Excursions - Here’s a New Low

[Port Power]

2 hours ago, UKCruiseJeff said:

 

Hi,

 

I’m clearly no apologist for Silversea but this is not completely correct.  

 

There are a number of different situations and also to add complexity  different legal rights in different countries for the same or similar contracts and indeed in some countries consumer rights vary even by state.  To make things more confusing it might also vary by when a chargeable excursion is “in the future” ie is the customer now locked in or not.  More of that later.  It’s a long time since I looked at Oz but I seem to recall that there was a variation by state but this might now  be wrong or out of date.

 

Firstly customers buying a cruise in the US could for the sake of argument have an identical set of terms and conditions that they sign as say UK customers.  However the contract might state that when a customer buys a cruise that they agree that SS are entitled to  make any changes they wish at any time and that the customer is obligated to accept those changes.  It may be that in the US this clause is enforceable but it might not be elsewhere.  In the UK/EU etc you can simply ignore the clause as it is considered unfair under consumer protection law. 

 

Silversea does reserve the right to cancel excursions.  This might be because there is insufficient bookings to make the excursions viable or some other reason.  This might be unwelcome and irritating but seems to me to be fair as long as it is before the customer carries an enforceable payment obligation and I cannot see that SS could be compelled to provide them except  in the case of included excursions when the fare includes them then they would be obligated to seek mutually acceptable alternatives or offer a reasonable refund for say UK customers as they had paid for them but this level of protection may not be true for US customers.  Isn’t life complicated. 🙂

 

In the UK and EU there is a different consideration and obligation in that it seems that the customer is obligated to pay if they fail to cancel at a set date before the excursion date … from memory I think it is 48 hours either before the start of the cruise or before the excursion ,,,, I cannot remember which but this is when the contract is effectively frozen for the customer and it therefore becomes mutually enforceable for some customers.  For UK customers it follows that SS has an enforceable contract that mirrors this.  So they must use their best endeavours to provide the booked excursion even if it costs them more.  They are not entitled to simply cancel it and that difference in price cannot be passed on from the start of the frozen date to UK customers for example.  This same right probably doesn’t exist for US customers who have considerably less rights.  Additionally if in extreme situations SS cancelled all included excursions UK customers (for example) could be reasonably confident if they pursued a claim for greater “reimbursement” for breach of contract and probably additionally for “vexation, aggravation and disappointment”. 

 

The issue is a little more complex than simply stating that Silversea are contractually obligated for all excursions and for all customers at all times but instead might simply be in many cases resolving customer satisfaction considerations.

 

Jeff

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeff, your knowledge and explanations are very informative.  I am on a world cruise with RSSC commencing next January and have had some excursions already cancelled because of “logistical” reasons.  Six or more months in advance, that is perfectly acceptable. Whether there were not enough participants or whether the supplier price had increased too much, there has been plenty of notice.

 

Surely the increase being asked once onboard the ship is too close for comfort?  I saw the snow skis in Iceland last month when I did the “Into the Glacier” tour.  I would expect it is expensive because of the distance from Reykjavik and the complexity of the experience.  But asking for so much extra so close to the excursion is pretty poor!  SS should have been informed of cost variations well before guests boarded the ship.

 

Thank you for your insight.

[UKCruiseJeff]

1 hour ago, Port Power said:

Jeff, your knowledge and explanations are very informative.  I am on a world cruise with RSSC commencing next January and have had some excursions already cancelled because of “logistical” reasons.  Six or more months in advance, that is perfectly acceptable. Whether there were not enough participants or whether the supplier price had increased too much, there has been plenty of notice.

 

Surely the increase being asked once onboard the ship is too close for comfort?  I saw the snow skis in Iceland last month when I did the “Into the Glacier” tour.  I would expect it is expensive because of the distance from Reykjavik and the complexity of the experience.  But asking for so much extra so close to the excursion is pretty poor!  SS should have been informed of cost variations well before guests boarded the ship.

 

Thank you for your insight.

 

Thanks PP, very much appreciate your kind comment. 

 

Let me explain why they are doing this ... and why ..... shock horror .... I think they are doing the right thing.  Who'd have thought I would say such things.  🫣😄

 

I don't wish to shock you or anyone by explaining why I think cruise lines need to do this and why it is also in the best interests of their customers generally in spite of the disappointment casualty rate group of which you are sadly a potential member.

 

One of the things that cruise lines will want to do is to offer it's potential customers and those that have booked cruises will be the very broadest and widest range of potential excursion option offers as possible to choose from as soon as they release and publish the cruise details to become open to reservations.  Each of those excursion options will eventually have different numbers of customers who book and who will select them in the hope that they operate.  Some excursions will gain enough customers for the excursion to proceed.  Some will not. 

