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Why are the prices higher than usual?


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With the restart of cruising just around the corner, I started checking sailings for July.  I've noticed that the prices for 4-night itineraries are unusually high. Could the demand be that high for July sailings that have very slim chances of even happening?  These sailings are usually in the $200-300 price range.

 

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This could be a "testing the market" situation. Happens every once in a while, like in real estate, a real estate agent will price a house above market just to see if it will sell or garner interest. If it works it pushes the market up higher... Alternatively, it could be they're expecting/planning to run ships at reduced capacity and have decided to raise fares to compensate for those losses.

IMO, I'd expect prices to normalize within 3-6 months for off peak sailings and maybe a year for peak time.

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Since these high prices are for close-in dates that may well not sail it makes me wonder if it's a way to try and prevent people playing the system by booking a cruise they're pretty sure is not going to go in the hope of getting the 125% FCC or the chance to L&S to next year at this year's prices. 

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9 minutes ago, JLMoran said:

My assumption is that with ships on reduced capacity, it's creating artificial scarcity in cabin availability and the algorithmic pricing is jacking up the prices.

Well, that and the fact that Royal seems to want to make up all of the revenue lost in 2020 before year-end 2021. ? ?

Leisure travel in North America is so insanely in demand these days, I would expect high prices through 2021 for even full-capacity cruises. It's incredible. Hell, even the number of new flights airlines are adding to Florida for this summer and fall is something I have never seen before. 

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I think it is a combination of everything. Lots of inflation, loss of revenue and possible demand. I manage a restaurant, corporate didn't just do the standard 2-3% increase; every item went up by8%+. RCG has to make up for 12+ months of no revenue, doing test cruises and getting around the CSO. I think the prices will eventually meet a healthy middle but I am assuming at least not until 2022.

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51 minutes ago, Ampurp85 said:

I think it is a combination of everything. Lots of inflation, loss of revenue and possible demand. I manage a restaurant, corporate didn't just do the standard 2-3% increase; every item went up by8%+. RCG has to make up for 12+ months of no revenue, doing test cruises and getting around the CSO. I think the prices will eventually meet a healthy middle but I am assuming at least not until 2022.

I am afraid the price stabilization might not occur until 2023. All the more reason to book well in advance (the conventional wisdom). We have our 3 cruises booked for 2022 and our early 2023 booked. As soon as the later 2023’s open up we will book those as well. These days are not the ones to be sitting on the sidelines.  
 

Stay Safe, Stay Apart, Stay Connected. 
 

Curt From Canada. 

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16 hours ago, Floski said:

Hotel prices for Port Canaveral are stupid high.

A room I used to get for about $140 for Saturday night pre-cruise is now $249 for 7/31, and a whopping $349 for 3/26/22.

The hotel prices in Miami and Ft Lauderdale for the three nights between my sailing on Radiance and Freedom in November of this year are high as well. So I just called my TA to book another sailing on Freedom on those nights making it a B2B.  

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19 hours ago, Zacharius said:

Leisure travel in North America is so insanely in demand these days, I would expect high prices through 2021 for even full-capacity cruises. It's incredible. Hell, even the number of new flights airlines are adding to Florida for this summer and fall is something I have never seen before. 

Exactly it all comes down to supply and demand, and it isn't just cruises charging more, customers need to be prepared to pay more for airfare, hotels, VRBO's, Airbnb's, rental cars, annything travel related is going to cost more in 2021 as more and more Americans look to make up for the vacation they didn't get to take in 2020.  

 

It would not surprise me to see cruise fares remain higher than usual until late 2022 or even early 2023 there is so much demand.  

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I've given up on cruising in the near-future as in several years, until some semblance of normalcy returns and I well know that may never happen. I went on a Vacation this year to Cocoa Beach, Florida and said numerous times how I miss cruising. But, when I go to mock-up cruises on Royal Caribbean's website I get put-off by the rise in prices so I give up and move on. I go back occasionally to mock-up more cruises only to leave thinking how crazy these prices are. Alas, I hope one day for something to change.

I had two cruises that were cancelled in the past two years that I was in Crown Loft Suites and I can't touch those original prices I once had. There is an increase of about 40% so I may never get to go to the 17th floor on an Oasis Class ship if this stays at these levels. ?

 

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On 5/24/2021 at 8:07 AM, PG Cruiser said:

With the restart of cruising just around the corner, I started checking sailings for July.  I've noticed that the prices for 4-night itineraries are unusually high. Could the demand be that high for July sailings that have very slim chances of even happening?  These sailings are usually in the $200-300 price range.

 

image.png.9a1dbfff2856b01233ddd1bfe56cba5e.png

 

Prices jumped in November on the first 3 of those...

pricehistory_mariner_2021_07_05.thumb.jpg.b6038ef41513d219e5d8c7ded2a70a82.jpg

pricehistory_mariner_2021_07_12.thumb.jpg.a28d7f44a65abf56eef8204d4b8601d0.jpg

pricehistory_mariner_2021_07_19.thumb.jpg.e76f5120c95038eb731496bfa404ab02.jpg

pricehistory_mariner_2021_07_26.thumb.jpg.0322c65f7303c9f355b09df0adacadab.jpg

 

 

Prior year cruises; I would ignore the prices from after February since at that point we were affected by COVID-19. But the prices were up there until that point.

pricehistory_mariner_2020_07_06.thumb.jpg.e0d4147ff6765d439af5264fc3aed569.jpg

pricehistory_mariner_2020_07_13.thumb.jpg.1c17dde827076f563c7ee2ded9679d06.jpg

pricehistory_mariner_2020_07_20.thumb.jpg.63eb57fb587acb9e2e76a4826b95b2c6.jpg

pricehistory_mariner_2020_07_27.thumb.jpg.9a91397902ad1c1926004560ebdc4842.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...
5 hours ago, Cruise_World said:

Hello dswallow,

Your informations are very interesting. On which website can i find this graphs, for other cruises i may study or book ?

Thanks 

I think he does it all manually on his end for cruises he tracks. I'll let @dswallow confirm if he has a master army of spreadsheet bots or not.

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It's supply and demand... ships sailing at reduced capacity decreases supply and then you take into account the pent up demand means rising prices. Traditionally June and July are pretty peaks seasons so I'm not surprised that the rates have jumped. If they don't get takers at the price levels they're set at then they'll adjust to try and fill space as the sailing approaches. 

I'm just glad I booked my Hawaii to Vancouver repo when I saw a great price. I have a feeling that's just going to keep going up. Already have my room in Honolulu too. 

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6 hours ago, Cruise_World said:

Hello dswallow,

Your informations are very interesting. On which website can i find this graphs, for other cruises i may study or book ?

Thanks 

It's all fully automated but it runs on systems at home. So until I migrate it to a cloud-based location that I can access from a public web server location (and also move the code the generates that stuff into a technology that can run on such a public web server :)) it's only accessible to me. If there's something in particular you want to look at maybe I can grab it for you, or at least get some sense of the kind of thing people may want to be able to do with it. Realistically I'm about to go off on 3 weeks of cruises so nothing will happen till I return if it isn't something I can do in the next 6 days. ?  Grabbing those graphs for any sailing is really easy though. Of course grabbing them for every sailing wouldn't be!

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26 minutes ago, smokeybandit said:

I must say though that I have to admire RC's marketing department for continually finding ways to make the $350 off plus 60% off second guess sale sound like a brand new sale each time comes out.

Yes.  I particularly like that "rare" extension of the current promotion.

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