BWIVince

This is just my personal opinion, but I wouldn't wait to book once onboard. I would book my reservations as a contingency on the nights and times I'd think I wanted to dine, just to hold a backup plan, and then cancel or change them when you find out the solo group plans work for you after you get onboard. That way you have a backup at times you like, just in case the solo group plans don't suit or work out. You can always release your current reservation and switch to the group table, but there might not be space to book your own new table on the dates and times you like once onboard. Vince

Kind of a local note, but a Crystal-adjacent one…. I was saddened to learn of the passing of local DC-area artist Avis Collins Robinson, wife of Crystal speaker and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Eugene Robinson. Avis passed away over the weekend after a battle with cancer, at the age of 70 — her and Gene were married 45 years. I’ve always been a huge fan of Avis’s paintings and quilts…. I believe her and Gene lived across the river more recently, but Avis was born in a historic African American settlement very near where I grew up outside Sandy Spring, Maryland, and I loved her representation of that perspective through her work. She will be very missed. Vince

With Windjammer out of the picture for so long, it opens the door for Crystal to grab the branding, Crystal Barefoot Cruises. 😄

It’s definitely in-fashion right now, but in fairness, people aren't wearing sneakers with the kind of old-school dark business suits that most Crystal passengers (including myself) are wearing…. They’re typically more modern, more stylized suits that lend themselves to more fashionable footwear. Vince

The original plans from when each ship was launched, or the current plans from each (or Harmony’s last season with Crystal in her case)? Vince

Dollars to donuts, you're looking at this completely differently than anyone on Crystal's sales team. I'm willing to bet no one at Crystal is/was even paying serious attention to September or October 2023 load factors. I'm sure they see them, but probably just say "yep" and keep scrolling. I'm also willing to bet every single morning, every set of eyes on Crystal's sales team are looking closely at every single sailing of both ships next summer. Vince

I agree overall, but this goes back to my earlier comment about these strategies being effective in certain situations, but can equally be disastrous in others... And why the same execs who have done these things previously aren't doing the same thing here. Adding inclusions is perfect when you have "shoulder" inventory to sell, but potentially could be a disaster when you try to apply it as a primary strategy for a couple of months of low occupancy (depending on the inclusions you need to move the needle). If you have certain dates where sales are soft in between well booked sailings, then you already have the crew and the variable costs for those cabins to be occupied, and it makes more sense to toss in an incentive. Also, while the incentives need to be impactful, to just sell shoulder dates the incentives don't typically need to be doorbusters. In a case like the September and October sailings though, if they had piled on something like free air or a large "as you wish" credit, they're increasing their variable costs by having to bring in full-price crew for lower margin guests, plus they're adding costs that either have a direct or partial cash outlay for the cruise line (depending on the inclusion -- air more so, onboard credit a little less so/guest-dependent). Moreover, you need more than the inclusions you'd need for shoulder inventory, to move the needle on a whole season you need doorbusters, which have a higher cost. This is why we have a whole toolbox of tools to drive sales, and why sometimes suppliers just leave well enough alone instead of trying to incentivize sales at a lower margin. Vince

Pricing integrity and variable costs. Crystal is doing it on certain sailings too, but you can only do this to a certain degree and only in certain cases, before it quickly becomes counterproductive unless you're trying to recalibrate where the fares should be longer-term. Heavy discounting on sailings already open for booking cannibalizes existing revenue, and cruise lines adjust capacity and staffing around seasonal demand -- so Crystal has only been staffing their ships to a certain level based on average demand. You can't adjust crew week-to-week, but if you only have 100 or so cabins occupied for several months, you don't staff a full compliment of stewardesses (for example) during that time. So there is a balancing act in there... Getting a body in a berth isn't a guarantee you'll make more money, it's entirely possible to add paying customers and lose more money than you would if the berths sailed empty (in this segment), because of the factors above. Vince

I love it when I get flack for giving industry insights (not from you), only for my insights to turn out to be correct and relevant to the situation. 😄 Vince

There are a variety of reasons for this typical curve, but as Keith noted, not everyone can back out of their existing commitments even if the penalty on the cruise itself is minimal or free... (Other arrangements might be nonrefundable, existing trips may have other commitments, may have trouble using miles on shorter notice, etc.) ...But even more people just aren't interested in backing out of existing arrangements -- that's the bucket I fall into. I love Crystal, but I can't imagine a scenario where I would cancel an existing planned trip just to book a Crystal cruise on months notice. I just booked my next cruise with Crystal when I planned my next vacation, after my other travel plans. ...Of course others feel and book differently, but the curve shows tells the story. Vince

