Cruisers are always trying to figure out what's next for Royal Caribbean, and sometimes its CEO has given us hints along the way.
Michael Bayley has been the President and CEO of Royal Caribbean International since 2014, and he's had an active role in crafting policies, changes, and innovation.
Over the years, I've observed Mr. Bayley immerse himself in projects, and he's never been one to shy away from a microphone when addressing questions or concerns from cruisers.
In fact, he hosts the President's Cruise each year, in which he sails with cruise fans who are eager to ask him a variety of questions on just about every topic.
Many times, he's seemingly shut the door on certain ideas or proposals. To be fair, Royal Caribbean isn't afraid to change its mind, so sometimes a "no" becomes a "yes" later.
Here are six examples of policy changes or ideas that he said Royal Caribbean won't do.
Switch to all-inclusive pricing
When Celebrity Cruises made the jump to including more in its cruise fare, it turned heads because it's something Royal Caribbean fans wondered if it could come to them too.
Celebrity includes a base drink package and internet access in its All Included fare.
When asked in 2024, Mr. Bayley said including those things on Royal Caribbean didn't make sense to his customers. He based this on the fact about half of cruisers don't want a drink package.
"Our research says that around about 50% of the guests don't want a beverage package," he explained.
"Our strategy has always been the unbundling of pricing to give people as much choice as they possibly can."
"We've learned that unbundling is much easier and better for the guest. It also gets the price point in front of the customer, especially for families. And remember family is our is our real core target market."
He went on to explain that cruisers prefer having the choice later to add those things on, rather than paying more up-front for a cruise fare.
"We feel like the pricing strategy that we have on the bundling, unbundling is the right path to go."
Include free Wi-Fi access like land resorts
Many resorts and restaurants on land include free Wi-Fi, so why can't Royal Caribbean?
This was the question asked as well on the 2024 President's Cruise, and the simple answer is costs are very different at sea versus on land.
"Are we going to give free WiFi? No."
"We got to pay a ton, a ton, a ton of money for WiFi," Mr. Bayley said.
Cruise ships use satellite internet access, but Wi-Fi on land relies on underground and undersea cables. Land-based internet is faster and cheaper than satellites.
Royal Caribbean enters into contracts with satellite tech companies, and this comes at a huge yearly cost.
Offer overnight visits to Perfect Day at CocoCay
As soon as Royal Caribbean opened Perfect Day at CocoCay, one of the top questions was how cruisers could spend more time there. Overnight visits seemed like the perfect solution.
In 2020, Mr. Bayley said they actually considered that idea, but it "became problematic" once the logistics were considered.
He admitted, "Part of the ongoing capital investment in Perfect Day was allowing us to accommodate additional ships so we could have one ship stay overnight."
There are two primary issues related to offering overnight stays at CocoCay.
The first is a lot of crew members and supplies are offloaded every day from the ship. The island doesn't have a supply route otherwise, and those crew members are needed back onboard later.
The reason those crew members are needed back onboard is Royal Caribbean realized their guests love a fun beach day, but like the cadence of being on the ship in the evening.
"[I]t doesn't look like we will be doing overnights because our guests, even with our late-night stays, once they want to come back, they really do want to come back onto the ship and enjoy the fine dining and they want to enjoy the entertainment that we have onboard," Vicki Freed, Royal Caribbean Senior Vice President of Sales and Trade Relations.
Ban smoking in the casino
During the 2022 President's Cruise, Mr. Bayley was asked about banning smoking in its casinos.
Bayley admitted, "smoking in the casinos is a bit of a conundrum."
"The dilemma is that there are many people who do want to smoke in the casino. I know that's not a popular response, but it's it's the truth."
"I'm not judging anyone or anything, but there's a large group of people who do want to smoke in the casino."
He explained, "Every, I would say every couple of years, we do test this and we take one or two or three ships we ban smoking in the casino. And the result is less people go in the casino and that that's the reality of it."
Banning smoking completely in its casino doesn't seem to be on the table.
To their credit, Royal Caribbean has added new non-smoking casino space on some of its ships, although that's come at the expense of other guest favorite areas. The cruise line has turned wine bars, comedy clubs, and even one of its English pubs into a casino.
On Utopia of the Seas, they added a non-smoking casino and then subsequently converted the entire original casino into a smoking area
Making it more difficult to become Pinnacle and Diamond Plus
In 2024 on the President's Cruise, one cruiser asked Mr. Bayley about any plans in the future to modify the loyalty program.
"No, we have no plans to to do that," he said.
He said the comments they receive periodically about too many top tier members tend to focus on a minority of sailings.
"Sometimes we get these comments and they're obviously they're valid comments. They're often based upon certain sailings... where we do get peak numbers of Pinnacle and Diamond Plus, but 90% of the sailings, it's just not true."
He was talking about trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific crossings, where you get a lot of Pinnacles and Diamond Plus members.
Include gratuities in the cruise fare
If there was one change I'd love to see Royal Caribbean make, it would be to include gratuities for the hard working crew members in the fare instead of pretending they are somehow optional.
Despite Mr. Bayley being an outspoken supporter of seafarers, his line has no plans to make that change.
During the 2025 President's Cruise, President and CEO Michael Bayley was asked by a passenger if they'd ever consider building it into the cruise fare instead of leaving it up to the guest, especially when some passengers don't pay it.
Mr. Bayley explained that they've "put a lot of thought" into gratuities and how to best handle them. It's why some countries have it baked in, while others do not.
"The bottom line is, is the model that seems to be genuinely the most productive, effective, and rewarding for the employees is is is the model that we operate today," he said.
He admitted there are pros and cons to each tipping model, but "we think we've got the right system in place."
