Cabin Category changes and Goldstein's Response

[orville99]

I emailed Adam Goldstein this morning voicing my displeasure with RCL's decision to restrict booking of D1 cabins to 3 or 4 passengers.

 

First, my email:

February 14, 2014

Dear Mr. Goldstein,

 

I just wanted to take a moment on this Valentine’s day to personally thank you and Royal Caribbean for giving me so many choices when we cruise.

Your ships enticed us away from Disney, and we’ve been sailing on Royal Caribbean ever since.

Even when you started eliminating the little amenities in our stateroom, we remained loyal.

When you started to cut back on the quality of your food offerings, we remained loyal.

When the service standards in your dining rooms started to go downhill, we remained loyal.

When you chose to replace popular food venues with upcharge specialty dining, we remained loyal.

When you eliminated the pens and paper in the staterooms, we remained loyal (although we could no longer fill out tip envelopes or comment cards).

When you changed the loyalty program and added 10 additional cruise days to become Diamond, we remained loyal.

When you restricted smoking, we switched to Personal vaporizers (by the way, the term electronic cigarette is a misnomer, as there is no smoke), and we remained loyal. In fact, we saved so much money by quitting that we were able to cruise more often, and in better cabins.

When you continued to build bigger and more elaborate ships that disconnected us further and further from the seas we love, we remained loyal, because we could still book our favorite D1 balcony cabins anywhere on the ship and re-connect at our leisure.

However, when you made the decision to restrict our cabin choices to smaller, more poorly located, and more disconnected from the sea cabins by making all of our favorite cabins unavailable to us unless we crammed a third or fourth person into the room with us, you finally came up with the perfect scenario that gave us back our cruise choices.

We currently have six cruises booked on Royal Caribbean though March of 2015 (we leave on the next one in two weeks) and will become Diamond Plus before year end. Once we complete the March 2015 cruise, we can go back and renew our previous relationships with Disney, Princess, Holland American, and Norwegian that we put on hold so we could be more “Loyal to Royal”.

Thanks you again for giving us back so many reasons to broaden our cruise choices.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

And his response:

 

"Hi xxxxxxxxxx. Wherever you choose to vacation, I hope you are highly satisfied. I won't comment on the very particular manner in which you constructed your email. From my perspective, the list of improvements we have made to the product is much longer than your list and is reflected in the highest customer ratings we have generated in many, many years. But that doesn't matter if what we offer doesn't match up with your needs. I would be interested to hear your views about ours or any other cruises you take, especially since several of your comments appear to be equally applicable to the other major cruise lines.

Best regards,

 

Adam

 

Adam M. Goldstein

President & CEO

Royal Caribbean International

(305) 539 6082"

Edited February 14, 2014 by orville99

[oneputt18]

Okay, where is the text of your email? How can we judge his response without seeing the email you sent?

 

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[negc]

Okay, where is the text of your email? How can we judge his response without seeing the email you sent?

 

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Forums mobile app

 

??? The text of his email is contained in the first several sentences of his post.:confused:

[oneputt18]

Sorry, it didn't show up in the CC app.

 

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[Clarea]

??? The text of his email is contained in the first several sentences of his post.:confused:

 

Sorry, it didn't show up in the CC app.

 

The first few sentences were not part of the initial post. It looks like the initial post was edited to add the first part.

[oneputt18]

So the way I interpret his response he is not concerned about you leaving Royal. I agree with your email and we are also exploring other lines.

 

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[ryansmith18]

I would be interested to hear your views about ours or any other cruises you take, especially since several of your comments appear to be equally applicable to the other major cruise lines.

 

Eh, he's kind of got a good point there I think.

[lady_cruiser]

So basically from what I read Adam Goldstein really didn't answer your question about why two people can't book a D1 cabin. Or did I miss read something?

[TwoTravelin]

Can someone please post the press release that says you cannot book a D1? I feel out of the loop.

[Ashland]

I feel that anyone should be able to book the cabin/catagory/location of their choice...if someone comes along after me and wants my cabin...I say" too bad I booked first"...It should then be RCI that can approach me with other options..not that I may or may not decide to change..but the choice should be mine...JMHO and maybe not yours ;):)

[alexkrn46]

I guess you are not the target demographic anymore. Explore other lines you will be pleasantly surprised

[galavant3]

I guess I don't understand what kind of response you were looking for?

