Vision Canceled

[AlmondFarmer]

Bermuda is an expensive island. No $1 beers like in Cozumel. I assume Royal planned to provision Vision in Bermuda opposed to Coco Cay based on port facilities. The passenger load required to break even on a sailing with higher provisioning costs likely influenced cancellation decision. 

[steverk]

29 minutes ago, BarbieBell said:

With so many other ships displaced right now, why couldn’t RCI honor their commitment to Nassau and restart sailings from US ports simultaneously?

I'm terrible at figuring out what is going on in Royal Caribbean's head, so take this with a grain of salt.

My feeling is that Royal will probably keep the Bahamas sailings. If nothing else, it gives them a chance to see if that's a viable departure port for the future.

However, it is ultimately going to come down to money.  There's more money in getting sailings from the US.  If the US does open up, they'll look at what ships are ready to go (i.e. in position, fully staffed, etc.) and decide which ones can sail from each port.

I they have a major port slot available, but no ship, it will be very tempting for Royal to re-deploy Adventure in to that location.

[Cruising With JT]

Wow crazy news... more cancellations... I think this is just bad planning and forecasting from Royal. If you're going to have a season from Bermuda, stick to it for a few months and then move... don't disrupt all these cruise plans people had made... they won't be happy. Israel I understand because of the unrest...but from Bermuda? Come on guys! 

[JLMoran]

18 minutes ago, coneyraven said:

Plus, flights to Nassau, especially from Florida are a lot less expensive and easy to come by (more airlines) than flights to Bermuda .... it only makes sense to keep the Adventure sailings

Not only are the flights to Bermuda more expensive, but Royal was subsidizing the hell out of them. I was able to see when looking at the options on ChoiceAir that Royal was eating over $600 per person on those subsidized flights, after factoring in taxes.

So just looking at my wife and I, Royal was covering over $1,200 in airfare for us, but our cruise fare including port taxes was all of $1,500 for our OV cabin. Since everyone who booked those sailings had to fly in and was probably taking advantage of the subsidized rates, that means Royal was barely making anything at all on each booking, if not losing money outright. We all know the real money-making is in the onboard spend, but if they're even more in the hole due to the flight subsidies then I can see why they'd cut their losses and cancel those trips.

[HBCcruiser]

8 minutes ago, JLMoran said:

Not only are the flights to Bermuda more expensive, but Royal was subsidizing the hell out of them. I was able to see when looking at the options on ChoiceAir that Royal was eating over $600 per person on those subsidized flights, after factoring in taxes.

So just looking at my wife and I, Royal was covering over $1,200 in airfare for us, but our cruise fare including port taxes was all of $1,500 for our OV cabin. Since everyone who booked those sailings had to fly in and was probably taking advantage of the subsidized rates, that means Royal was barely making anything at all on each booking, if not losing money outright. We all know the real money-making is in the onboard spend, but if they're even more in the hole due to the flight subsidies then I can see why they'd cut their losses and cancel those trips.

Good point. 

[JLMoran]

17 minutes ago, AlmondFarmer said:

Bermuda is an expensive island. No $1 beers like in Cozumel. I assume Royal planned to provision Vision in Bermuda opposed to Coco Cay based on port facilities. The passenger load required to break even on a sailing with higher provisioning costs likely influenced cancellation decision. 

Royal was going to provision during a technical stop in Freeport, not in Bermuda. Covered that in another thread here a few weeks back. But yeah, it was still going to be more expensive even from Freeport than it would be from any US port.

[twangster]

I've been unofficially tracking both Vision and Adventure.  It was pretty clear Adventure had some demand, at least early in her Nassau season while Vision looked soft.

The first Adventure cruise only had a few dozen cabins left and most of those were the expensive panoramic oceanview that were priced over the balcony rates.  

It will be interesting to watch now if many people exercise a CWC on their Adventure cruises once the US restart becomes official.  Only time will tell.   

[twangster]

Not to turn this into an Adventure thread but I could see them opening up capacity a bit to fatten up her revenue.

