Towel charges are back

[audome78]

On the second week of a B2B on the Freedom. Last week, no signing out of towels and no charges. This week- new Hotel Director- you must sign out your towels with your sea pass and the $25.00 charge is back.

[Clarea]

On the second week of a B2B on the Freedom. Last week, no signing out of towels and no charges. This week- new Hotel Director- you must sign out your towels with your sea pass and the $25.00 charge is back.

Wow, that didn't last long.

 

My guess is the HD looked at the number of towels they were losing and how that was going to impact the budget.:eek:

Edited March 10, 2014 by clarea

[Dajbman22]

Somehow I am less than surprised. It did seem like a huge financial risk having a liberal pool towel policy.

[PORT ROYAL]

On the second week of a B2B on the Freedom. Last week, no signing out of towels and no charges. This week- new Hotel Director- you must sign out your towels with your sea pass and the $25.00 charge is back.

 

A few light fingered cretins spoil it for the majority.

One can never understand why some would want to seal a RCL towel.:confused:

[Cindy]

I love Royal Caribbean, but I fail to understand how they can be the only mainstream cruise line who has to totally inconvenience passengers in order to keep track of their towels.:rolleyes:

[ckrobyn]

I just sailed the Adventure and there were no signing out of towels.

The question keeps being raised why anyone would want to steal an RCI towel? Well, the vast majority would not - but let me tell you, when you have spent the day at the beach and your towel is soaking wet and heavy......would you think twice about bringing it back if you knew that it didn't matter? Believe me, I saw many a towel being left behind in St. Maarten :eek:

 

I am not the least bit surprised the charges are back.

[Langley Cruisers]

OP mentioned there was a new Hotel Director on the sailing in question and thus, the signing in and out of towels was implemented. We cannot assume this is going to go fleet-wide so I hope everyone will remain calm and carry on. :D We are just off Serenade B2B and the towels were freely available to use and return as needed.

.

[fletch1027]

A few light fingered cretins spoil it for the majority.

One can never understand why some would want to seal a RCL towel.:confused:

 

 

It is funny to ride in cabs in the Carribean ports and see the Carnival & RCI towels that the cabbies "repurpose". Most popular placement I have seen is in minivan cabs for the console between the 2 front seats... :D

[PORT ROYAL]

I just sailed the Adventure and there were no signing out of towels.

The question keeps being raised why anyone would want to steal an RCI towel? Well, the vast majority would not - but let me tell you, when you have spent the day at the beach and your towel is soaking wet and heavy......would you think twice about bringing it back if you knew that it didn't matter? Believe me, I saw many a towel being left behind in St. Maarten :eek:

 

I am not the least bit surprised the charges are back.

 

So we have two sets of cretins, being the light fingered and just too lazy varieties.:eek:

[fletch1027]

On the second week of a B2B on the Freedom. Last week, no signing out of towels and no charges. This week- new Hotel Director- you must sign out your towels with your sea pass and the $25.00 charge is back.

 

We were on the Freedom on the Feb 9th sailing and they scanned our seapass for towels during that week. I was surprised because I had read on here before our cruise that the towel sign outs were gone... :confused:

[niksmom630]

While I found it more convenient to not have to sign out towels, I saw people on Indy grabbing 4-6 at a time--per person!

 

Certainly makes it easier for the chair hogs to save 6-8 chairs at a time, where before they would have been limited to 2! :D

 

And, while I returned my towels to the station every day, I did notice a lot of people just leaving them on the chairs--even saw a few in some of the indoor venues. Would not be surprised if this led to the occasional towel shortage, not to mention the staff having to scout around and pick up towels.

[BillOh]

OP mentioned there was a new Hotel Director on the sailing in question and thus, the signing in and out of towels was implemented. We cannot assume this is going to go fleet-wide so I hope everyone will remain calm and carry on. :D We are just off Serenade B2B and the towels were freely available to use and return as needed.

.

 

That's exactly what I was thinking. It will be May before I report back :)

[Cindy]

I'm a fan of the "in cabin" method of distributing towels. You can either swap them out at a towel station, or let your cabin steward swap them out when your room is serviced. That way nobody hogs towels, and each passenger is still responsible without having to do all the card swiping which can really slow things down or running up to the pool when you're headed in a different direction.

 

As far as people just leaving them on a beach, :(:(:(.

[ckrobyn]

So we have two sets of cretins, being the light fingered and just too lazy varieties.:eek:

 

 

Love the word Cretin! LOL

[AtlantaCruiser72]

I never had an issue with the checking out of towels. The towel stands were in convenient locations and it never took more than a minute out my day to check out/in towels. It reduces chair hogging, it reduces clutter of abandoned towels and it reduces theft/laziness of leaving towels ashore. I'd welcome the return to this policy fleet wide.

[Paulxyz2004]

I love Royal Caribbean, but I fail to understand how they can be the only mainstream cruise line who has to totally inconvenience passengers in order to keep track of their towels.:rolleyes:

 

 

Well I would say as Long as they still fill their ships it doesn´t matter to them.

 

OTOH, I have to say I never found it inconvenient to check out towels, I´m all for bringing it back on, for the various reasons already stated.

[AtlantaCruiser72]

I'm a fan of the "in cabin" method of distributing towels. You can either swap them out at a towel station, or let your cabin steward swap them out when your room is serviced. That way nobody hogs towels, and each passenger is still responsible without having to do all the card swiping which can really slow things down or running up to the pool when you're headed in a different direction.

