You think it's only Princess?...

[Guest ldtr]

10 hours ago, caribill said:

 

I do not think any of the younger people that they are marketing to will say "Hey, I will choose Princess because they are reducing benefits for loyal cruisers of any age."

No, but they will choose based upon other features some of which might be funded by money saved  other places as well as benefits that are changed as a result of other business changes (the move to packages, the change in Internet from the old per minute approach, etc.)

 

To put it simply about the only real benefit that has been removed has been the loyalty OBC that one has gotten starting after their 25th cruises.  The Internet change was more a function of how internet is implemented.  They could no longer offer minutes when their system no longer tracked minutes.  In either case based upon your earlier arguments even if Internet minutes had remained it would have been the same as removal of benefits since they would no longer be a benefit to anyone that purchased a package that included Internet.

 

The lifetime loyalty systems are doomed to failure over time due to the numbers of people that reach each tier over time.  The biggest erosion in benefits has not been due to anything getting removed as much as the benefits getting swamped by the shear number of people on board with the higher tiers.

[SiliconCruiser]

On 10/9/2022 at 9:06 PM, Kay S said:

Frugal Voyager, aren't you the one who was recently complaining that cruises to Hawaii are too expensive and the cruise lines should lower the prices just for you?  I'm sorry your income as Young Marketing Executive isn't sufficient to cover the cost of a two-week cruise on a main-stream line.  It may be time for the old folks to walk the plank in your fantastical universe, but maybe the cruise lines would like them to keep paying for those Hawaii cruises that they can obviously afford.  Funny thing about us old-timers:  we have money and we spend it.

 

See posts #96 and #98 in the "difference between carnival and princess" thread posted by seagoer1973 on Sept 29, 2022 in this Princess forum.

Princess cruises to Hawaii have the lowest per person per day cost (around $50-60 per day).  I don't understand his "wisdom"

[Guest ldtr]

12 hours ago, 2 cruises a year said:

There is all of this talk of we 60 year old cruisers dying off and the market drying up.

Did I miss something?  Aren't there any 40 and 50 year olds out there ageing into the 60's to take our place? There must be some 40 year olds that will be looking forward to their children being successful and moving out so that they can retire and cruise 30 or so days a year like we current 60+ year olds. 

That is correct, that is exactly why they want to balance their demographics such that they are attracting a number of younger individuals (such as the 40 and 50 years olds) that are familiar and used to the product such that they will already be linked to the brand.  

 

Keep in mind from a marketing perspective the changes we are talking about is getting the median age from 60 to 55, not filling the ship totally with 20 year olds (unlike Virgin Cruises that was totally focused on the 20 and 30 somethings).  

 

If you are a cruise line and your average age keeps getting older that is a clear indication that not attracting the younger individuals you need for future business.  Take for example HAL.  It had, and still does have the reputation of only being for old people.  As a result it was a turn off for potential younger cruisers. They started making changes to get their demographics back in line and have managed to reduce their average age by about 5 years according to reports.  They still, along with Princess, have some of the older demographics among the main stream cruise lines. But both are trying to address that issue to some degree.

 

Celebrity has also been somewhat successful on lowering their age demographics.

 

It is not about any one age group, it is about how to get their planned mix of age groups onto the ships.    

 

 

Edited October 11, 2022 by ldtr

[Ken the cruiser]

I’m just wondering when Princess is going to eliminate the “number of cruises” option and just use the “number of days cruised” option when determining loyalty status. It just seems weird a 2 day cruise has the same 1 point “number of cruises” value as a 25 day single itinerary cruise, especially when you don’t get double “cruise day” points when you book a suite. 

[Guest ldtr]

3 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

I’m just wondering when Princess is going to eliminate the “number of cruises” option and just use the “number of days cruised” option when determining loyalty status. It just seems weird a 2 day cruise has the same 1 point “number of cruises” value as a 25 day single itinerary cruise, especially when you don’t get double “cruise day” points when you book a suite. 

Really would not change much in terms of the loyalty program since the numbers are already excessively large with some cruises like trans-Atlantics have more than half of the passengers being Platinum or Elite.  One thing nice about Alaska cruises is the relatively low numbers of Elite.

[SiliconCruiser]

On 10/9/2022 at 6:53 PM, FrugalVoyager said:

 

I am a young marketing executive my self in my 30s and my philosophy as is with many of my colleagues is that the only reason young people don't fill the ships is because they don't want to cruise with old folks, on a boring boat. But as marketers our job is to completely re-emagine the market and define new expectations of what a "cruise is".

 

To do it effectively we need to basically start fresh and clean to attract the masses to so that effectively older people, seniors and anyone not fitting the new image needs to be phased out so the marketers can do their job and get young people to fall in love with the concept of cruising.