[Biff215]

While I do think cruising will resume from some US ports this summer, it’s going to be a slow rollout which leads me to believe the Vision cancellation was mostly due to money. Sure they may be hoping to redeploy her ASAP out of a US port, but that’s still an unknown at this point. You can bet that if the numbers worked, those Bermuda cruises would still be happening.

Of course I still fear a similar fate for Adventure as none of us know the true numbers that make this worthwhile for Royal. Even if sold out, the reduced capacity will no doubt hurt the bottom line. Only time will tell, but as others have said, I’ll feel a whole lot better once everything is officially released for the first sailings. 

[twangster]

The US restart will be slowed only by the inability to re-crew ships in a timely manner.  Processing of US crew VISAs may be the long pole in the tent.

The concept of a slow restart with only 3 & 4 night Bahamas cruises on Mariner and Navigator was from the era before vaccines.  They relaunch all ships as fast as they can which is appropriate now with vaccines available.  It won't be the floodgates opening but it will be pretty darn close, at least IMO.

[PG Cruiser]

10 minutes ago, twangster said:

The US restart will be slowed only by the inability to re-crew ships in a timely manner.  Processing of US crew VISAs may be the long pole in the tent.

My contacts in the Philippines are telling me they're having a hard time processing their papers because of government backlogs and the recent spike in COVID cases causing more lockdowns and quarantines.  My son traveled to the capital city for his papers (he's part of Virgin's Scarlet Lady crew) and he went home with COVID symptoms.  Multiply this scenario by the thousands of crew members in third world countries waiting for cruising to restart.

[twangster]

8 minutes ago, PG Cruiser said:

My contacts in the Philippines are telling me they're having a hard time processing their papers because of government backlogs and the recent spike in COVID cases causing more lockdowns and quarantines.  My son traveled to the capital city for his papers (he's part of Virgin's Scarlet Lady crew) and he went home with COVID symptoms.  Multiply this scenario by the thousands of crew members in third world countries waiting for cruising to restart.

Hope he's feeling better.

[PG Cruiser]

7 minutes ago, twangster said:

Hope he's feeling better.

He just recently got his sense of taste and smell back.  He went through two weeks of labored breathing.

[HBCcruiser]

Plus, Royal still has to conduct test cruises for the CDC don't they? That will take longer than 3 weeks to conduct. Adventure cruises are set to begin in 3 weeks, and are a revenue booster. Am I wrong? 

[RyanS]

10 minutes ago, HBCcruiser said:

Plus, Royal still has to conduct test cruises for the CDC don't they? That will take longer than 3 weeks to conduct. Adventure cruises are set to begin in 3 weeks, and are a revenue booster. Am I wrong? 

This is true. They won't start until July either. My initial thought is they may cancel the August/September sailings for Adventure and move her to the U.S. if it makes sense financially. I noticed the prices decrease as you move into August which could mean more availability which means less revenue.

 

As an example, my June 12th cruise was roughly $2200 for balcony, but the same room September 4th is $1450.

[deep1]

I'm far from Omnipotent but I could see this coming... The costs to book this trip were pretty steep. Prohibitive even. Add in air and other  expenses it was not all that attractive of a package... Then we have the rumors of her return to USA in the mix , makes more sense. Revenue is indeed revenue but if the numbers are too low negative cash flow from operating at a loss would be no good.  With the potential of USA homeports opening back up it makes this particular  itinerary and cost even less appealing. I'm sure at a corporate level  they can tell by number of bookings if it would be economically feasible to operate this run. 

[0_0]

I just noticed the entire Royal Caribbean fleet is Bahamas flagged. I doubt they'd pull the Adventure sailings and irritate them. It's also kind of a big deal for them because their goal is to be a long term homeport going forward, and they're pushing to invest in cruise terminal infrastructure, etc.

[dswallow]

Interesting reading in the discussions/comments on the article that appeared in Bermuda regarding this.

Royal Caribbean cancels Bermuda homeport cruises - The Royal Gazette | Bermuda News, Business, Sports, Events, & Community |

[bryresangel]

That makes me so sad since my cruise on Vision was cancelled due to them repositioning/sailing out of Bermuda!