Questions about an Overbooked Cruise

[firegal2539]

I am really getting tired of that word OVERBOOKED. I know that air and cruise lines do it but I don't understand it. I was just notified by Royal that my Explorer of the Seas Alaskan cruise is seriously overbooked, (term the representative used). They are calling passengers who live in the embarkation port area and have booked a interior room to move to the cruise the week before this one, upgraded to a Ocean View cabin with $100 OBC and a 50% off cruise certificate for a new cruise if booked and used within a year. A friend from San Francisco is on this cruise and he was called. He asked what "seriously overbooked meant", 10 cabins, 20 cabins, 50 cabins too many. The rep wouldn't say. He couldn't move because of a prior engagement but Royal told him to call back today to see if they would give him a better deal, a different date for the cruise, etc. He recommended that I call, even though I am not in an interior, and see what they would offer me. Royal doesn't want to play with me because I would have air cancellation fees, but the rep told me to call back on Wednesday to see if they had upped the offer. There is a large group, about 400, why don't they offer them a deal?

Can someone explain to me, what will Royal do if passengers don't take the offer, offer more incentives to get them to change, just randomly bump passengers off and how do they choose those passengers? Why are they only calling passengers that booked an Interior, aren't they overbooked in all categories? Can't Royal see that the cruise is sold out so why do they keep selling cabins, I understand about cancellations before final pay, but I would think they could tell by the amount of passengers that have paid all or most of the cruise and the passengers that haven't paid anything but the deposit.

Hopefully someone with lots of knowledge can weigh in and explain why they do this and how they will rectify the overbooking.

Thanks, Candie

[Matt]

Oh @monorailmedic....

[firegal2539]

3 minutes ago, Matt said:

Oh @monorailmedic....

Matt,

What are you trying to tell me?

Candie

[Matt]

Just now, firegal2539 said:

Matt,

What are you trying to tell me?

Candie

He has a story to share about this

[WAAAYTOOO]

Honestly, I don't remember this kind of thing happening on a cruise ship until very recently.  Maybe it has happened all along and I just never heard about it.

It seems insane to me that a cruise line can overbook a cruise !  I'm not one to declare "there oughta be a law...." (there are far too many of those already) but it certainly does seem like it would be a publicity nightmare to have to kick families off a cruise ship when they have paid their (already over-inflated) full fare up front !

...but I have heard a number of these horror stories over the past several weeks.  What is changing that they are suddenly overbooking these cruises ?

[DocLC]

As far as I know, no own has ever been bumped from a cruise, so I'm okay with this. If they're willing to increase the benefits of changing one's cruise and someone can benefit from the incentive, then I'm all for it. 

My guess is that they're playing with booking too many guarantees and then end up with to few cabins to book those guarantee passengers into. 

If someone is every forcible bumped, then my tune would change. 

[KLA]

3 hours ago, Matt said:

He has a story to share about this

I love the new summoning capability. 

[firegal2539]

Doc,

The problem with this cruise is Royal was only offering the May 19th cruise, $100 OBC and a 50% certificate for a new booking taken within a year. They weren't flexible at all. My TA went into the agent portal and the May 26, June 2, 9, and 16th are closed with limited availability on the 23 cruise. If they seriously want you to give up your cabin then make an offer that  will make you change. To me it isn't right for Royal to expect you to change with only 5 days before you have to leave. Just my opinion!

Candie

[DocLC]

3 hours ago, firegal2539 said:

Doc,

The problem with this cruise is Royal was only offering the May 19th cruise, $100 OBC and a 50% certificate for a new booking taken within a year. They weren't flexible at all. My TA went into the agent portal and the May 26, June 2, 9, and 16th are closed with limited availability on the 23 cruise. If they seriously want you to give up your cabin then make an offer that  will make you change. To me it isn't right for Royal to expect you to change with only 5 days before you have to leave. Just my opinion!

Candie

That's what they're offering now. If there are no takers, they'll sweeten the offer until they have the cabins they need. Airlines do the same thing. They start with a low offer and slowly increase the offer until they have takers. 

[F1guynz]

I find overbooking a strange concept. To me and long as I have paid and not been refunded then it should be irrelevant to any company whether I turn up or not. You have sold me the space for a set date/time and whether I use it is up to me. Airlines and apparently now cruise lines are just playing the numbers by selling tickets to space that has already been paid for in the hope they can double dip. Probably in the past they just overbooked by small number of tickets but over time have become more aggressive with this policy so that now it has become newsworthy. I don't like the unnecessary stress this causes people when they have done nothing wrong.

[monorailmedic]

Wow - so I started to reply and it got long, which inspired a post over on my site, to which I'll like below.

In short, this happens because cruise lines really don't want to sail empty - they'd rather pay guests to back out than they would lose revenue by not filling a ship.  It's gone on for years, just like with airlines, but gets more attention now.

Back in January I was given the option to cancel, and in exchange, I got a credit for the value of my cruise (plus a refund).  I took it, and feel pretty good about that decision - but I could have simply said no.

In the below article I go into detail about this practice and also link to my personal story when I cancelled my Indy sailing.
http://www.cruisehabit.com/just-airlines-cruise-lines-overbook-–-and-it’s-nothing-new

Let us know how this pans out for you, firegal , and remember - if you don't think the offer is worth it, just say no.

[FManke]

3 hours ago, DocLC said:

That's what they're offering now. If there are no takers, they'll sweeten the offer until they have the cabins they need. Airlines do the same thing. They start with a low offer and slowly increase the offer until they have takers. 

They are just low balling you to start. If they don't get any takers like DocLC said. They will up their offer. It depends how bad they want it vs how bad you want it.