 

So take as an example, that a cruise line offers 20 different excursions on a visit to London.  Let's imagine that one of those excursions is for $500 per head(!) to visit an abattoir and has a minimum target of - for ease of math - 21 passengers.  If there was as might be likely just one person booking that cruise - an enthusiastic abattoir owner from Oz say - then if the cruise line were to proceed with this excursion in order not to disappoint that customer then they would need to find the net subsidy of say 20 people @ $500 ie $10,000 to avoid that single person's disappointment. Multiply that problem across all the 20 excursions for London and then multiply it by the number of ports of call on the complete cruise and then for all ships for the whole year - and you have an eye watering potential financial exposure for the cruise line. 

 

The dilemma the cruise line then has to resolve, is do they subsidise all excursions for all ships for all year that has an uneconomic number of customers for.  If they do so who is eventually going to pay.  Effectively it will not be the very small number of customers who booked but it will need to be absorbed by all customers as a higher cruise cost across all ships for all year essentially so that a very small number of customers can visit the abattoir or something.  Or another choice would be to cut down the variety of excursion options in order to minimise the number they might eventually cancel.  That might equally be unattractive to customers.  What they probably do is cross fund.  What I mean is sort of let some go if they are 7 under required numbers because some other excursions might be 7 over.  There is an infinite number of ways of doing this to make it sensible from their point of view.  

 

So it if they didn't cancel those with insufficient takers it would mean a significantly higher cruise costs for all customers or other service cost reductions and/ or lessor excursion possibilities as well. I think on balance they do not want to see all cruises made more expensive or considerably less excursions to choose from.  The option they have therefore chosen is a simple one. If insufficient people are interested then protect the cruise cost and the initial variety of excursions offered and disappoint just a few.   But six months would mean that they cancel excursions far too quickly and that would cause a whole lot of (potentially unnecessary cancellations if they simply had waited for longer) to different sets of reasonable "dissatisfactioners". 😊

 

I think they are therefore doing the least worst thing presuming they make the decision early enough but that strikes me as being really difficult to do and they might just be doing it at the last possible minute that it is sensible to do it - all factors being considered.

 

Jeff

 

Edited July 10 by UKCruiseJeff

[nfcu]

Iceland is not a member of the EU.

[Desperate to Sail]

I wish Silversea would eliminate all included excursions. The practice only started with them during COVID when it was necessary to cocoon guests.

 

I doubt they will because it's evolved into a hidden profit generator for them. I'm feed up with booked excursions being cancelled for "operational issues". For Silversea, all that means the $100pp excursion fare they were going to pay stays in their pocket. The loser is the passenger.

 

We've been cruising all over the world for the past 35 years but now are left with what will probably be our last cruise next year to Canada. And with another cruise line. Between the cruise lines and the airlines, the experience has lost all appeal.     

[Host Jazzbeau]

Thanks for trying Jeff.  I found your posts helpful.  I think there is also another dynamic going on:  the shore excursion vendors may be playing fast and loose with Silversea (for their own loss-mitigation reasons as explained in your post).  Excursions cancelled six months out probably mean the vendor cancelled.

 

Also I think Silversea is still new to the game of included excursions, and hasn't figured out the right timing for announcements.  It's great that they post such a long list of excursions almost as soon as the sailing is available to book, but it seems that they haven't got their provider contracts nailed down at that point.  Hopefully they will learn from experience [I'm not betting on that 😉] and fine-tune the process.  But for now they seem guilty of a number of own goals.

[UKCruiseJeff]

48 minutes ago, Host Jazzbeau said:

Thanks for trying Jeff.  I found your posts helpful.  I think there is also another dynamic going on:  the shore excursion vendors may be playing fast and loose with Silversea (for their own loss-mitigation reasons as explained in your post).  Excursions cancelled six months out probably mean the vendor cancelled.

 

Also I think Silversea is still new to the game of included excursions, and hasn't figured out the right timing for announcements.  It's great that they post such a long list of excursions almost as soon as the sailing is available to book, but it seems that they haven't got their provider contracts nailed down at that point.  Hopefully they will learn from experience [I'm not betting on that 😉] and fine-tune the process.  But for now they seem guilty of a number of own goals.

 

Thanks J,

 

I absolutely agree with that.  But they aren’t own goals because the revenue and profit they need is rolling in today. There is a persistent delusion that loyalty and reputation is currently important.  It will be but it isn’t today  that’s tomorrow. 

 

They cannot nail down excursion contracts. To agree with you and flesh it out if I may. 