 

Yes it will take years to convert the industry but a massive change is needed to save the industry, the seniors will have to find another way to travel and other ways to vacation because cruising is going young hard. Just my insider take based on all the new advertisement assets cruise lines are focusing on, they are smart to do so.

Perhaps you could educate an old/retired marketing guy.  How does disenfranchising your existing consumer demographic (the one that brings in the current income) to seek a new demographic help the company.  Especially when the company is trying to emerge from a 2+ year shutdown.  Your perspective sounds very entry-level, not "executive".  But the term "executive" is often applied to first-line employees (e.g. "Account Executive" instead of "Salesperson")  Your philosophy brings to mind the adage of "Throwing out the baby with the bathwater."

Basically your philosophy of destroying current income flow in the hopes attracting a new revenue source makes no sense to me.  Actually I've seen it before with "brilliant" fresh out of college kids taking the marketing helm in small tech companies as they drive the company straight into the ground.

[Guest ldtr]

Just now, SiliconCruiser said:

Perhaps you could educate an old/retired marketing guy.  How does disenfranchising your existing consumer demographic (the one that brings in the current income) to seek a new demographic help the company.  Especially when the company is trying to emerge from a 2+ year shutdown.  Your perspective sounds very entry-level, not "executive".  But the term "executive" is often applied to first-line employees (e.g. "Account Executive" instead of "Salesperson")  Your philosophy brings to mind the adage of "Throwing out the baby with the bathwater."

Basically your philosophy of destroying current income flow in the hopes attracting a new revenue source makes no sense to me.  Actually I've seen it before with "brilliant" fresh out of college kids taking the marketing helm in small tech companies as they drive the company straight into the ground.

I do not consider what Princess is doing is disenfranchising their existing customer base.  If they were on a mission to disenfranchise their customer base the changes would be much more immediate, instead of being mostly incremental. They are making changes that they feel is necessary based upon all of the market data that they have.  Which is clearly more than any data we have access to.  Clearly they have have all of their customer information including customer spend, age demographics, survey information etc. that with modern database systems can be sliced and diced to look at their customers in just about every way possible.

 

Certainly, as with any industry, the changes they are making will be considered to be negative by some of their customers. Some may even choose to not be customers in the future.  Every business that wishes to survive in the future must be willing to alienate some customers if they feel that it will better position them as a business going forward. In many ways Princess has been one of the slower cruise lines to make changes.

 

Unfortunately the biggest impact with be their change that the Sun apparently is projecting of going to a class based system going forward.  If  that ship design hold up then I expect retrofitting of existing ships (at least the Royal Class ships) to spread the model throughout most of the fleet.  Of course this change is well behind their competition in going in this direction (Celebrity, NCL) leaving HAL as pretty much the only US focused main stream line that has not gone in that direction.

[Ken the cruiser]

12 minutes ago, ldtr said:

Really would not change much in terms of the loyalty program since the numbers are already excessively large with some cruises like trans-Atlantics have more than half of the passengers being Platinum or Elite.  One thing nice about Alaska cruises is the relatively low numbers of Elite.

Probably not. It’s just somewhat annoying when we booked a 25 day cruise in a VS and got the same number of cruise points as someone that booked a 2 day cruise in a VS from Seattle to Vancouver.  Now if we would have received (50) double cruise day points, then that would have made sense. But hey, we’re just over here in the peanut gallery and just happy to be able to cruise on Princess’ longer itineraries. One day we’ll get to the “free laundry” level! 😂

[Kay S]

2 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

 One day we’ll get to the “free laundry” level! 😂

Fingers crossed they don't eliminate that perk, too.

[ShakeDaddy]

1 hour ago, Kay S said:

Fingers crossed they don't eliminate that perk, too.

 

For me, far from a deal breaker

[Ken the cruiser]

14 minutes ago, Kay S said:

Fingers crossed they don't eliminate that perk, too.

Nooooo!!!! 😂😂

[Ken the cruiser]

3 minutes ago, ShakeDaddy said:

 

For me, far from a deal breaker

Our average Princess cruise length is 3-4 weeks. So for us that’s a $400+ perk. 
 

Edited October 11, 2022 by Ken the cruiser

[Guest ldtr]

2 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Nooooo!!!! 😂😂

Though keep in mind that on cruises with lots of Elites the turn around for laundry might be as long as 3 days.

[Kay S]

18 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Our average Princess cruise length is 3-4 weeks. So for us that’s a $400+ perk. 
 

Me too.  It's the one perk I will miss when I bid Princess adieu.

[Kay S]

23 minutes ago, ShakeDaddy said:

 

For me, far from a deal breaker

What is your deal breaker?

