Cruise Line shoot out - Celebrity vs. Princess

[Aquahound]

I could be wrong, but I seem to remember someone posting age stats not long ago that showed Princess and HAL having the oldest average passenger age, with Celebrity in 3rd.....among the mass market lines.

[Hlitner]

I could be wrong, but I seem to remember someone posting age stats not long ago that showed Princess and HAL having the oldest average passenger age, with Celebrity in 3rd.....among the mass market lines.

 

We think the stats are somewhat misleading. Yes, HAL does get an older clientele, but much of that is related to their many longer cruises (we routinely do 40 day+ cruises on HAL that you cannot even find on many other lines). Princess also has a fair amount of longer cruises (over 2 weeks). But some other lines (such as RCI) specialize in shorter cruises (often only 7 days) which attract younger cruisers who do not have the time to take extended trips. It is likely that the 55 day HAL Grand Med Cruise (in March) will have nobody on the cruise under the age of 60! And when Princess does their World Cruise (over 100 days in length) nearly everyone will be 60+. This skews the statistics...but is also not necessarily reflected in the shorter cruises on these lines.

 

Hank

[Lovincruisin1321]

Funny that you feel Princess passengers are younger than the ones on Celebrity. We took a Princess cruise to Alaska this summer and we felt like we were in an old people's home.:eek: We are in our late sixties, but we felt too young for that crowd and will not cruise Princess again.

 

Age is basically based on destination. Younger cruisers are not interested in Alaska. Caribbean will draw a younger age set.....

[Lovincruisin1321]

Thank you for your review. I have not sailed on Princess because I have found the prices on the higher side. Perhaps I am wrong and haven't done my research.

 

I found your opinion, "Celebrity passengers tend to be older, well healed, and better dressed. We always dress up for formal nights and Celebrity fits our lifestyle better." to be entertaining. "Better healed"? or Heeled? What did you mean?

Edited December 21, 2015 by Lovincruisin1321

[RDC1]

Age is basically based on destination. Younger cruisers are not interested in Alaska. Caribbean will draw a younger age set.....

 

Actually you tend to have younger demographics on Alaska cruises. Primary reason is because they occur during the some when school is out and you get a number of families with school age children.

 

Not sure where the idea of Alaska cruises being older came from.

 

Now there are some differences between Alaska cruises. You will find the cruises out of SF to have older demographics then the ones out of Vancouver for example. A lot more locals that don't want to fly are on the SF cruises, that tends to be older demographics.

 

Age also varies by length of cruise. The shorter the younger.

Edited December 21, 2015 by RDC1

[RDC1]

I could be wrong, but I seem to remember someone posting age stats not long ago that showed Princess and HAL having the oldest average passenger age, with Celebrity in 3rd.....among the mass market lines.

 

Would be interesting to see where they might have gotten that information. Age demographics for the industry or by region seem to be available, but not by cruise line.

 

I would expect that if you look at average length of cruises per cruise line, that the age demographics would follow the same trend. Princess tends to have more longer cruises and are more geographically distributed then Celebrity, so I would expect age demographics to be in line with that.

[Gracie115]

I find the comment about the buffet on Regal/Royal being MUCH better than on Eclipse interesting. We sailed Eclipse earlier this year and Regal just last month and disagree completely. We REALLY disliked the layout of the Regal buffet....it is so spread out in alleys between the two sides of the ship and my sister in law kept getting lost trying to find food. I thought the food itself was okay but no better than Eclipse at all. I like the food stations that the "S" class offers, it is much more open, doesn't feel cramped the way it did on Regal's .... all 4 of us preferred the "S" class buffet more..

 

But we liked the Regal...our biggest complaint with Princess was their truly lousy Anytime Dining, which was most definitely NOT ANYTIME.... and the fact that there is no way to get to the front of the ship on the top decks....

