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Warnings For Booking A Triple/Quad As A Double?


VibeGuy
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Looks like HAL is sending rather curt notices to passengers on high-demand sailings who book specific cabins equipped as triples or quads as doubles, warning that they may be moved laterally (BE to BE, for example) to accommodate parties who require the third or fourth berth.  
 

Princess has traditionally handled that situation by “upgrading” the BE quad-booked-as-double to BD, and skipping cabins with the “decline complimentary upgrade” or “meta-category upgrade only” tag.  
 

I get HAL’s motivation here (they need to fill as many triples and quads to boost their occupancy % and REVPAR in their present reality of a shrunken fleet with no new ships in sight) and I’m wondering if anyone has been so warned for Princess bookings yet.  My hunch is they’ll get through the holiday season with HAL and then spring this on Princess because it affects relatively few passengers but every quad they sell makes one empty cabin on a less-popular itinerary look full for accounting purposes. 

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I have noticed that for at least the past year Princess intentionally hides triple and quad accommodations on the website when someone is looking to book a double occupancy cabin. I have never checked HAL's website to know if they do the same, but Princess may be largely avoiding the issue with this technique. 

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1 hour ago, So_Tweetie said:

I have noticed that for at least the past year Princess intentionally hides triple and quad accommodations on the website when someone is looking to book a double occupancy cabin. I have never checked HAL's website to know if they do the same, but Princess may be largely avoiding the issue with this technique. 

HAL is starting to do that as well. 

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1 hour ago, So_Tweetie said:

I have noticed that for at least the past year Princess intentionally hides triple and quad accommodations on the website when someone is looking to book a double occupancy cabin. 

I have just encountered the opposite for our May 2025 cruise. Deluxe balconies (obstructed) show up only if you are looking for a 2 person cabin, but are hidden if you have 3 people in a cabin.

Edited by Itchy&Scratchy
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I suspect that the moves by both HAL and Princess to get more control over their cabin inventory may be related to a statement in the CCL analyst call last quarter. Princess, HAL and Costa were not reaching the target of 12% return on capital invested. As such one would expect that they are under pressure to reach that target and one way to do so would be to by improved cabin management. By making sure that the opportunity to improve revenue is not lost by sub optimal cabin occupancy.

 

 

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It’s absolutely to look better to the analysts.  Cramming in thirds and fourths even at ”free” rates raises revenue per available room night without actually raising rates because not all “taxes and fees”’are actually pass-through, and it raises onboard spend. 
 

I get that they’re taking steps to avoid these “underutilized” bookings on the consumer website, but for people managing to book specific cabins via other channels, this is  kind of negating the “pay a little extra, get out of the guarantee-only category and select your specific cabin”, which could backfire. 

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9 minutes ago, VibeGuy said:

It’s absolutely to look better to the analysts.  Cramming in thirds and fourths even at ”free” rates raises revenue per available room night without actually raising rates because not all “taxes and fees”’are actually pass-through, and it raises onboard spend. 
 

I get that they’re taking steps to avoid these “underutilized” bookings on the consumer website, but for people managing to book specific cabins via other channels, this is  kind of negating the “pay a little extra, get out of the guarantee-only category and select your specific cabin”, which could backfire. 

Which taxes and fees are not pass through?

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14 minutes ago, TRLD said:

Which taxes and fees are not pass through?

 The USCIS user fees, are, for example completely pass-through.  
 

But wharfage and stevedoring and canal tolls and all sorts of things that get buried in “required charges and fees” are assessed to the line on a tonnage or voyage basis and then divvied up on a two-per-cabin basis but assessed to passengers on a per passenger basis.  So when “three and four” sail for “free” the line is collecting more in required charges and fees than they’re paying out as owed, and the difference isn’t 3% to cover processing costs. 
 

The debt loads and capital-limited fleet growth demand accounting “solutions”  like the near-constant 3 and 4 free sales.   Those were much more intermittent in the Before Times.   Now they’re critical to raising average occupancy.  

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46 minutes ago, VibeGuy said:

 The USCIS user fees, are, for example completely pass-through.  
 

But wharfage and stevedoring and canal tolls and all sorts of things that get buried in “required charges and fees” are assessed to the line on a tonnage or voyage basis and then divvied up on a two-per-cabin basis but assessed to passengers on a per passenger basis.  So when “three and four” sail for “free” the line is collecting more in required charges and fees than they’re paying out as owed, and the difference isn’t 3% to cover processing costs. 
 

The debt loads and capital-limited fleet growth demand accounting “solutions”  like the near-constant 3 and 4 free sales.   Those were much more intermittent in the Before Times.   Now they’re critical to raising average occupancy.  