 

Silversea as are many are over promising and under delivering simply because they can and must.  But from the excursion provider viewpoint - as you say - they are also coming out of covid and if they want to secure contracts to make up lostt revenue they are also being heavily nailed down by cruise lines and so will then  game the cruise-lines and open with low price promises with the clause that they can increase. That’s what it seems is going on.  So the excursion provider is being offered no bookings or bookings at an agreed low starter point with the option to increase and/or have them cancelled  

 

That means that neither the excursion provider or the cruise line immediately loses.  The disappointment is simply passed down the line to the customer who then complains on CC. That doesn’t mean they any are breaking contracts it simply means that they are all gaming them and in the end the customer is also being gamed. Complaining doesn’t resolve it sadly.  I was simply trying to explain it from their point of view. They are all simply tactically gaming the cruiser until the only option is to stop. 

 

That may be a while. 🙂

 

Thanks for the sympathy towards my efforts!

 

 

Jeff

Edited July 10 by UKCruiseJeff

[Host Jazzbeau]

52 minutes ago, UKCruiseJeff said:

They are all simply tactically gaming the cruiser until the only option is to stop. 

That may be a while. 🙂

Not in my case.  I have two Silversea cruises booked [at really attractive prices, so I am definitely the poster child for promises that may be loss makers for SS].  The first is an expedition on Endeavour; no details about excursions are ever announced for expedition cruises, so they won't be able to disappointment [in that way].  But the second is a regular cruise in the Caribbean on Ray in January 2026; they followed the usual pattern of announcing a slew of interesting included excursions really early, and I have booked the most interesting one for each day of the cruise.

 

If they play games by cancelling them or shifting from included to extra-cost [and try to charge me], that will be my last SS cruise.  OK, that fits your projection of the issues only hitting SS in the future.  But I'm not even looking at their offerings between now and that cruise because of all these reports – they don't know it yet, but the issue has hit them already in this way.

[AtlantaCruiser72]

Seeing as how the shell games of “let the customer book now and we will try and charge them, or up the price later”, seems to have only cropped up in the last 5-6 months in large numbers I detect the hand of the Royal Caribbean revenue-management bean counters at work here. They probably feel that Silversea was offering too many included options and that the charges for supplemental tours and spa treatments were too low. Just look at the pricing games they play with ancillary items for Royal and Celebrity both. This is just the beginning I fear. 

[gcornell]

5 hours ago, AtlantaCruiser72 said:

Seeing as how the shell games of “let the customer book now and we will try and charge them, or up the price later”, seems to have only cropped up in the last 5-6 months in large numbers I detect the hand of the Royal Caribbean revenue-management bean counters at work here. They probably feel that Silversea was offering too many included options and that the charges for supplemental tours and spa treatments were too low. Just look at the pricing games they play with ancillary items for Royal and Celebrity both. This is just the beginning I fear. 

Could be right. I met a lady that had a massage at the spa today and she said it was great but the hard sell of products was awful.  Long story short, she was very uncomfortable with their persistence despite saying no several times.  They finally offered her a “special” and said once she leaves the spa the offer is void.   She was pretty upset.  

Edited July 10 by gcornell
Grammar

[LAexNY]

The hard sell at spas is not unique to Silversea.  I have experienced it on other cruise lines, especially Oceania.

[7300ponce]

On 7/9/2024 at 10:40 AM, gcornell said:

We are told the vendor raised prices several times in the last few months.  I spent the morning googling and making some calls and was able to secure a private tour to Glacier Bay and Diamond Beach tomorrow so my kids aren’t too disappointed. Meeting with the Shore Excursions Manager at 6 today. 

We are taking this cruise next month.  If you enjoyed the excursion, can you please provide the information for the private tour?

[gcornell]

4 hours ago, 7300ponce said:

We are taking this cruise next month.  If you enjoyed the excursion, can you please provide the information for the private tour?

We very much enjoyed it and was extra nice because it was just my family.  I reread the CC guidelines and I think it’s okay to share as it’s not for a cruise company. We used  Artistica Tours.  I communicated with them through what’s app and they were very responsive and accommodating. Came out to about $1,300 for the 4 of us. 
 

We visited:

 

Jökulsárlón – Glacial Lagoon

Jökulsárlón – Diamonds Beach

Stokksnes – Vestrahorn

Höfn

 

 

 

[7300ponce]

Thank you very much for the information. I am very glad you enjoyed it!   