Keith, was that taken in May? Vince

This isn’t specifically directed at Terry’s comment, but I’ve read several comments on the board about influencers lately that really make me think people are stuck on some kind of stereotype and really don’t understand their bigger role in the travel industry. First, unless you catch one of them recording an editorial segment (which is rare because that is hard to do with people around), it’s not obvious who is an influencer and who isn’t. Many of us regular passengers take the same photos and videos that influencers do, Similarly they don’t fit into an age demographic or visual stereotype — I follow roughly 90-100 different influencers across the spectrum of the travel industry, and many of them are senior citizens. Second, I’m sure there are teenagers out there who go out and buy a product at Target because they saw an influencer that they want to be just like rave about something on TikTok, but that’s not generally the role of influencers in the travel industry. Most travelers use influencers coverage of a hotel, airline or cruise as a deep dive into the product, not as a critically balanced review. Sure, influencers give opinions, but most of us that follow particular influencers either learn quickly how to align our preferences with theirs, or completely ignore that part. Many of the influencers I follow have completely opposite tastes and preferences from mine v= I don’t follow them because I need someone to tell me what to buy, I follow them because they can document every aspect of a product and I can then process that for what I need. Vince

I don’t think it has anything to do with labor, as much as waste…. It’s just as much trouble to print 20 as 200. I’m a paper person, and a thousand times over prefer to flip through a paper publication, but we’re a dying breed. My entire company is completely paperless, and the employees under 40 can’t even imagine why we used to print things off. I can honestly see that a lot of people think it’s archaic to clutter your stateroom with paper schedules, or have to carry them around through the day, even though that suits me 100%. Someday, like everything else, this will go all digital. 😞 Vince

Well, none of us do! 🙂 We’ll keep you in the loop!

You have to opt-in to the emails, since your permission to be contacted doesn’t convey to a new company that buys the data (or that would defeat the purpose). Since A&K has major operations in the EU, I can’t imagine they have any part of their company that isn’t compliant with GDPR and the other patch quilt of privacy regulations covering their target markets at this point. Vince

If you do t feel you’re getting enough of it, I’ll happily send you some of mine. 🫤 Vince

YUM! Oh, blast from the past... Perry's was a real DC fixture when I was a kid -- it's nice to see them still making a mark. (Also a fixture of DC's gay community back in the day.) Vince

Next to the Century... The Club 2100. 🙂 Though the Century fit the neighborhood theme as well! Vince

How about the name of the third cabaret lounge (Harmony's)? 😁 Spoiler -- the lounge was named after the address of Crystal's first HQ (Fox Plaza)... The corridor the lounge was similarly named after the same street the office was on, so the lounge name was fitting. Vince

Same here…. I can’t tell you how many brochures I’ve skipped downloading because I didn’t want to receive all the emails that would follow…. Unfortunately, that’s a marketing best practice these days in travel, so resistance like ours is baked into their expectation, so I’m not going to move that needle in 2023. 😞 Vince

I didn’t mean the post to do anything like that…. 😞 But I’ve always thought it might be interesting sometime to have a thread about all of the unintended consequences of improvements at Crystal, including some of the “it seemed like a great idea at the time” design reversals that backtracked in the third (Serenity) iteration. Vince

You nailed it, Keith! The concept for the Palm Court on Serenity was a shift from the design of Symphony’s…. It was given a formal stage (prior to 2018) and a large dance floor expressly to give it the cabaret and music entertainment function that the Starliite serves on Symphony. The Stardust’s location and interior orientation was designed for it to hold more night events and lectures where the curtains could remain closed, if it was used at all during the day. Otherwise it was expected the flow would keep people coming out of a night performance in Stardust dissipated to Pulse or The Avenue for the final shift. Serenity’s Palm Court was designed to handle things like pre-dinner dancing, and the captain’s cocktail parties, which Symphony’s Starlite had normally managed (especially after the wall came down). The funny part is that I’ve talked about all the “improvements” from Harmony to Symphony that were undone from Symphony to Serenity, and the role of the Palm Court is one of those! Harmony of course had a whole different setup since the Palm Court was split with the Vista Lounge, but the combined role was what they went back to with Serenity, using it for the same functions. Vince

I said “likely” because I know the range an experienced sales team would forecast in this scenario, from decades of experience. None of the sales team at Crystal are new to this, and many of them have the same kind of experience I do. I can’t speak to the numbers they’re working with or their actual forecasts, but I know full well the methodology, and that’s exactly what I cited. Vince

Not just that (which is a great point), some of those merchant gateways no longer exist. On top of that, although MM&A has access to those accounts and the data, the entity that “owns” the accounts has shut down, so I doubt they would want to go through all the viability requirements to operate them again in the future. I can’t imagine any way they’d be able to refund original payment cards. I would think it’s to be check/debit or cash-equivalents at this point. Vince

I wouldn’t call the numbers surprising — I would probably think they’re about what Crystal projected for this month, a few months ago. That doesn’t mean they can stay where they’re at long-term, but they’re likely exactly where they projected to be at this point given the headwinds they have and the extremely short launch runway. IMHO, next summer is going to be make-or-break for Crystal, and that’s still an extremely short time for them to get up to speed, as travel suppliers go. They don’t end to be profitable in 2024 (that would be historic among new suppliers), but they need to start to be viable by then at least. Vince