 

The cruise lines estimate what the charges will be based upon expected passenger count.   Something that they do pretty accurately.  During the restart and other times as well we have sometimes gotten refunds on port fees when they over estimated the amount of the charges, and occupancy was higher than expected. It would just show up as an unexpected entry in the folio and tax/fee refund. We had this happen fairly often during the restart.  The good news for passengers is if they over collect they will refund onboard, but if they under estimate they do not charge more and basically eat the costs.  They have a major incentive to forecast correctly. 

 

The cruise lines SEC filings are pretty clear that taxes and fees received from the passengers are accounted for under ticket fares, not onboard..  The money paid out is mostly under other operating category.

 

If the cruise lines had a major difference between the funds they collected in such taxes and fees and the money they pay out it would be a violation of consumer law in several different jurisdictions.  Also if it was as much as you are implying it would be material under accounting regulations and such an additional source of revenue would need to be disclosed and set off an interesting legal chain of events.

 

I would expect that they is some accuracy percentage that their auditors would accept that might average out over multiple cruises, but a consistent leakage of overcharges as an additional source of income would certainly make for a very painful discussion between the company and their auditing firm.

 

The reasons for the 3/4 sail free are pretty clear with 35% over revenue coming from onboard sales if there are 2 in a cabin with revenue 2X with 3 in a cabin would be 2.35X and a 4th would be 2.7X.

 

On the expense side cruise ship expenses for a given cruise are pretty much fixed.  The most variable expense, food, is mostly fixed for a given itinerary.

 

Even so food expense only runs $15-$18 per passenger per day including food for the crew.  

Edited by TRLD
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No cruise line can completely fill all the triple or quad cabins because the cabins have a life boat assignment that cannot exceed the number the life boat occupancy. That alone would require some redistribution of passenger counts per muster station. So it's not always revenue driven.

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I’m specifically referring to the subcategory Princess details as “Required Cruise Fees and Expenses” as opposed to “Government Taxes and Fees”.  
 

The former are routinely assessed to passengers on a per-person basis and the line is under no obligation, legal or GAAP, to adjust the proration per sailing.   They can absolutely buy wholesale and sell retail on things like shoreside screening and wharfage.  
 

Where I have long questioned the GAAP treatment of these is when the service provider is a wholly owned subsidiary or JV of Carnival Corporation and plc, such as their acquisition of Cruise Line Agencies of Alaska and Southeast Stevedoring. 
 

Their auditors have long tolerated this treatment as industry standard and consumer regulators have viewed it the same way - their only noise has been that these must be disclosed as separate categories from government taxes and fees, and no detailed accounting is owed passengers. 
 

Carnival Coporation and plc absolutely routinely collects more in Required Cruise Fees and Expenses for a given sailing than they expend and only makes pro rata adjustments on the government ones.   This subsidizes collection shortfalls across the lines across the lines when viewed at a p&l level. 
 

The non-GAAP happy talk isn’t limited to cruiselines - airlines and hotels (more so managers/operators than REITs) have a storied tradition of promoting measures of business performance that strain credulity. 

Edited by VibeGuy
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24 minutes ago, cruzsnooze said:

No cruise line can completely fill all the triple or quad cabins because the cabins have a life boat assignment that cannot exceed the number the life boat occupancy. That alone would require some redistribution of passenger counts per muster station. So it's not always revenue driven.

Sure, but Before, they absolutely would not shift confirmed doubles out of triples and quads without at least an in-meta-category upgrade, and they wouldn’t do it to cabins marked non-upgrade.  People willing to pay for thirds and fourths would be flatly told “book sooner”.    Selling more categories as guarantee-only to get more of this flexibility didn’t get them *enough* flexibility to aggressively drive third and fourth occupancy. 
 

They’re now more aggressively applying in-meta-category upgrades to open up more triples and quads and it’s disingenuous to think it’s being driven by muster zone capacities because those same constraints existed before.  They’re then giving away the third and fourth passage for taxes and fees.   It’s not the marketing department pushing this to introduce more people to cruising.  It’s not compliance trying to get the muster zone allocations right.  But there’s got to be a motivation somewhere. 
 

The sister line in the group is being more aggressive still.  I’m pretty sure it will spread to people booking this way at Princess. 

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3 hours ago, VibeGuy said:

It’s absolutely to look better to the analysts.  Cramming in thirds and fourths even at ”free” rates raises revenue per available room night without actually raising rates because not all “taxes and fees”’are actually pass-through, and it raises onboard spend. 
 

I get that they’re taking steps to avoid these “underutilized” bookings on the consumer website, but for people managing to book specific cabins via other channels, this is  kind of negating the “pay a little extra, get out of the guarantee-only category and select your specific cabin”, which could backfire. 

It also raises the tips revenue. 

Edited by startedwithamouse
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56 minutes ago, VibeGuy said:

I’m specifically referring to the subcategory Princess details as “Required Cruise Fees and Expenses” as opposed to “Government Taxes and Fees”.  
 

