whoa Posted September 2, 2020 Report Share Posted September 2, 2020 I booked a cruise on the Harmony for November 1st through my TA on December 2019 for 2 central park balcony staterooms. Cost was $4900 Cdn, a good deal. I priced out similar rooms just now and the price jumped to a whopping $8900 Can. Probably a function of reduced capacity and increased labor and protocols. If this is going to be the new normal going forward, I will hold off doing any cruises until prices stabilize, if ever. cruisellama 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krhardy Posted September 2, 2020 Report Share Posted September 2, 2020 MOO (my opinion only)...I think demand is going to be greater than supply, which will drive prices. There are so many people who want to get back on a ship, and have an FCC burning a hole in their pockets. Add in probable reduced capacity allowances, and I think we will see higher prices, especially once a return date is finally officially announced and all the people who have been holding off making bookings start making reservations. cruisellama, ehw51, Matt and 1 other 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twangster Posted September 2, 2020 Report Share Posted September 2, 2020 https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/2020/06/24/expect-royal-caribbean-cruise-prices-go-soon Matt 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Posted September 2, 2020 Report Share Posted September 2, 2020 2 hours ago, krhardy said: MOO (my opinion only)...I think demand is going to be greater than supply, which will drive prices. There are so many people who want to get back on a ship, and have an FCC burning a hole in their pockets. Add in probable reduced capacity allowances, and I think we will see higher prices, especially once a return date is finally officially announced and all the people who have been holding off making bookings start making reservations. I think you're definitely right. The longer this goes, the more pent up demand, especially for early sailings on limited ships. ehw51 and cruisellama 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ehw51 Posted September 2, 2020 Report Share Posted September 2, 2020 Just did a fake booking for our Anthem, Nov 29, 2020, tons of open cabins on all the decks. Prices are way up too, cabins on both sides empty. Cruise planner sale prices are same as they were a couple of sales ago. It will be interesting to see how many people will book if it does NOT get canceled. Sure looks like it will be canceled. I completely agree that prices will go up and most of us will pay. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sailor_to_Cruiser Posted September 3, 2020 Report Share Posted September 3, 2020 I am an obsessed cruiser. I track all the prices of things I'm interested in. I purchased my April cruise (re-booking of September 20th) for £717 GBP, and £712 (B2B) on 11 August. The price began to gently rise over the time. Tuesday the price JUMPED! it is now £1053 and £950. That is about £1200 more than what I paid. Glad I got on the (ahem) "boat" when I did. Right now there is a cruise planner sale and prices for those items are the same as they were when I was tracking the September cruise. Has anyone ever noticed, excursion prices never actually go on sale? WAAAYTOOO 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atlantix2000 Posted September 3, 2020 Report Share Posted September 3, 2020 6 hours ago, Sailor_to_Cruiser said: I am an obsessed cruiser. I track all the prices of things I'm interested in. I purchased my April cruise (re-booking of September 20th) for £717 GBP, and £712 (B2B) on 11 August. The price began to gently rise over the time. Tuesday the price JUMPED! it is now £1053 and £950. That is about £1200 more than what I paid. Glad I got on the (ahem) "boat" when I did. Based on those numbers, my calculator says that's only £574 more than what you paid??? Either way, yes prices will probably continue to rise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JLMoran Posted September 3, 2020 Report Share Posted September 3, 2020 1 hour ago, Atlantix2000 said: Based on those numbers, my calculator says that's only £574 more than what you paid??? Either way, yes prices will probably continue to rise. The numbers are per person, so you have to double the extra to a total of £1,148. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JLMoran Posted September 3, 2020 Report Share Posted September 3, 2020 Remember that Royal is a business, and has to turn a profit. They had stated that an Oasis class ship can manage to be profitable at 30% capacity, IIRC; that certainly won't happen if they cut prices a lot. Even if they plan to try and start off at 50% and go up from there, that's a lot of unavailable cabins that they need to offset the losses from. Some operational costs will be reduced -- they don't have to load as much food every sailing if they're going at 50%, though I doubt they'd cut the actual load-up by 50%. But others, like the amount of fuel needed for a given sailing or the wages they have to pay the crew (assuming the total crew assignment isn't also reduced significantly) don't really change. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cruisellama Posted September 3, 2020 Report Share Posted September 3, 2020 Is possible to know ship occupancy as prior to departure (do lines share this info with TAs)? Was manually looking over open cabins on a ship that's still sailing in Nov and wanted to get a feel how many open cabins. Just cumbersome mock booking - changing class and running through decks. If it were to sail, guessing it would be under reduced capacity anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twangster Posted September 3, 2020 Report Share Posted September 3, 2020 A lot has changed since the days when they faced a question about sailing at reduced capacity during an investor call. Keep in the mind the response was an answer to a question on the spot, it wasn't an announcement that this was an intention developed as a formal policy derived after days of effort by a working group. It was a response to a question that took seconds to think up on the spot that many have since extrapolated a lot from. That was months ago when there was some hope that cruising would have resumed by now. Fast forward to today and if asked the same question there may be a different answer. With 5 minute testing and a vaccine on the verge of becoming real the requirements to operate at reduced capacity have changed. This is an example of many things the Healthy Sail Panel will evaluate. I think it unwise to speculate about capacity reductions or any approach to a resumption of cruising until the Healthy Sail Panel finishes their work. We'll know when they know. Right now Royal doesn't know and I doubt they are using unknowns to adjust cabin pricing. There have always been a lot of revenue management algorithms in use that are probably being driven wonky with pandemic induced booking trends that the algorithms were never intended to deal with. Gears, ehw51, Matt and 4 others 6 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gears Posted September 3, 2020 Report Share Posted September 3, 2020 Hmmmm...125% FCC might not go as far as originally thought? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twangster Posted September 3, 2020 Report Share Posted September 3, 2020 9 minutes ago, Gears said: Hmmmm...125% FCC might not go as far as originally thought? Alaska is pretty cheap right now. Your FCC will go further than it ever has up there. Baked Alaska, crisgold52 and WAAAYTOOO 1 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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