 

As far as people just leaving them on a beach, :(:(:(.

 

On every Royal cruise I've been on recently there have been towels available near the gangway for check out on port days. Is that not the case on all their ships? Maybe it's just been offered on the smaller ships? I only cruise Vision/Radiance class as a general rule.

[velmasue]

I never had an issue with the checking out of towels. The towel stands were in convenient locations and it never took more than a minute out my day to check out/in towels. It reduces chair hogging, it reduces clutter of abandoned towels and it reduces theft/laziness of leaving towels ashore. I'd welcome the return to this policy fleet wide.

 

I agree.

 

We just returned from Grandeur on Saturday and as mentioned there seemed to be a lot of towels left on chairs for staff to pick up. I don't know about stealing of the towels, but having worked with the public for many years, let's face it---there are quite a few folks who would steal anything that is not nailed down. I don't want to pay a higher cruise fare for others to steal or discard beach towels.

[Mark_K]

OP mentioned there was a new Hotel Director on the sailing in question and thus, the signing in and out of towels was implemented. We cannot assume this is going to go fleet-wide so I hope everyone will remain calm and carry on. :D We are just off Serenade B2B and the towels were freely available to use and return as needed.

 

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Exactly so.

 

 

 

Sent using the Cruise Critic forums app

[LetsGetWet!]

If it truly comes back fleetwide, my suspicion is that the main negative hit to the budget that resulted in the return was REVENUE, not expenses! At $25 each, they must hope that as many of those towels will disappear as possible! Buying at wholesale, there's no way they're paying more than $5 per towel, guaranteed! They certainly aren't worth anywhere near $25, even at full retail.

[wwcruisers]

OP mentioned there was a new Hotel Director on the sailing in question and thus, the signing in and out of towels was implemented. We cannot assume this is going to go fleet-wide so I hope everyone will remain calm and carry on. :D We are just off Serenade B2B and the towels were freely available to use and return as needed.

.

 

I sure hope this isn't fleet-wide. I really hated having to spend my vacation time signing out towels -- and hoping that the scanner was really working, when I checked them back in, at the end of the cruise. If this phenomenon is truly rearing its ugly head again, the folks who don't like it need to write, call, and e-mail Corporate -- let Mr. Goldstein know how you feel about this! :mad:

 

Personally, I love how Celebrity does it. They have pool towels in stacks by the pool (just like RC once did). They also have pool butlers who do a pretty good job of picking up the old towels, so they don't unnecessarily tie up the sun beds. Celebrity's beach towels are different: larger and thicker than the pool/spa towels. Everyone gets a beach towel in their cabin, which your room steward will replace, when you use it. Now, those you will be charged for -- should you should leave them on the beach, in a cab, etc. But, the bottom line is: you never have to spend one minute of your vacation looking for any kind of towel on an X ship -- or signing your life away for the privilege of using it! :rolleyes:

Edited March 10, 2014 by wwcruisers

[Donut23]

I agree.

 

We just returned from Grandeur on Saturday and as mentioned there seemed to be a lot of towels left on chairs for staff to pick up. I don't know about stealing of the towels, but having worked with the public for many years, let's face it---there are quite a few folks who would steal anything that is not nailed down. I don't want to pay a higher cruise fare for others to steal or discard beach towels.

 

 

 

Ok, love my parents to pieces. We lived overlooking the Chesapeake Bay and all our beach towels had hotel names on them. 59 now, parents long gone, still a few remnants in the rag bin. I always thought it was odd, even as I child. We certainly were not poor.

[nolimits]

Besides being inconvenient picking up and dropping off.There where the stray extra 25$ fees upon check out.We went to dispute but lines where so long we decided to complain when we where home.Refund took 4weeks but we did get credited for missing towel fee.We as a family had 2 cabins one had to many towels returned and the other short 1.We where with other families and actualy had 3 to many returns. If they did like a bounty on abandoned towels I could keep my kids busy collecting chair hogs towels lol.

[cecelia0613]

Yay, it's obvious they are listening. Sent off a nice complaint letter about the change in towel policy and chair hogging poolside when we did our back to back January/February on Allure. In reply to my issues I was advised that HQ had been receiving lots of complaints since January when they went back to the old way. On this cruise it was obvious that the towels were being used to hog chairs when at 9 am one morning I found not one chair that did not have a towel on it and no people anywhere in sight. It was also disappointing to watch rude people come back from excursions and just dump their towels on the elevators and in the stairwells. So, blame the lazy cruisers if the policy changes back!

 

Personally I like the idea of putting the towels back in the stateroom, one or two per person, and then having you switch them out with the stateroom attendant for new towels. No one needs more than one or two towels!

Edited March 10, 2014 by cecelia0613

[ryano]

I never had an issue with the checking out of towels. The towel stands were in convenient locations and it never took more than a minute out my day to check out/in towels. It reduces chair hogging, it reduces clutter of abandoned towels and it reduces theft/laziness of leaving towels ashore. I'd welcome the return to this policy fleet wide.

 

Wait until you get hit with an erroneous 25.00 towel charge that you KNOW is not correct and I bet you will feel differently :) It happened to me on my last cruise. They told me I had two checked out when I only checked out one.

 

Sure, they eventually corrected the charge but it was a hassle and I definitely felt guitly until proven innocent.

 

If I need towels I will just go to the spa from now on.

Edited March 10, 2014 by ryano