Unwanted upgrades

[JimmyVWine]

2 minutes ago, Sea Hag said:

My PVP says there is such a thing. I'm picky about cabins, and I've never gotten an unwanted upgrade after she told me that she'd marked the res no upgrade. Maybe I've been lucky, but maybe some other Princess staff just don't bother. Who can tell?

We almost always book an “MA” cabin. Before the introduction of Club Class, that was the highest level of Mini-Suite and now it is one level below Club Class. If Princess wants to upgrade us without notification, it is either going to be a move into CC or into a Full Suite, either of which we would take without complaint. 

[AtlantaCruiser72]

3 hours ago, caribill said:

 

I thought in the past that the only function of linking bookings was so that if Traditional Dining was requested, the different cabins would be assigned the same table.

 

For families travelling in separate rooms the Princess res agents can "tag" the bookings, which is different that the old school TWID (Travelling with ID) that was used for dining and now is largely irrelevant

[tetleytea]

Sounds like Princess needs two tags on all their cabins:   Do Not Upgrade, and No Really.

 

[2 cruises a year]

12 hours ago, Airwavey said:

Well.... actually..... the "close doors" button on our Sky Princess cruise just finished DID work, every time. 

We quickly learnt that you could close doors the moment a "sharer" stepped out

Actually, the door close button on elevators for years have an ADA timer that has to be "activated" to give ADA passengers in the elevator lobby a chance to get to the elevator before inconsiderate people push the door close button without checking to see if anyone is on the way.  Hopefully someone in the technical department on the Sky Princess will notice that and "activate" the delayed door time.  It is just clicking the feature in software.

[travelhound]

We have the opposite issue. We are hoping for an upgrade and have our reservation tagged as such. Crickets from Princess. We leave two weeks from today. Probably stuck in our original inside room. Could get a balcony now for what we paid for an inside. Called a couple times to see if we could switch. Nope. Not exactly true. We could switch for about twice as much as we paid.

[geoherb]

12 hours ago, travelhound said:

We have the opposite issue. We are hoping for an upgrade and have our reservation tagged as such. Crickets from Princess. We leave two weeks from today. Probably stuck in our original inside room. Could get a balcony now for what we paid for an inside. Called a couple times to see if we could switch. Nope. Not exactly true. We could switch for about twice as much as we paid.

 

Did you pay attention to the cost to upgrade to a balcony when you booked your cruise? If so, is the difference more or less now?

I received an upsell offer to move from an inside to a balcony for $199 per person. Unfortunately, I was sailing solo and it would have been double for me. The $398 was more than I wanted to pay. But it was still a good price compared to what it would have been when I booked the cruise.

[travelhound]

We booked it so long ago that I don't remember the exact difference, but it's a lot more now. I just looked on our cruise and the only options for three people are insides and window (no balcony) suite. So, I think I'm safe printing our bag tags. We never got an offer for upgrading, paid or free. A few days after our final payment the entire front balconies on two different floors were less than we paid. I tried to change to that and they said that price was for new bookings only. Obviously they got a lot of new bookings in the last month, because it looks like our ship is almost full.

[Cruise Raider]

1 hour ago, travelhound said:

We booked it so long ago that I don't remember the exact difference, but it's a lot more now. I just looked on our cruise and the only options for three people are insides and window (no balcony) suite. So, I think I'm safe printing our bag tags. We never got an offer for upgrading, paid or free. A few days after our final payment the entire front balconies on two different floors were less than we paid. I tried to change to that and they said that price was for new bookings only. Obviously they got a lot of new bookings in the last month, because it looks like our ship is almost full.

I never used to get upsell, complimentary upgrade or move over offers until …..

 

I started using a Princess Cruise Vacation Planner.  I used to book through a big box travel agency and guess what?  I found out they don’t pass these offers onto their clients.  Wait, what?  All these years and I never knew that before.  I think Princess started offering them both to their TA and to the passenger in the last several years but they didn’t used to do that in the past.  
Now, I would say I’ve received an offer on about every fourth cruise we take.  Lastly, they have been filling their ships so not really sure if I can’t count on that happening as much anymore. 

[sloopsailor]

On 6/26/2022 at 8:12 AM, ontheweb said:

Good for you; I do think that they really do not believe the customers who say they will not come back. If more followed through on those threats, just maybe they would begin to notice and change accordingly.

The threats mean nothing in actuality. For every person who will never patronize cruise line "A" again, the cruise line most likely gains a replacement customer who won't patronizes cruise line "B" ever again, and so on and so on. All that happens is people replace each other, and none gain any loyalty points on any cruise line, which in the end only saves the cruise lines money by not having to dish out loyalty rewards to those never-satisfied customers. 😉

Edited June 27, 2022 by sloopsailor

[tetleytea]

There is still the law of averages.  Princess has a 3.8 average here on CC, as does Carnival.  RCCL and HAL have 3.9.  Celebrity is 4.1.  Norwegian is 3.7.    Also, the cost of customer acquisition far exceeds any loyalty costs.   Princess (and all cruise lines) would get far better return if they invested more in loyalty than they did in acquiring replacements.