[MileHighAko]

41 minutes ago, ldtr said:

They are making changes that they feel is necessary based upon all of the market data that they have.  Which is clearly more than any data we have access to.

 

And the MedallionClass system is a data scientist and marketers dream system. The amount of data they are generating on each ship each day is huge. Put it all together and you're in heaven. With the medallion they know exactly who is doing what and when, all the time. Since they know your demographic data in a detailed way (age, sex, citizenship, spending habits, family & friends) and they can track what time you consumed what type of beverage, engaged in what kind of interaction, even the route you walked to dinner or the show. The level of prediction and targeted experiences they will be able to deal is going to be impressive.

 

Princess has a digital-double of each of their passengers and between the medallion on ship, the mobile app, and everything else they'll soon be able to target any market demographic with precision that it will be both scary and fun to see.

 

No, they're not going to leave the older cruisers out to dry. In fact, they're just going to get better and better and taking your money, every last penny if possible. And while doing that they will also court and win a new generation of cruisers that will fuel their growth for the next 20 and 40 years to come. 

[2 cruises a year]

20 minutes ago, ldtr said:

Though keep in mind that on cruises with lots of Elites the turn around for laundry might be as long as 3 days.

Ohhh the horror! What a shame! I guess that I will have to pack a couple more underwear. 

Personally, the only elite perks that I really like are the laundry, even if I have to wait 3 days, head of the tender line(yes, even on the cruises with lots of Elites, when you do have to get a ticket) and the PES lounge on ships with a Skywalkers.  Not for the bargain drinks, they are a joke.  There is nothing like having my 5 o'clock cocktail and that view.

[Kay S]

16 minutes ago, MileHighAko said:

No, they're not going to leave the older cruisers out to dry. In fact, they're just going to get better and better and taking your money, every last penny if possible. 

And to think someone (hint: executive) says that old money is "tainted" and taking it is a buzz kill.  The idea that any cruise line would refuse money is beyond laughable.

[Guest ldtr]

15 minutes ago, MileHighAko said:

 

And the MedallionClass system is a data scientist and marketers dream system. The amount of data they are generating on each ship each day is huge. Put it all together and you're in heaven. With the medallion they know exactly who is doing what and when, all the time. Since they know your demographic data in a detailed way (age, sex, citizenship, spending habits, family & friends) and they can track what time you consumed what type of beverage, engaged in what kind of interaction, even the route you walked to dinner or the show. The level of prediction and targeted experiences they will be able to deal is going to be impressive.

 

Princess has a digital-double of each of their passengers and between the medallion on ship, the mobile app, and everything else they'll soon be able to target any market demographic with precision that it will be both scary and fun to see.

 

No, they're not going to leave the older cruisers out to dry. In fact, they're just going to get better and better and taking your money, every last penny if possible. And while doing that they will also court and win a new generation of cruisers that will fuel their growth for the next 20 and 40 years to come. 

While one could mine location data out of the medallion system I would expect that it would be more of being used of attendance information at specific events (i.e.  how many people actually attend a show in venue A). Even those screens would need to be set up in advance, just collecting random position data would be a huge data set of mostly useless information.   On the other hand collecting data about actual events such as the number of people in the theater at specific times would be a relatively small data set (especially if individual specific information is not included, only total numbers) and would be very valuable in trying to determine what the passengers really consider to be valuable.

 

Of course they could collect much of that information even prior to medallion.  They certainly had the purchase information.  They could have gotten attendee numbers by simply having a crew member count and estimate numbers.   The medallion system (just as the wrist band system used by other lines) certainly allows the information collection to be automated.

[ShakeDaddy]

1 hour ago, Kay S said:

What is your deal breaker?

 

Laundry is not something we equate being a higher end rewards perk. 

 

Something more couples memorable such as 2 speciality dinners for 2 along with a bottle of wine, plus a wines around the world tasting, along with a behind the scenes tour all offered by NCL. 

 

They also include comp laundry service along along with a few other appreciated perks.     

[wowzz]

3 hours ago, Kay S said:

Can you say troll?  I see the lad's post count is increasing, might be two dozen if he continues to "educate" us.

Be careful  - certain words lead to automatic suspension. 

[DCThunder]

2 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Probably not. It’s just somewhat annoying when we booked a 25 day cruise in a VS and got the same number of cruise points as someone that booked a 2 day cruise in a VS from Seattle to Vancouver.  Now if we would have received (50) double cruise day points, then that would have made sense. But hey, we’re just over here in the peanut gallery and just happy to be able to cruise on Princess’ longer itineraries. One day we’ll get to the “free laundry” level! 😂

It is my understanding that Princess is also the only cruise line to give double cruise day points to solo travelers.