[DocLC]

3 hours ago, F1guynz said:

I find overbooking a strange concept. To me and long as I have paid and not been refunded then it should be irrelevant to any company whether I turn up or not. You have sold me the space for a set date/time and whether I use it is up to me. Airlines and apparently now cruise lines are just playing the numbers by selling tickets to space that has already been paid for in the hope they can double dip. Probably in the past they just overbooked by small number of tickets but over time have become more aggressive with this policy so that now it has become newsworthy. I don't like the unnecessary stress this causes people when they have done nothing wrong.

Unlike airlines, cruise lines have generous cancellation policies for those of us in North America. This if you cancel after final payment but before sailing, you are eligible to get some of your money back. Thus, they aren't guaranteed full fare unless your past any refund dates. In addition, the cruise lines rely on onboard revenue to meet their income goals. The fare alone does not keep a cruise line super profitable. As for the airlines, they have your money in most cases, but they can make more by overbooking and essentially selling the same seat twice. 

[DocLC]

@monorailmedic nice cross promotion. Did you pick that up from Matt. ;) <jk>

BTW, I completely agree with your decision to accept the offer (not that you were looking for my approval). 

[monorailmedic]

2 minutes ago, DocLC said:

... cruise lines rely on onboard revenue to meet their income goals. The fare alone does not keep a cruise line super profitable. As for the airlines, they have your money in most cases, but they can make more by overbooking and essentially selling the same seat twice. 

Fantastic point.

[DocLC]

2 minutes ago, monorailmedic said:

Fantastic point.

Now if I could only get you to say that on ratemyprofessor ;)

[monorailmedic]

3 minutes ago, DocLC said:

Now if I could only get you to say that on ratemyprofessor ;)

I'll just leave this here: http://paypal.me/billyhirsch/25

[PRC]

I've been fortunate to never have to deal with this.  

I have often wondered though if the booking engine will allow them to "sell" a specific cabin more than once, or would you always see the over-bookings go into the selling of "guarantee" bookings (no cabin assigned at purchase, only closer to sailing).  I did book one of those years ago, and was assigned a cabin approx. 6 hours later!

 

 

 

[monorailmedic]

13 minutes ago, PRC said:

I've been fortunate to never have to deal with this.  

I have often wondered though if the booking engine will allow them to "sell" a specific cabin more than once, or would you always see the over-bookings go into the selling of "guarantee" bookings (no cabin assigned at purchase, only closer to sailing).  I did book one of those years ago, and was assigned a cabin approx. 6 hours later!

They shouldn't be selling the same cabin twice.  Overbooking should always have to do with the GTY categories.  That's not to say that mistakes don't happen - but they'd be taking one heck of a gamble booking a specific room twice :-)

[FManke]

14 hours ago, DocLC said:

In addition, the cruise lines rely on onboard revenue to meet their income goals.

Dollars pay the bills and pennies make the profit. Although they are certainly charging you more than pennies for their wares. I think you get the point, though.

[firegal2539]

Hi to All,

Candie here. Royal got enough booked passengers to step down and take the May 19, 2017 cruise. These were all local passengers to San Francisco, so there would be no cost of air to Royal. What these passengers were offered was the May 19, 2017 cruise as opposed to the May 26, 2017 Alaskan cruise. Same ports, same everything. They were originally offered $100 OBC but finally gave $150 to each stateroom. A 50% off a future cruise, booked and taken within a year, from May 19, 2017. A free specialty meal. John, the person that I was talking to about this, said he negotiated on his own. When Royal offered $100 OBC, he told them $150 and a free specialty meal for two. Royal gave it to him.

I wonder if the other passengers were smart enough to negotiate with Royal. John has only done about 150 cruises on Royal so I think they might treat him a little differently from other passengers. He and his wife are on the seas about 200 or more days a year.

Thanks for all your input, still really tired of the OVER BOOKED word.

Candie

[SimonLynn]

Hi Matt,

Sorry if I'm reviving an almost 5 year old thread. I just need to confirm something with you and/or more experienced cruisers than me. 

First off, I'm based in Singapore. Cruises have resumed for a while now but recently there has been an unusually large amount of negative experiences had by cruisers embarking from Singapore.

I'm hoping someone here will be able to advise us as it does appear as though things are getting really out of hand. 

We've had passengers who have had their bookings cancelled due to overbooking. However, unlike what's being shared here, RC contacted passengers not to ask them if the passengers wanted to back out of their booking in return for another sailing date with whatever benefits or offers to sweeten the deal. Instead, passengers are being called and simply TOLD that their sailings are overbooked and that their bookings have been cancelled. The sailing is only 2 weeks away, the passengers have done their online check-ins via the Royal app and most importantly, they have made FULL payment for their bookings a long time ago. 

Is there a reason why passengers who booked sailings from US ports are given a choice of sticking to their bookings or taking the offer while those of us from here are given neither an offer nor a choice in whether we want to go ahead with our bookings or not? Having made full payment, in some cases even did pre-purchases for on-board packages and checked in, I don't think the passengers should be the one paying the price for the sailings being overbooked. Shouldn't we be at least given a choice on the matter or at least a decent/good compensation? 

[Matt]

On 1/18/2022 at 7:56 AM, SimonLynn said:

Is there a reason why passengers who booked sailings from US ports are given a choice of sticking to their bookings or taking the offer while those of us from here are given neither an offer nor a choice in whether we want to go ahead with our bookings or not?

I don't have a good answer for you, just that Royal Caribbean operates different internationally compared to here in the US.

Part of it have something to do with government regulations in Singapore, but I don't know if that's true or not.

In short, I don't have a good answer for you. Sorry.

[SPS]

Sorry, @SimonLynn couldn't resist!