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New Fees on Quantum of the Seas


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18 hours ago, twangster said:

No surprise really, this model has worked well in China for the Asia region.

If (or when) it spreads West is another matter.

Don't you think if it RC thought it was viable in the US market they would have already done it, or are they just test marketing it in Asia? Those same attractions have been here for awhile.

I think there will always be room for differences in the markets because of different cultural norms. 

I don't have an idea of the concept of "all inclusive" outside of the US. Is this common elsewhere? We seem to expect it in a lot of cases here.

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2 hours ago, FManke said:

Don't you think if it RC thought it was viable in the US market they would have already done it, or are they just test marketing it in Asia? Those same attractions have been here for awhile.

I think there will always be room for differences in the markets because of different cultural norms. 

The business model Royal uses in China was developed locally in that region.  Other cruise lines have failed or had limited success in China because they tried to take their standard product from another region and force it to work in China.  Royal didn't do that, they built their China business model from scratch following cultural norms and expectations for Chinese consumers.  

I had a conversation with a hotel director who spent 7 contracts working in Asia.  In China specifically it's apparently normal to charge for everything.  Chinese guests are not shocked by this practice, it's accepted.      

Expanding this successful model to include Singapore likely isn't being done blindly or out of greed.  Singapore consumers possibly track closer with some Chinese cultural norms than they do with some Western norms and expectations.   It also reduces crew confusion as ships like Quantum shift between Singapore and China home ports.

European consumers are similar to, but also different than North American consumers in some areas.  Royal and some of the other big cruise industry players take a North American product and plug it into Europe.  This works to some degree because a lot of North Americans end up on those European cruises but there is evidence of the incongruity with European consumers in areas like gratuity practices.  Contrast that with China cruises where very few Westerners end up on ships sailing from a China home port.  

2 hours ago, FManke said:

I don't have an idea of the concept of "all inclusive" outside of the US. Is this common elsewhere? We seem to expect it in a lot of cases here.

The "all inclusive" mentality of the cruise market is an interesting discussion.  In the early days cruises may have been more towards all inclusive.  There was one dining room on the ship where all meals were consumed.  There was no buffet, no other smaller restaurants on board to supplement the primary dining venue like there are today.  Back in that day sometimes wine was offered at dinner but most guests in that era wouldn't binge drink at dinner simply because it was offered.  Ships held two or three hundred guests but many were from a similar cross section of society.  Cruising wasn't mass market like it is today.

Fast forward to today.  Ships hold thousands of guests representing wildly different backgrounds and areas of society.  Cruises are within reach for lower income households today when they never were in the early days of cruising.  Cruising is much more affordable today than it was in the early days of cruising.

If Royal offered complimentary wine at dinner today it would be mass chaos of chugging wine just to get another glass, and another glass.    Some guests would go overboard binge drinking just because they can.  Royal now has 26 ships with over 70,000 guests on board at any given moment.  It would cost a small fortune supplying all that wine every night to tens of thousands.  For guests that don't binge drink or don't drink at all they would have to pay higher fares to account for the cost of all that wine.  Instead of forcing all guests to pay more so that some guests can over indulge, guests who wish to indulge pay for it while guests that won't, don't have to pay for it.  This is where all inclusive begins to break down.  

The catch with all inclusive is that it isn't free.  Someone is paying it and no for-profit company is going to write it off as a loss to offer all inclusive.  Why force everyone to pay for things they don't want?  Many cruisers don't want Voom.  To make Voom included everyone would have to pay more including guests who don't want it.   Some people don't drink alcohol.  To include all alcohol cruise fares for everyone would increase.  It isn't fair for a guest to pay for something they don't want and the something one guest doesn't want is different than the something another guest doesn't want.  

All inclusive simply doesn't adapt or scale to the mass cruise market because there are too many different consumers with wildly different needs and expectations yet people hark back to the olden days when more was included.  Even people who weren't born then go back in time and draw comparisons to that all inclusive era missing that ships held a couple hundred guests who all tended to be affluent for that era.    Cruises were more all inclusive back in the day because the affluent guests who booked cruises expected it and could afford it.  It wasn't free, they paid for it.

You still see this on certain boutique or luxury cruise lines.  Ships are smaller with lower capacity and cruise fares are higher.  More is included and the guests booking these types of ships tend to be more similar from a smaller slice of society.     This is not mass market cruising.  

The same concept applies to activities.  Ships have to offer outlandish activities to differentiate themselves from the hundreds of other ships.  Many activities have to be included because of consumer expectations. These activities cost money to build and money to maintain and operate.  It's conceivable that at some point they may need to charge for some activities so that they can continue to offer inexpensive cruise fares. 

Certain activities do carry a charge.  Escape rooms for example.  Why make everyone pay for all activities when not all guests can or want to use them?  A flowrider costs money to build, maintain and operate.   Why should a person who can't or doesn't want to use a flowrider pay for it?

As I get older and stop using zip lines, ice skating, bumper cars, rock walls and so on I could make an argument for why I shouldn't have to pay for everyone else to use them.  

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@twangster Your explanation is spot on!  I think that brings a great perspective to all...nothing is ever truly free.  Companies are going to set themselves up to make the largest profit possible and that is evident in the wide variety of practices across a wide variety of cruise lines.  Given where I am at in my life, I appreciate the financial flexibility offered by having a cost overall for the cruise but options to add on activities if I wish to do so.  I am able to afford cruising and can add things on if I wish.  Once I started seeing the explanation for Spectrum of the Seas having a basic cost and many things that are included for Westerners are not for that ship made sense when I saw the Spectrum OTS cruise prices.  

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I agree with @twangster too.  In this case, the reason that cruises from Singapore are included is that RCI would have done some very specific modelling on the clientele that take these cruises, what they spent on the cruise from a base fare perspective and then combine that with the average spend once onboard.   Their driver would be to reduce the base fare down to a level that drives sales and then hope that passengers pay more on board.

Each market is different.  For example, Australians do not tip - nor is there an expectation for a tip. At home, the only time I tip is for well above average service at a restaurant or i may choose to round up a payment to a taxi driver when leaving a cab.    So - when looking at cruise fares - any thing i book via RCI's Australian website has the daily gratuity built into the base fare.  (i also have to mention, its Australian consumer law that this must be included in the price).

Anyway, the point is - they adjust their product/pricing to fit the clientele they are expecting (this includes food in the windjammer/MDR on individual sailings).   Read this specifically: https://www.royalcaribbean.com/faq/questions/what-are-culturally-enriching-cruises-from-mainland-china

To be honest - I am a data nerd and what I find most interesting is how they use the wealth of information at their fingertips to continually predict and refine their product.

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