The former are routinely assessed to passengers on a per-person basis and the line is under no obligation, legal or GAAP, to adjust the proration per sailing.   They can absolutely buy wholesale and sell retail on things like shoreside screening and wharfage.  
 

Where I have long questioned the GAAP treatment of these is when the service provider is a wholly owned subsidiary or JV of Carnival Corporation and plc, such as their acquisition of Cruise Line Agencies of Alaska and Southeast Stevedoring. 
 

Their auditors have long tolerated this treatment as industry standard and consumer regulators have viewed it the same way - their only noise has been that these must be disclosed as separate categories from government taxes and fees, and no detailed accounting is owed passengers. 
 

Carnival Coporation and plc absolutely routinely collects more in Required Cruise Fees and Expenses for a given sailing than they expend and only makes pro rata adjustments on the government ones.   This subsidizes collection shortfalls across the lines across the lines when viewed at a p&l level. 
 

The non-GAAP happy talk isn’t limited to cruiselines - airlines and hotels (more so managers/operators than REITs) have a storied tradition of promoting measures of business performance that strain credulity. 

Keep believing that.

 

First in most cases ports are a government function. Many of the services/fees are controlled by the ports. Not wholly owned sub corps.

 

 

There are a few ports where the ports are privately held. Even in those cases such as Skagway there is substantial government oversite. If nothing else then to make sure that the companies are dealing above board. Pretty sure rates charged by those companies are consistent from line to line. If CCL owned lines were being overcharged and the other lines were not it would stand out. If the other lines were being charged excessively at the same rate then pretty sure they woukd be vocal in their complaints as well. So just maybe they are actually charging comoetitve industry expected rates.

 

There are some functions such as security that is sometimes contracted with the port, sometimes can be done independently wirh approval of the port. Same with baggage handling.

 

So what percentage of all of the fees charged are not governemt, in ports where the port authority does not provide the service? Not that high of a percentage i expect.

 

Again if it was anything material there would be pushback.

Edited by TRLD
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100% of stevedore services are provided by private contractors and not port authorities.  


Look at the subsidiary list in the annual reports and you’ll see just how many related firms they’re doing business with under ports, handling, pilotage, etc.   That doesn’t even count independent vendors.  
 

I’m not arguing this is an accounting scandal, but it could be 5-10% of the total non-government fees and expenses billed to customers, and almost *all* of these fees assessed to “free” 3s and 4s and it’s propping up non-GAAP measures. 

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1 hour ago, VibeGuy said:

100% of stevedore services are provided by private contractors and not port authorities.  


Look at the subsidiary list in the annual reports and you’ll see just how many related firms they’re doing business with under ports, handling, pilotage, etc.   That doesn’t even count independent vendors.  
 

I’m not arguing this is an accounting scandal, but it could be 5-10% of the total non-government fees and expenses billed to customers, and almost *all* of these fees assessed to “free” 3s and 4s and it’s propping up non-GAAP measures. 

Compared to the increase in expected revenue for each additional person kimd of a rounding error at most.

 

For example taking a 7 day Mexican cruise the fare including taxes and fees are $834. I did the total fare because cruise lines include that in the ticket revenue. Ticket revenue makes up 65% of total revenue so in this case. Onboard spend would add an additional $449 per passenger.

would 3/4 no fare.

2 passengers  2566

3 passengers 3005

4 passengets  3454

 

Oops forgot the taxes and fees of 185  on 3/4 so that would be

 

3  passengers 3200

4 passengers 3824

 

 

Now this was using the cheapest cabin category, not the average cabin fare which would generate higher numbers.

 

Compare that to an additional 10% of reguired cruise fees and expenses  120 on this cruise ) over charged  if you are correct with would 12 per person per this cruise. I would think the   potential revenue per cabin would far out weigh the potential 24 dollar over charge if it exists.

Edited by TRLD
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8 hours ago, VibeGuy said:

It’s absolutely to look better to the analysts.  Cramming in thirds and fourths even at ”free” rates raises revenue per available room night without actually raising rates because not all “taxes and fees”’are actually pass-through, and it raises onboard spend. 
 

 

Well this explains why all of a sudden I am seeing 3rd and 4th sail free. I actually asked my adult son to join us as the 3rd free person on our Med sailing in 2026. He always wanted to sail that itinerary and couldn't afford it solo. Let's face it. Princess and HAL doesn't draw enough families especially when school is in session to fill these 3 and 4 passenger rooms.  This will entice passengers like it did for me. 

 

Personally I would never want a room that holds 3 and 4 unless that's all that was available. I also wouldn't book guarantee or anything obstructed so if that was all that I was offered when booking I would be off to another cruise line for a similar itinerary or try booking with a 3rd person to see what choices I had and then remove that person before final payment.

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