Why are English language excursions more expensive?

[Thisguylikestocruise]

[Biker19]

Because RCI can.

[taglovestocruise]

Saw this from a Odyssey of the seas cruiser on the transatlantic. Seems odd but as Biker 19 said Royal does it's own thing. 

 

As a related aside, anyone who has sufficient knowledge of secondary excursion language could actually benefit from booking them rather than the corresponding English language tour. On our recent Odyssey cruise, we booked two Spanish language tours that were essentially identical to the English ones but were considerably cheaper. 

[texmex.ferr]

These are Greek Islands, so English is a second language, so it may cost Royal more to have interpretators to do the tours.

[la_croisiere_s'amuse]

Their shore excursions are provided by third-party companies, so in all likelihood, the company running the Spanish-language tours charges less than the company offering English-language tours.

[taglovestocruise]

2 minutes ago, la_croisiere_s'amuse said:

Their shore excursions are provided by third-party companies, so in all likelihood, the company running the Spanish-language tours charges less than the company offering English-language tours.

Then Royal should charge the same, pocket the difference in price, use that money to keep the ranch dressing stocked in the WJ.

[smokeybandit]

Supply and demand.

[time4u2go]

13 hours ago, texmex.ferr said:

These are Greek Islands, so English is a second language, so it may cost Royal more to have interpretators to do the tours.

Wouldn't that be true for the Spanish version also?

[HappyTexan44]

Same reason that you pay more for English speakers at the Day Labor Center.  The supply of workers  is less.  

[clochette]

if the cheaper tour was in Greek, I could see that maybe it would make sense, but cheaper in Spanish doe snot make any sense.

[la_croisiere_s'amuse]

7 hours ago, clochette said:

if the cheaper tour was in Greek, I could see that maybe it would make sense, but cheaper in Spanish doe snot make any sense.

As I mentioned above, most likely the company running the Spanish-language tours charges less than the company offering English-language tours.  All of these excursions are sold by Royal Caribbean but provided by third-party companies.

Edited March 3, 2023 by la_croisiere_s'amuse

[smokeybandit]

7 hours ago, clochette said:

if the cheaper tour was in Greek, I could see that maybe it would make sense, but cheaper in Spanish doe snot make any sense.

If the demand for English tours is more than Spanish tours, then it makes great sense that the higher demand item costs more.

[FionaMG]

On 3/1/2023 at 11:50 PM, Thisguylikestocruise said:

 

On 3/2/2023 at 12:17 AM, taglovestocruise said:

Saw this from a Odyssey of the seas cruiser on the transatlantic. Seems odd but as Biker 19 said Royal does it's own thing. 

 

As a related aside, anyone who has sufficient knowledge of secondary excursion language could actually benefit from booking them rather than the corresponding English language tour. On our recent Odyssey cruise, we booked two Spanish language tours that were essentially identical to the English ones but were considerably cheaper. 

 

The comment quoted by @taglovestocruise was mine. And the Island of Santorini and Village of Oia excursion was precisely one of the ones that we did at a significantly cheaper price than the one in English. Note that on that particular excursion, it may be the case that the cable car ticket back down is included in the English tour; it wasn't on the Spanish tour but even so that would not account for the whole difference in price.

 

I believe, as others have mentioned, that supply and demand will be a primary driver in the difference in cost and, possibly, as someone else mentioned, that the supplier is different and charges less. In that vein, the guides are usually freelancers so the fees they charge to the tour operator may also have some bearing.

 

Another factor is how much the market will bear. Understandably, many North American cruisers, especially those visiting Europe for the first time, feel more comfortable booking excursions through the cruise line and the cruise line knows this. Cue price hike.

Meanwhile, for non-English language tours, there's a break-even number of passengers needed to even operate the tour but once that point is reached the cruise line obviously wants to fill the bus in order to make a profit, so they have to be careful about hiking the price too high and putting people off buying.

 

Another aspect, although not cost-related, worth considering if you're thinking of taking a non-English language tour is that the standard of the commentary can often be better than on the English tours. This is because sometimes so many English-speaking guides are needed that some are drafted in who have English as their second or even third working language so, while they might know their stuff very well, they have difficulty getting it over, struggling to find words and stumbling over others.

 

This is less likely to happen with non-English tours because usually the guides on those tours will be working in their first working language.

 

Our stand-out top cruise-line excursions were all in Spanish and our worst two, by far, were English-language tours in Spain with guides who were barely comprehensible.