[orville99]

The first few sentences were not part of the initial post. It looks like the initial post was edited to add the first part.

 

 

Yep, and I have no idea why that happened. Everything was there when I hit the submit button, but the first half disappeared when it posted so I had to go back in and re-edit to add the first part.:confused:

[ehfl]

Why would you want a sofa-bed if there are only 2 people? You don't get any more room, you just get the sofa bed instead of a regular sofa.

[orville99]

I guess I don't understand what kind of response you were looking for?

 

 

Not sure what I would get, but I certainly expect a If you don't like it you can p*ss off because don't need anyone like you response.

[orville99]

Why would you want a sofa-bed if there are only 2 people? You don't get any more room, you just get the sofa bed instead of a regular sofa.

 

If I want to book an aft or hump D1, I can no longer do that, because those are restricted to 3-4 passenger bookings. I can book a JS with a sofa bed for $400-$500 more per person right next to a D1, but not the D1.

[TwoTravelin]

But who said you cannot book it? Still confused.

[orville99]

So basically from what I read Adam Goldstein really didn't answer your question about why two people can't book a D1 cabin. Or did I miss read something?

 

 

You are correct. He completely dodged the issue and essentially told me to "go pound salt" if I didn't like the way they do things.

[retird]

As another poster asked , where is the policy that says two people cannot book a D1 if ther are only two guests. I just did and there are only two of us.

[orville99]

Eh, he's kind of got a good point there I think.

 

 

Yep, and the way I read his response, his "good" point is sooner or later you're going to get screwed over by every major cruise line anyway, so we don't feel any need to be any different.

[orville99]

As another poster asked , where is the policy that says two people cannot book a D1 if ther are only two guests. I just did and there are only two of us.

 

 

Try booking a cruise leaving anytime after June 1, 2015, and you'll see what changed.

[Coralc]

What you stated is all true orv. However, his response is also pretty straightforward, and I doubt if they make much of an effort to "woo" back individual cruisers.

 

Maybe if bookings drop overall, they might look at some of their cutbacks....but that is probably also unlikely, as evidenced by the excitement over new itinerary releases.

[ehfl]

If I want to book an aft or hump D1, I can no longer do that, because those are restricted to 3-4 passenger bookings. I can book a JS with a sofa bed for $400-$500 more per person right next to a D1, but not the D1.

 

Not all D1s have a sofa bed, so you can still book one if you want. There are D1 hump and aft cabins without the sofa bed.

 

You can clearly see this here:

http://www.royalcaribbean.com/findacruise/ships/ship/decks/deck/home.do?deckCode=09&shipCode=FR&shipProfile=1511&sailDate=1140216&hasNavigation=false

 

and here:

 

http://www.royalcaribbean.com/findacruise/ships/ship/decks/deck/home.do?deckCode=09&shipCode=OA&shipProfile=1535&sailDate=1140215&hasNavigation=false

[wolfganghowell]

Considering the letter was just a litany of complaints, the response seems appropriate to me. I hardly think a CEO is going to beg a customer to come back when they present a laundry list of what they don't like about the product. I'm surprised the OP didn't say "when you eliminated the pillow chocolates".

 

I understand your frustration regarding the cabin issue. I would be really mad too if I couldn't book a JS or GS - our rooms of choice. Your response, by the way, was most likely written by an employee. I hardly think Goldstein would respond to an email the same day. I would like to think he has a better way to spend his time running a multi million dollar company. But they made a valid point - many of your complaints are industry wide - not exclusive to Royal. In the 15 years we have cruised, we haven't noticed any drastic changes in the quality of the food or the service in the MDR.

 

Eliminating pen and paper in the rooms? Really? That's going to have zero effect on my decision of a cruise line. To each his own.

 

I am glad that you expressed your opinions to RCI and I hope you are too. I am glad they at least responded. I hope you find a cruiseline that is a good fit for you - it sounds like you and Royal just aren't anymore.

[retird]

Try booking a cruise leaving anytime after June 1, 2015, and you'll see what changed.

 

 

 

Maybe I am missing something here , but online I did 4 mock bookings after June 1,2015 and also spoke with the agent I deal with at RCI and had no problem reserving a D! cabin for the both of us.