When do cruise lines send an email asking passengers to switch if a cruise is oversold?

[Eliza2024]

When do cruise lines send an email asking passengers to switch if a cruise is oversold? 

Is it a few weeks in advance, or even week of? 

 

 

[ColeThornton]

Welcome to the forum.

 

Recommend that you ask on the forum for whatever cruise line you will be sailing on.  Not all lines have the same terms and policies.

 

Click on "Forums" at the top left of this page and scroll down.

[zqvol]

For what it is worth I have never seen it happen, though recent reports are that RCCL has been overbooking. 

[Eliza2024]

Yes, I'm wondering about Royal Caribbean

[Host Kat]

13 minutes ago, Eliza2024 said:

Yes, I'm wondering about Royal Caribbean

 

Hello @Eliza2024  and welcome to the Cruise Critic website and our message boards!

 

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[dragontrainer]

There was a post about someone having this happen last month:

 

It appears in their case the e-mail came one week before sailing (July 19th before July 26th cruise).  In that instance it was for a cruise out of Europe (Ravenna).

 

[Ken at the beach]

21 minutes ago, Eliza2024 said:

Yes, I'm wondering about Royal Caribbean

It could be at anytime.. If you are curious because you see your cruise sold out on the website I woud not be.  This happens with lots of cruises and maybe less than 1% are actually sold out

[elaine5]

I got one this summer for a princess sailing in Europe 2 days before. 

[PhillyFan33579]

20 hours ago, Ourusualbeach said:

It could be at anytime.. If you are curious because you see your cruise sold out on the website I woud not be.  This happens with lots of cruises and maybe less than 1% are actually sold out

According to RCI leadership, not only is every cruise selling out, cruises are sailing at 105 - 130 percent capacity. 

[smokeybandit]

While it did happen a few times as RC was adjusting its overbooking strategies coming off the restart, the odds of it happening now are near zero.

[smokeybandit]

20 minutes ago, PhillyFan33579 said:

According to RCI leadership, not only is every cruise selling out, cruises are sailing at 105 - 130 percent capacity. 

A cruise can be well over 100% capacity and not be sold out. It just means there are a lot of cabins with 3+ people in them. But there still could be cabins available.

[TBone2K]

I believe the only time this has happened was when there was an unexpected problem that made some staterooms unusable.

[PhillyFan33579]

4 minutes ago, smokeybandit said:

A cruise can be well over 100% capacity and not be sold out. It just means there are a lot of cabins with 3+ people in them. But there still could be cabins available.

Good point. 

[smokeybandit]

9 minutes ago, TBone2K said:

I believe the only time this has happened was when there was an unexpected problem that made some staterooms unusable.

It happened maybe a dozen times late 2022 into 2023. But I don't recall it happening since. The unusable stateroom cruise was an Aussie cruise during a covid outbreak and them still having strict covid rules. That one had nothing to do with the cruise being oversold (not that you suggest it did)

Plus when it did happen, no one got booted off the cruise. They always had ample volunteers.

Edited August 13 by smokeybandit

[Ken at the beach]

1 hour ago, PhillyFan33579 said:

According to RCI leadership, not only is every cruise selling out, cruises are sailing at 105 - 130 percent capacity. 

105 to 130% does not mean they are oversold.  with those numbers they could be running at only 80 to 90% of actual capacity (which includes triples and quads).  The 105 to 130 refers to double occupancy and there is a lot more room on the ship than that.