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Navigator Pricing Error and Revenue Mgmt


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Last week I received an email from revenue management letting me know that my March bookings involved a pricing error but they would honor the bookings.

I had two suite cabins booked, one for me and another for a family member.  To give you an idea of the error involved my suite would normally go for 234% more while the other suite would normally be 255% more each on a solo basis given our unique qualifiers (CAS status, age, state, etc).  Both suites have the capacity for 6 guests.  I had booked both suites with a single guest in each cabin.

I offered to let the bookings go.  An email exchange followed that turned into a game of phone tag as we both worked around busy schedules but we eventually talked on the phone.   

Revenue management was very clear I could keep the bookings and they would honor the pricing.  They requested the phone call to make sure I understood they would honor them.  I told her to cancel them.

I didn't feel right taking advantage of what was clearly a pricing error.  I knew it was a error when I booked it and give Royal a lot of credit for offering to honor the bookings despite the thousands of dollars they would lose by doing so.  

A family of four booked in one of these suites would have gone for 500% more than I was booked for.  Between the two suites it amounted to an error that would cost Royal over $10k in revenue if both suites were booked at capacity not to mention losses in gratuity and onboard spending.

Simply stated it didn't sit right with me to take advantage of the company especially during these dark times with so much lost due to the pandemic.

Call me a fool but I slept better knowing I did the right thing.

BTW - nice people in revenue management.  

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15 minutes ago, smokeybandit said:

Did you book them because of the price, or would you have booked them anyway?

I booked them to sail from LA to MX.

I wanted 7 nights since I am flying to the port.  

I've done B2B on carnival from CA to Ensenada and Catalina so several things pushed me to the 7 night cruises.  

I wanted to book in November but will be on the Odyssey inaugural US cruise. 

Seeing the price motivated me to jump on that particular cruise since it met my criteria and avoided flying at Christmas when flights are at peak prices.

While booking I said "that's gotta be a mistake" since they were lower than the other 7 night cruises, even lower than the Christmas peak holiday sailings when solo discounts don't apply.

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9 minutes ago, twangster said:

I booked them to sail from LA to MX.

I wanted 7 nights since I am flying to the port.  

I've done B2B on carnival from CA to Ensenada and Catalina so several things pushed me to the 7 night cruises.  

I wanted to book in November but will be on the Odyssey inaugural US cruise. 

Seeing the price motivated me to jump on that particular cruise since it met my criteria and avoided flying at Christmas when flights are at peak prices.

While booking I said "that's gotta be a mistake" since they were lower than the other 7 night cruises, even lower than the Christmas peak holiday sailings when solo discounts don't apply.

I admire your conscience, but at the same time, RC is a multi billion dollar corporation that we all know needs to get its head out of its rear in its IT department. So in many ways I don't feel bad about someone taking advantage of a price screw up.

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8 minutes ago, smokeybandit said:

I admire your conscience, but at the same time, RC is a multi billion dollar corporation that we all know needs to get its head out of its rear in its IT department. So in many ways I don't feel bad about someone taking advantage of a price screw up.

In my mind the size of the company doesn't change the equation.  

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A big ? to you @twangster for the right thing. We have corrected the Royal personnel times before when they have erred in a price quote or refund. We have a cruise booked on Navigator over Thanksgiving and realize that they will probably sell out that sailing. We did notice that the pricing was way below what we were used to seeing but we booked it through the Casino so we know they will make up the fare difference on us. Have fun on the Odyssey on her maiden US voyage.

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Wow.  Working with the general public in restaurants and food service, human error would tell you that we have just as many under charges as over charges across thousands of transactions every day which are admittedly much smaller and less important than booking a suite on a cruise ship.  But still, I can count on one hand the number of people who have come to me in 20+ years to fix a pricing mistake that favored them, the customer.

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37 minutes ago, dr martini said:

Wow.  Working with the general public in restaurants and food service, human error would tell you that we have just as many under charges as over charges across thousands of transactions every day which are admittedly much smaller and less important than booking a suite on a cruise ship.  But still, I can count on one hand the number of people who have come to me in 20+ years to fix a pricing mistake that favored them, the customer.

They came to me ? 

If they didn't come to me I would have gone with it on the assumption they were fine with it.  Once it was known to be a pretty costly mistake I wasn't good with taking advantage of the situation like this.  

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