 

[JimmyVWine]

1 hour ago, tetleytea said:

Also, the cost of customer acquisition far exceeds any loyalty costs.   Princess (and all cruise lines) would get far better return if they invested more in loyalty than they did in acquiring replacements.

That is a hotly debated topic and far from certain. Some studies show, (and my statistically insignificant personal experiences support) that new customers pay more per day than loyal return customers. Once people learn the tricks and hacks, they eat into profits. As it relates to cruises, they learn to purchase private excursions instead of reflexively purchasing excursions from the cruise line. They are less likely to be fooled into buying gold by the inch/foot, photos with crew members dressed like pirates, formal night photos, specialty drinks of the day, wine tastings, beauty/spa products, and on and on. I am not privy to Princess’ marketing and profit numbers, but their data and analytics people certainly do. But the experiences I noted here make it a fairly debatable topic. There is a reason why post-Covid Disney all but eliminated it’s annual passholder program. Seasoned veterans don’t buy Mickey ears, balloons, souvenirs and tee-shirts at nearly the rate of first-timers. 

[tetleytea]

I booked no excursions and was all shopping my first cruise.   I started booking excursions only when merely visiting the same ports was no longer enough.   Finally booked my first ship excursion on my 8th cruise.

[Chrissy6299]

On 6/26/2022 at 5:42 AM, MommyOTwins said:

Will not be happy to get upgraded to nonconnecting rooms in a higher category. I can tell you I will never sail princess again if they do that. 

Holland America does the same thing, and I would think that other cruise lines do so too 🤷‍♀️

[JimmyVWine]

16 minutes ago, Chrissy6299 said:

Holland America does the same thing, and I would think that other cruise lines do so too 🤷‍♀️

It is funny how many issues repeat that cause people to stomp their feet and leave Cruise Line A in favor of Cruise Line B while people from Cruise Line B are leaving it to move over to Cruise Line A.  If there were a perfect cruise line out there, we'd all know about it by now, and everyone would book every cruise on it! 

[Kabuki12]

I have 4 upcoming cruises on Lido deck all inside cabins.  They have upgraded me from all 4 to middle of ship on another deck inside room.  I wanted Lido deck and spent hours on the phone to get my room back on all 4.    

 

It's extremely stressful.  I don't have this kind of time to fiddle around trying to fix their mistakes.  I have to keep a careful eye on all 4 bookings because I know it will happen again.  Lido deck fills up fast and I fear I'll lose my room.  They just cheerfully tell me if that happens they will compensate me somehow.

 

As someone said an upgrade is from inside to oceanview or oceanview to balcony.  Taking you out of your chosen location and putting you into the same cabin elsewhere is not an upgrade.  It falls more into the bait and switch category.

 

I have a February booking on Celebrity and this has not happened with them, but  has happened on every one of my Princess Cruises.   

 

If I wanted the other room, I would have booked it.   

Edited June 28, 2022 by Kabuki12
spelling correction

[jenf22]

This just happened to us... or I should say I just *noticed* it happened to us.  We're on Majestic in January to New Zealand.  I had D410  booked which is mid-ship and an extended angled balcony.  I was pretty excited about it.  I logged in yesterday and saw we were in C743.  What the what?!?  I checked my reservation and confirmed the "no upgrade".  I didn't get an email from Princess or my TA.  My original room is gone.  I was able to move the room to B739 since Caribe aft facing balconies aren't covered at all.  I can't decide if I want to stay back there or move to a side room.  There are a lot of "cruising" days on this itinerary.

[vjmatty]

22 hours ago, JimmyVWine said:

That is a hotly debated topic and far from certain. Some studies show, (and my statistically insignificant personal experiences support) that new customers pay more per day than loyal return customers. Once people learn the tricks and hacks, they eat into profits. As it relates to cruises, they learn to purchase private excursions instead of reflexively purchasing excursions from the cruise line. They are less likely to be fooled into buying gold by the inch/foot, photos with crew members dressed like pirates, formal night photos, specialty drinks of the day, wine tastings, beauty/spa products, and on and on. I am not privy to Princess’ marketing and profit numbers, but their data and analytics people certainly do. But the experiences I noted here make it a fairly debatable topic. There is a reason why post-Covid Disney all but eliminated it’s annual passholder program. Seasoned veterans don’t buy Mickey ears, balloons, souvenirs and tee-shirts at nearly the rate of first-timers. 

But all of this only works with people who are new to cruising as a whole, not just new to Princess.  New cruisers are a smaller margin than those just jumping ship from other lines. 

[JimmyVWine]

1 hour ago, vjmatty said:

But all of this only works with people who are new to cruising as a whole, not just new to Princess.  New cruisers are a smaller margin than those just jumping ship from other lines. 

Fair point. Though I think that the recent and current ad campaigns are targeting the “new to cruising” customer more so than the “come on over” customer.