Excursion Cancellations - St Lucia Land and Sea

[KLC1993]

I know a few people who have had their reservations for this excursion cancelled by RCCL for upcoming cruises in Jan and Feb, including us.

 

Is this a strange coincidence of being overbooked or is their something else going on? In all cases these were reserved and paid for though the RCCL website months in advance and covers multiple sailings.

 

We've already made other arrangements for the port, but I was curious if anyone knows anything.

Edited December 28, 2015 by KLC1993

[kalliekae]

I don't know about your specific excursion, but we had a golf excursion in Jamaica cancelled on the Allure in November. We paid for it months in advance and were notified the night before. Dh was very disappointed! He went to the excursion desk and they said it was "an operational problem". No further explanation was given. He was put on the wait list for golf in Cozumel and they called him two days later to say he would be able to golf there. Interesting point was that there were 9 people on this excursion and all 9 had also signed up for golf in Jamaica. Some of those people took a taxi to the Jamaican golf course and were able to golf all day even though Royal had cancelled the excursion. We wondered if there just weren't enough buses for transport that day and Royal chose to cancel a 9 person golf excursion so that bus could be better used to transport more people for another excursion.

[Setting sail for fun]

Sometimes it simply means their boat or transportation is not operational (broken down).

[brillohead]

Royal doesn't actually run the excursions that they sell -- they hire an independent tour operator and take a cut of the profit (that's why it's almost always cheaper to buy your excursions on the pier -- don't have to pay RCCL's part of the bill).

 

In this situation, it sounds like the arrangement between the tour operator and the cruise line has been terminated. That's why multiple tours over a period of months have all been cancelled.

 

This could be because the tour operator backed out (maybe RCCL was taking too much off the top so it wasn't profitable enough for the tour operator, or maybe the tour operator is having other problems with equipment / personnel / illness) or because Royal backed out (maybe the tour operator was asking for an increase in price, or maybe people were complaining about the quality / safety of the tour and Royal no longer wants to be affiliated with that operator).

 

The biggest thing to remember is that Royal doesn't run the tours/excursions themselves -- they contract with local hotels / tour buses / boats who offer services in that port.

 

Especially in ports I've been in before (but even in unfamiliar locations), I will often book an excursion on the pier as I get off the ship (or online in advance). More than once I've been on the same boat with people who paid the cruise line for the excursion, and I paid less than half of what they did for the exact same experience.

 

If the tour operator is already taking his boat/bus out on a tour, anyone that gets added on the pier is basically pure profit in his pocket -- he's already paying for fuel / guide / driver out of the money he got from the cruise line excursion sales, so cash sales on the pier are just "free money" to him (plus he doesn't have to share that income with the cruise line). This means the tour operator is free to negotiate a much lower fee -- his costs are already covered by the other paying guests.