they can’t raise prices as much as costs are increasing so value is still there. Yes the experience is different, but the experience was evolving anyway. Sometimes that just provides an excuse to try out different lines that have an itinerary that is interesting. Sometimes you just have to do a little more work to get value. And sometimes the value is just at a higher point.

Not end the vacation, but rush to get to exploring Seattle. With a 1:30 flight, a 7:30 disembarkation is perfect to get a little sightseeing in before the flight. Especially since Port Valet handles the checked bags. Based on my cruise timing last year I was able to get the Space Needle and Chihuly Gardens in before I needed to head to the airport.

I’d say maybe a bit longer, but it basically would be because they got an offer to make getting rid of the last of the R class. Costa only has 2 ships that would not automatically be the largest ship in the HAL fleet by a significant margin to even keep capacity close to level.

I doubt this is really going to be substantial changes in those excursions (with a few exceptions), just now some premium ones will have National Geographic branding. Very much like the Princess partnership with Discovery.

That 12-1 window is crazy since pretty much everyone is trying to get back on in that one hour and I think they want to try and depart by getting people in line at 12 instead of 12:30. Can’t blame them since Ketchikan is such a short stop people try and maximize their time which can mean delays and I’ve already seen some Princess cruises having their Victoria stops shortened due to speed regulations which could then stack the problems with Victoria being the most important stop legally for the round trip US trips.

Holland America wants to get Millennials because otherwise they aren’t going to be able to backfill the Baby Boomers that are not going to be able to cruise any more. And for reference, your elder Millennials are turning 40. Especially with people waiting until later in life to have children, there is a market for those without kids but who don’t want a party boat atmosphere. Honestly why I like MSC in the states, because compared to Carnival and even Princess their cultural differences create a more relaxed big ship experience even outside of yacht club. Yes they have a lot more kids, but they also have very good programming for the kids so that they aren’t likely to be running around all the time.

With the growth of the resort ships, HAL has become a small ship operator with the newest ships still holding less than the Carnival Conquest. Because of this HAL has to sell the destinations more, and gets to take advantage of the trend of newer ships being too large for many ports. By keeping the price point at the mass market cruise line point, they are able to provide a natural evolution for the CCL customer that may not be able to step up to Cunard or Seabourn.

CCL has already been playing around with cheap conversions so they have relatively little downtime shifting from Costa to Carnival, and likely could get away with even less work for conversion to HAL. I genuinely think the next cycle of business changes is to get ready for cutting weaker parts of the operation, and getting relatively new ships with lines that are likely to survive the next recession.

This is exactly why I had no issues booking the excursions. Yes it is captivity, but that is because they aren't able to go out into the wild, and those are the exact cases where you want to let people see them up close so that they aren't tempted to get too close out in the wild.

Flying between Canada and the states in general is expensive. I will gladly take the delays going across the border to pay for flights into Seattle vs Vancouver

I would assume they have numbers about how many of those reduced deposits convert into cruises, and how many actually just become free income because they make the process of cancelling to be not worth the time to claw back a $1 or $25 deposit for many cruisers. Anything more than a few clicks is too much work to get back a $1 deposit.

It is one thing we have to keep in mind is that the average cruise critic member is just an extremely small subset of cruisers. For reference, a group for my September cruise which only has Guarantee verandahs available has 36 people in the group on one of the most popular social sites in the world. While I am sharing some content from this site in that group, no idea how many will actually join and become posters. But even then you are talking 36 people out of a signature class ship even making it to the group stage is still a very small percentage of the ship. Even as they roll out tech, Holland America is still aware that a large portion of their customer base is not technologically savvy and that is shown in the roll calls and groups being much smaller.

The cruise reservation process is ripe for streamlining however they aren’t going to like the customer incentives they are going to have to offer to peel people away from the current system. New cruisers will easily shift to booking direct, but experienced cruisers are going to need incentives other than the lowest fare actually being able to be booked direct.

The mass market end is constrained on what they can charge, with CCL really suffering in their Carnival line with MSC blocking the price increases on the low end for Florida and now New York along with their strong position in Europe which has helped turn Costa into a shutdown target rather than strong line. And because of the reduced ability to raise fares in many markets, CCL is driven to push onboard spend higher through increased prices as well as increased promotion of opportunities.

Cruise line apps in general earn the low ratings they deserve because cruise lines fail to manage expectations properly on the app, and then fail to properly guide customers to the website for cruise management when they need to be using that prior to the cruise given the limited onshore capabilities of the app. With that said, Navigator is nowhere near the worst in the pack.

While many options with the cruise line may be booked, you are also in a market where you can fairly safely book excursions through third party sites.

It will start with trying to optimize operations in minor ways. Systems networked so that performance can be tracked and failures predicted. It will expand into ship event scheduling. Using a combination of your activity preferences, attendance, as well as the projected preferences based on the demographics the activities offered during a sailing can be customized. This can also extend to customer experience. The technology is out where a screen can focus a message just on you and utilizing a tracking camera can target the message just to you. To get the second screen, I was literally having to stand on someone’s shoulder, and utilizing medallions or room cards could serve as the tracker instead of the camera above. The flags are actually mirrors pointing to the main screen. With all the screens customized to you, they can start doing more targeted in ship advertising.

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