BWIVince

GMTA…. 😁 I literally had the exact same thoughts at the same moment. Haha Vince

I don’t understand the thought process behind mailing you a letter with the luggage tags and then making you print out the boarding document. Why not just print the boarding barcode on the welcome letter, or insert whatever document you need people to acknowledge in the envelope you’re already sending? I’m bombarded with all kinds of greenwashing in the travel industry by all kinds of suppliers, but this isn’t even that. It doesn’t save paper overall, it doesn’t save postage, it doesn’t save greenhouse gasses from shipping, it doesn’t save labor as it could be batch printed in the same queue as the letters — all it does is tasks the guests with one more chore and makes them use their paper for something Crystal seems too cheap to supply. Definitely not a great luxury experience. I’m kind of hoping they eventually move to the pre-printed luggage tags like the ones OC used starting in 2021, but I can at least understand why that’s a bigger project for another day. The poor experience of getting a mailing and then having to print your own boarding pass is a real head scratcher though. Vince

I agree with the previous posters…. I’ve flown on Icelandair in Saga Class and would happily do it again based on price and schedule. It’s not for everyone, and as Keith mentioned if you’re expecting or needing a lie-flat business product, it’s worth buying up to an airline like Delta. That said, the flight to DC is about as long as a transcon from here and the seats were similar in size and style to our domestic first class seats in the US, but I found them more comfortable. The meals were also streamlined and straightforward, but I enjoyed them a lot. Lots of Icelandic touches in both the meal service and beverages. Service was friendly and attentive in Saga. The lounge in KEF was cute and had a nice variety of tasty nibbles. Overall, I’d say be aware of what you’re paying, and what they’re promising. Icelandair is a discount airline that doesn’t offer the same business class product as full service international carriers. For the price I paid though, I thought I got an excellent value and had a very enjoyable trip in Saga Class. Vince

Come along and find out! 😁 There may or may not be other Chez patrons on the sailing. Vince

I wouldn’t put much stock in the times listed, that site just aggregates data from other schedules. It’s a great general guide, but the details may not be 100% current or complete when you get down to that level. Definitely go by what Crystal gives for port times, they will advise you of any changes when they are confirmed enough to communicate. PortMiami currently has 10 cruise ship berths, so 8 ships in port is a pretty average day for them. Miami is also used to handling some pretty massive ships, so if a Crystal ship is taking up one of those spots, it probably means there will be a few less passengers in port that day than usual. 🙂. Not saying it’s not crazy busy, just that they’re at least used to processing lots of people. Vince

I know it sounds like your and FT’s comments are at odds, but I think you both are speaking to the entire pricing integrity disaster that the airlines created a few decades ago, and have been working hard to untangle for years. You’re both correct in your perspectives, it’s just more complicated than that. I have an analysis of what makes the airlines the cautionary tale that lines like Crystal are trying to avoid, that I’ll post as soon as I get some time. It’s actually quite relevant to Crystal’s strategy moving forward. Vince

It's my pleasure... There is a lot more that goes into these processes than the average customer sees, and a lot of them are not Crystal-specific, and those I ususally have lots of experience with. I'm always happy to share background on things like this. Vince

Travel suppliers these days usually do tiered openings for booking for a variety of reasons. They generally start with the smallest group of customers first and grow each subsequent tier in size and scope. The first group or two are considered "soft openings" because of the relatively limited size of the first group (or two), and they usually don't publish a firm date for this booking release. Now, in order to minimize the testing timeline and not have to buffer in a whole lot of extra days which may end up just being wasted, it's become customary for the first tiers to just fire off emails to the first group around a target day (which is sometimes just a specified week) when everything is ready, and most people wouldn't be the wiser unless they have a personal connection at the company that gave them a heads up. After the first tier you give more structure to the release dates, including a "published" opening date that is firm and (hopefully) never needs to move because everything is normally on-track by that point no matter how the content build goes. This essentially allows travel suppliers to never/rarely miss a milestone, while at the same time rewarding certain groups of customers that need or deserve special advance privileges. Vince

At this point they're not making anyone wait, they're going to open bookings for the first tier as soon as all of the content management loading is verified and everything passes QA testing, which is reportedly forecasted to be sometime mid-week. There is always a risk that might open late if there's a delay, but that's why you have a soft opening for the first tier. I should also point out that we seldom really know what the ACTUAL first tier of a soft opening is, we only know what the first tier anyone talks about is. To your point though, we're getting closer and closer to Crystal booking berths on a normal schedule. While they were booking 2025, they almost had to be booking 2026, and key dates for 2027 and 2028. They've really had to rush to get 2025 together, but starting with 2026 they should start to be able to be more strategic with release dates, and starting with 2027 they should be able to start to be more strategic with port bookings. Vince