 

But the issue of "too many" Elite/Platinum cruises is no different than what the airlines face with their frequent flyer programs.  Airlines solve the problem by increasing the number of miles required for upgrades or doing all sorts of esoteric changes to their programs.  I'm not sure how doing that would fly with cruisers, though...

[Guest ldtr]

23 minutes ago, DCThunder said:

It is my understanding that Princess is also the only cruise line to give double cruise day points to solo travelers.

 

But the issue of "too many" Elite/Platinum cruises is no different than what the airlines face with their frequent flyer programs.  Airlines solve the problem by increasing the number of miles required for upgrades or doing all sorts of esoteric changes to their programs.  I'm not sure how doing that would fly with cruisers, though...

However there is one big difference.  Status on airlines (and Hotels) resets each year.  Cruise line status is forever. So airlines do not have to deal with the lifetime status situation that the cruise lines have.  The only people that have lifetime status on airlines are those that have hit million miler.

 

Cruise lines also do not have a point or mile system for getting free cruises or cabin upgrades so there is not a counterpart to the airlines point system.

[caribill]

5 hours ago, ldtr said:

No, but they will choose based upon other features some of which might be funded by money saved  other places as well as benefits that are changed as a result of other business changes (the move to packages, the change in Internet from the old per minute approach, etc.)

 

Many (most?) existing Princess passengers book a the Plus/Elite package, so current customers see value in the packages being offered. 

 

Even pre Plus/Elite packages, a number of people who bought the higher priced beverage package did it just for the convenience of not having to keep track of beverage spending on a cruise, not because they saved money. So those people, as well anyone who had purchased the original beverage package for other reasons, save $$$ with the Plus package.

 

 

5 hours ago, ldtr said:

 

To put it simply about the only real benefit that has been removed has been the loyalty OBC that one has gotten starting after their 25th cruises.  The Internet change was more a function of how internet is implemented.  They could no longer offer minutes when their system no longer tracked minutes. 

 

My point was that the minute benefit was worth more $$$ than the unlimited benefit is worth. Thus I do see that as a reduction in benefits. Yes, supposedly having unlimited minutes is better than a fixed number. But based on internet performance as reported recently from many Princess ships, it takes unlimited minutes to accomplish what used to be able to be done relatively quickly. And streaming your favorite movies/shows, well, as they say in Brooklyn, Fuhgeddaboudit.

 

And the limitation of the elite 10% discount in the shops to items only at full price is another definite reduction in a benefit.

 

Of course the addition of a 10% discount on Princess excursions is an added benefit, but the more cruises a Princess customer has been on, the less likely booking Princess excursions is.

 

 

[Guest ldtr]

25 minutes ago, caribill said:

 

Many (most?) existing Princess passengers book a the Plus/Elite package, so current customers see value in the packages being offered. 

 

Even pre Plus/Elite packages, a number of people who bought the higher priced beverage package did it just for the convenience of not having to keep track of beverage spending on a cruise, not because they saved money. So those people, as well anyone who had purchased the original beverage package for other reasons, save $$$ with the Plus package.

 

 

 

My point was that the minute benefit was worth more $$$ than the unlimited benefit is worth. Thus I do see that as a reduction in benefits. Yes, supposedly having unlimited minutes is better than a fixed number. But based on internet performance as reported recently from many Princess ships, it takes unlimited minutes to accomplish what used to be able to be done relatively quickly. And streaming your favorite movies/shows, well, as they say in Brooklyn, Fuhgeddaboudit.

 

And the limitation of the elite 10% discount in the shops to items only at full price is another definite reduction in a benefit.

 

Of course the addition of a 10% discount on Princess excursions is an added benefit, but the more cruises a Princess customer has been on, the less likely booking Princess excursions is.

 

 

 

 

So if most of the members purchase packages that include internet then the offering is obsolete and it does not matter if they remove it.

 

The 50% reduction of a single device very similar to the value of the old minute amount depending upon cruise length, and a 50% reduction for multiple devices is more than the dollar value so pretty much a wash for those that do not buy packages.  For some of us that use the Internet frequently the value is better, for others that only used a few minutes and do not want to spend any money it is less.  However in either case the minute system is obsolete and not compatible with the current system and really not practical to do so only for a relatively small percentage of passengers.  After all the sub group that it would benefit would be only those that did not buy packages and also did not want to have unlimited access.  

 

Then as you say they added on the 10% discount on excursions when they made the change to the Internet.  Of course you could then argue that it is a major negative to those that do not buy packages, that do not want unlimited Internet and do not buy cruise line excursions.  

 

If you are concerned that much over the potential delta on the value of the internet benefit you must be really going about airline mile and hotel point devaluations.

 

Edited October 12, 2022 by ldtr