[Host Jazzbeau]

Here's an example of similar problems at a different cruise line that has been posting their shore excursions too early:

 

18 minutes ago, mike@sea said:

Explora has learned its lesson and I think it is very wise, not to release any excursions > 3 months before the actual cruise. Or even less like Hapag Lloyd, who only release them mostly 2, sometimes 3 months prior. 
That way you do not face changes and it spares EX from problems with the subcontractors, like Explora faced partly during last Caribbean season. I had 3 excursions cancelled before I even stepped on the ship. And they were not cancelled because they would not have attracted fellow passengers. The contractors bailed out. One or two excursions also got completely changed in content, after I booked them about 2 months prior. Again, not because Explora wanted that, but for other reasons. So I have been told.

[AusMum]

You have me worried now.  We have booked excursions etc for our upcoming trip around Iceland, before we go on The Endeavour.  I never entertained the idea that the prices could increase so much between now and then (the ones we have booked privately).

[gcornell]

6 minutes ago, AusMum said:

You have me worried now.  We have booked excursions etc for our upcoming trip around Iceland, before we go on The Endeavour.  I never entertained the idea that the prices could increase so much between now and then (the ones we have booked privately).

I’m sure you know already, but booking privately saves money but is risky.  For example, yesterday we were supposed to stop in the Westman Islands but due to wind and seas we couldn’t.  Booking the ATV excursion privately would have saved $300 but it’s not refundable without 48 hours notice. 

[surmy555]

31 minutes ago, gcornell said:

I’m sure you know already, but booking privately saves money but is risky.  For example, yesterday we were supposed to stop in the Westman Islands but due to wind and seas we couldn’t.  Booking the ATV excursion privately would have saved $300 but it’s not refundable without 48 hours notice. 

I will only book independent tour operators that agree to refund the cost if, for any reason, your ship in unable to make that port. While I like the lower cost, to me the biggest advantage is smaller groups

[Woodrowst]

7 minutes ago, surmy555 said:

I will only book independent tour operators that agree to refund the cost if, for any reason, your ship in unable to make that port. 

Please be aware that your approach may not be available in all ports and, if it is, it may be with the less desirable operators.  Research becomes important so you can do an effective cost-benefit analysis (I.e. is this operator highly rated enough to make their liberal cancellation policy worth it).

[christraveller]

Hi Royal Caribbean and Silversea,

 

you seem to be under scrutiny for Shenanigans. It’s no surprise to anyone, given your cost pressures - but is it really worth trying?  
 

Silversea guests are older, ie not born yesterday, and sophisticated, ie know marketing, contract law and customer service themselves. 
 

Silversea has very  loyal guests. Brand reputation is important to maintain in our ranks, both in our own families and in the broad public. 
 

Please engage  your well trained  MBAs in conversations about short and long term business strategies, especially in the face of the steadily increasing cabin count as plenty of new ships and new competitors are going to be chasing the same population of potential guests. 
 

Thank you,

And a happy Sunday - you can do this right!

[CurlerRob]

12 hours ago, Woodrowst said:

Please be aware that your approach may not be available in all ports and, if it is, it may be with the less desirable operators.  Research becomes important so you can do an effective cost-benefit analysis (I.e. is this operator highly rated enough to make their liberal cancellation policy worth it).

 

I would amend this slightly to point out that it may not be available from all providers, versus ports. Our experience is that refundability for a missed port is actually an indicator of a more desirable operator - they understand the long-term value of playing fair.

 

That said, I agree there is no substitute for research. 🍺🥌

[AusMum]

we aren't booking any tours independently when we are on the cruise, but we have had to book in advance for a couple of excursions we are doing along our drive - I think we have booked ones where you only pay on the day, so cancellation (on their part) will be disappointment versus not getting our $$ back (I hope).

 

We have only got one port for Greenland.  At the time of booking we had three, and we have no idea why they got cancelled. The pay off is we are going further north up the east coast, so we are happy with that.

Edited July 15 by AusMum

[Port Power]

Looking at future cruises, the included excursions now only basic walking tours.  The lovely snorkelling tours, catamaran tours or other similar tours are now for a fee.  $1,000 OBC on a world cruise won’t go very far at all.  I am truly sorry to see the reduction quality of included tours.

[sscohen]

We booked a private on a couple of tours in Iceland knowing there was a 50% refund if you didn't make it.  I also used a credit card, sapphire, that includes trip insurance at no additional cost.  We missed two ports.  A total of $4000 for four of us.  I received the 50% from the operator and the other 50% from my credit card.  No issues.

[Travel2Learn]

Iceland imports oil and other things the excursion operators rely on.  I wonder if price increases are partially due to the difficulties for cargo shipping that would normally pass through the Red Sea.  

[PaulaJK]

Port Power…..You are correct. In addition, there is not much quality control. On SS Spirit in Feb, we visited Reunion. The tour guide began my saying that she conducts tours in German and doesn’t really speak English. She then grabbed some papers from which she read while sitting on the bus.