+1... I'd also point out that the first tier opening is a soft opening in function, which is one of the reasons they open to a limited group at first. That means it's literally designed to slip if needed... So if they actually end up needing more time, at this point it would be too early to tell. But we'll find out on those days whether the itineraries appear or not. 🙂

Keith is right... The current prevailing sales methodology in the travel industry is to tease new offers in advance, but not show the full details of the offer until as close to they can book the offer as possible. The thought process is that when someone reads all the details, if they're interested in the offer, you want them to take action on it then and there. If people need more time to make a decision that's great, but among the people who are ready to book immediately, the odds of losing that momentum grow by the day the longer someone waits. Obviously since Crystal can't currently gate the content by tiers they're going to lose that advantage for some passengers anyway, but if they release the itineraries too early they lose momentum on all of the passengers. Vince

Yeah, that’s a definite scenario too, but IME that’s been more rare than the guarantee assignments clearing in a higher category. IME, until the unique situation during the Covid restart, they usually had a specific reason to offer paid upgrades, and it wasn’t just a routine program. The upgrades they were selling in 2021 were really the first broad scale paid upgrades, but we all remember the inventory situation that made those unique. Vince

That’s a valid question…. The second step in the booking process is to review a fare quote, where the breakout would show the full construction. Part of the reason for this method by cruise lines these days is to accommodate the use of templated content management systems and the need for consistency on each web page. Once upon a time every web page for every sailing was different, but now every sailing detail page is just one page, and it populates the same fields from a data table, so the format has to be identical for every sailing. This is yet another reason behind displaying simplified final fares, adding a random notes field for particular sailings would throw off the template for non-B2B sailings, or complicate the terms block by having to have various flavors of nearly identical terms that could be easily mixed up. That said, while the detailed breakout is meant to be that indicator, there are other hacks to figure out is a “sailing” is actually multiple joined segments. The first are multiple sailing dates for the same ship — you can see your sailing is actually a combo when you see the individual segments listed. A TA would see the segments on a list of voyage numbers as well, since there would be listings for multiple durations for the same date. Some longer combos are also listed as “Grand Journeys” on the website. Finally, you can often see a turnaround port in the itinerary…. In your case the ship comes back to FLL for a turnaround day mid-cruise, before sailing to the other side of the Caribbean — that’s a pretty big tell that shows on a lot of combos. Again, there’s an actual process for this, those are just other indicators you can also use. Vince

I know this isn’t your preference, but this is EXACTLY why they have to always display the gross fare and then show the discounts now. The B2B discount should only be applied once for each segment, no matter how many B2Bs are booked, and this format shows clearly when it’s applied or missing. Applying it to the $9100 would be a violation. There’s a science to this, even if it’s not to your liking. Vince

I’ll toss in that the only upgrades I’ve ever heard of or received on Crystal were operational upgrades, where Crystal assigned an upgrade because they needed a specific cabin for some reason, an assigned cabin went out of service, or they were assigning guarantees that were accepted in consideration of which inventory was available higher in the categories. Crystal’s dedication to pricing integrity and not just passing out willy nilly comp upgrades is my favorite practices of old Crystal. I hope that continues. Vince

We can debate the industry best practice (and in some cases regulatory requirement) of advertising the final booking price, and then showing the fare breakdown as part of the fare quoting process, but honestly I think the odds of this changing are about as close to zero as I’ve ever seen in my professional career. Sure, Crystal could add verbiage to the website on the final quotes pointing people to see the breakdown, but in this case the agent saw the final breakdown and misunderstood why the B2B discount was applied, so that wouldn’t have helped any at all. I think what it came down to is just a difference of perspective — a lack of situational awareness by both the travel agent and the call center agent. The agent was focused on the gross fare and was probably questioning why the B2B discount didn’t come off the fare they expected, and the call center agent saw the B2B discount applied correctly and probably assumed the travel agent was requesting was B2B discount be double-applied because of the subsequent booking when the agent questioned why the 5% wasn’t applied to the post-discount fare. Vince

The price on the website is the final price after the B2B discount, taxes, etc., which is the price Crystal is supposed to advertise. The invoice breaks out the discounts, including the 5%, but prices the two segments that make up the 20 day B2B as the total gross fare, as it’s supposed to because that number is equally important in the breakout. I think the confusion was the OP wasn’t thinking of the 20 days as a B2B in itself, and that the total price already included the 5% off. It’s still off by $30-something, but as mentioned upthread that can probably be explained in the way the discounts and fees are calculated, that’s how those differences normally happen. That’s a whole different story than the base fares though. Vince