 

We would and most likely will sail Princess again, this was our first time, and there was more good than bad (Vines, the wine lounge, is LEAPS & BOUNDS better than Cellar Masters). Celebrity's prices are escalating so much that Princess is more appealing now....

[Aquahound]

Would be interesting to see where they might have gotten that information. Age demographics for the industry or by region seem to be available, but not by cruise line.

 

I know I've seen it before, but not recently. I think the stats I saw in the past were reported by CLIA. I know I've seen them on these boards too, but I don't remember the sources.

[RDC1]

I know I've seen it before, but not recently. I think the stats I saw in the past were reported by CLIA. I know I've seen them on these boards too, but I don't remember the sources.

 

The CLIA publishes industry demographics, but not individual cruise line demographics other than market share. They do publish market share by line.

[RDC1]

I find the comment about the buffet on Regal/Royal being MUCH better than on Eclipse interesting. We sailed Eclipse earlier this year and Regal just last month and disagree completely. We REALLY disliked the layout of the Regal buffet....it is so spread out in alleys between the two sides of the ship and my sister in law kept getting lost trying to find food. I thought the food itself was okay but no better than Eclipse at all. I like the food stations that the "S" class offers, it is much more open, doesn't feel cramped the way it did on Regal's .... all 4 of us preferred the "S" class buffet more..

 

But we liked the Regal...our biggest complaint with Princess was their truly lousy Anytime Dining, which was most definitely NOT ANYTIME.... and the fact that there is no way to get to the front of the ship on the top decks....

 

We would and most likely will sail Princess again, this was our first time, and there was more good than bad (Vines, the wine lounge, is LEAPS & BOUNDS better than Cellar Masters). Celebrity's prices are escalating so much that Princess is more appealing now....

 

I find that Princess varies their buffet more day to day than Celebrity does. For a single day I found Celebrity S class ships to have a better buffet, but since they change it less, to be a bit boring over a 12 day cruise. So for a short cruise I would favor Celebrity buffet, for a long cruise I favor Princess.

[Cruise Junky]

I know I've seen it before, but not recently. I think the stats I saw in the past were reported by CLIA. I know I've seen them on these boards too, but I don't remember the sources.

 

Pretty sure Bruce posted it who works in the industry. If I remember correctly Princess overtook HAL in average age. He would have access to information that is not public.

[RDC1]

Pretty sure Bruce posted it who works in the industry. If I remember correctly Princess overtook HAL in average age. He would have access to information that is not public.

 

I did find his posts last November in which he mentioned the average age for the last 8 years was 58 for Princess and 57 for HAL. No mention of Celebrity.

He also proceeded to detail the main drivers for the age demographics:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2130490&highlight=age&page=4

 

Remember - It's ALWAYS about the money.

 

Most older passengers prefer smaller ships and longer cruises.

Most younger passengers prefer bigger, newer ships with all the bells and whistles.

Most younger passengers cannot afford the time or money required to take longer cruises.

The average North American (still employed) cannot take a cruise longer than 7 days.

 

The corrrelation between length of cruise and age of passengers is very obvious and logical.

The cruise lines promote this correlation as much as possible.

-Small ships rarely make any profit at all.

-Larger ships make good profits.

-Really large ships make obscene profits.

 

With North Americans, the most profitable cruise length is 7 days.

With Europeans, the most profitable cruise length is 10 days.

 

Even though smaller ships rarely make a profit, they lose less money on longer voyages.

 

The most profitable situation for a cruise line is a very large new ship, carrying a middle-aged crowd, with plenty opportunities to spend more money onboard, on a 7-day cruise.

 

If you manage a cruise line, who do you want sailing on your large profit-making ships?

Younger cruisers with disposible income, of course.

 

Who do you want sailing on your smaller unprofitable ships?

Old folks who don't spend any of their fixed income. Actually you don't really want those older folks sailing at all. But in order to keep them off the bigger, newer ships, you make it more attractive for them to sail on the smaller, older ships.