I don’t think they've done a good job of that, BUT there is more context on how we got to this point that isn’t specific to Crystal. In the old days cruise lines advertised gross fares and then listed all of the additional fees and discounts needed to construct the final cost. Over the years regulators have given different guidance on changes, but the most recent pressure on cruise lines is to streamline things and display net final fares with as few numbers in the advertised price block as possible, and display the breakout on an invoice or later step in the sales process. (The same pressure was applied to airlines, that now generally use the same flow.) The thought is the customer can compare the bottom line fares without extra noise, but still have the transparency of the backup fare construction before purchase. Crystal is providing both here, per industry best practice a la 2023. That said, any agent at Crystal should be able to walk your travel agent through that fare construction. That’s a core part of their job as reservationists. That’s the part that baffles and disappoints me. There is no reason anyone should feel frustrated or confused by this. Vince

Im not sure I’d call it misleading — the 20 day cruise is itself a combo cruise and is advertised at the net fare including the discount. Unfortunately, discounts like that don’t change the taxes and fees, so at some point on an invoice they will have to show you the original fare, the taxes, and the discounts applied for transparency on how it was constructed. (They have to do the same for commission purposes as well.). What’s missing here though is a clear explanation, which I’m at a loss as to why neither Crystal nor your travel agent was able to provide. I’m especially confused as to why the travel agent, when they couldn’t figure it out, had you call Crystal. Crystal should have been able to explain it better to them, but your agent should have been able to go back to Crystal to clear that up if they didn’t understand it, without making that your problem, IMHO. Vince

My pleasure, Ivi! The day my agent made my booking, I LITERALLY clicked through every card and page in excitement to see what was in there. 😁 That’s the only reason it came to mind so quickly. Vince

Is it a mid/aft Double Veranda (PP with double occupancy)? Current pricing shows at $9100 for those, so I would question the price difference. Was the invoice the agency one from Crystal or the one your travel agent issued? Also, was there any kind of deposit put down for the waitlist? Generally speaking, adding your name to a waitlist doesn't guarantee pricing against any fare changes, but depending on the amount of deposit placed to get on the waitlist, that can be subject to change. That doesn't seem to explain what appears to have happened here though, if you're being charged more than the published fare. Outside of a fare changing while you're waitlisted, I've never heard of an actual premium being charged for being waitlisted. I suspect there's a miscommunication somewhere. Vince

I think they're going to have to release the itineraries to the public all at once, and just filter bookings by tiers instead. Last I heard they were still working with their CRM vendor to get all the history data processed and imported, but they do have the CS contact data (or at least they had mine). So long story short, don't worry that you don't see your history, it likely won't be needed to browse or book (unless a miracle happens quickly). Vince

I was kind of pondering this earlier this morning, and this is actually something I'd love to get a lot more clarity on. We all know the history here with Symphony, but there seems to be some new developments on that front, yet we're still kind of in the same place with the itineraries. I've seen and read various interviews with Crystal execs talking about environmental upgrades to both ships, and how Symphony now meets certain environmental standards (or maybe she always met some of those). What I don't know is how this impacts her deployment away from the Americas, if at all, or if environmental compliance has anything to do with where she sails anymore. If they're going to invest in environmental upgrades, you would think they would choose meaningful ones that allow greater flexibility in deployment and reduced limitations, but there are some specific requirements out there which are very expensive to retrofit or not really feasible for Symphony, so I get that too. When I first started in the travel industry in the travel industry as a young'n in the late 80's and early 90's, cruise lines almost universally deployed their newest/largest ships on the highest demand markets with the easiest access to their core customer base, and their smallest/oldest ships on the most remote deployments with the narrowest demand. Looking at 2024 and 2025, at a high level, this sort of fits that M.O. the same way it fits the environmental compliance situation. It's just hard for me to tell where one situation starts and the other situation ends... It would help me if they would elaborate on some of these things that just kind of get glossed over in some of these interviews. Vince

Ivi, when you log into your account, and click into your booking, there is a button marked “Complete Guest Documents” which brings up a travel dashboard. On that dashboard there’s a button marked “Suite Preferences” in the travel documents and preferences section. In there, there’s an option for twin beds or one queen. Hope this helps. Vince

This is one of the biggest advantages of being owned by one of the most prominent DMCs in the world — they have to begin contracting space for major international events for their other clients 2-3 years ahead of their announcement to the public. 😇 Vince