Royal Caribbean offers trade 10-day Wi-Fi trial

Royal Caribbean offers trade 10-day Wi-Fi trial

by Natasha Salmon
Royal Caribbean International’s decision to extend a free Wi-Fi promotion to the trade has been welcomed, but the 10-day limit has been questioned.

From tomorrow (November 18), agents will be able to offer customers free Wi-Fi on selected European and Dubai sailings of six nights or more between January 1 and October 28, 2017. The promotion ends on November 28.

The offer was previously only available to customers who booked direct for a six-week test period, prompting complaints from agents, although the line said it always planned to roll it out to the trade.

Denise Hodgson, a partner at in Cheshire, welcomed the move but said the promotion seemed ‘unbalanced’.

“This would have been more welcome if it had come to agents in the first place. How will they be able to compare? If this is still part of the test, it is unbalanced as it is not running for the same period.”

Ben Bouldin, Royal sales director, stood by the promotion, saying: “I said from day one it was a test and we would offer it to the trade. It is for just 10 days, but if successful it will be considered for future campaigns and run for longer. If it works really well it could become a more mainstream part of our campaigns.”

Bouldin added: “Our research shows connectivity is an absolute priority for holidaymakers.

“We have just launched our November campaign and we thought the free Wi-Fi would be a good overlay before we head into a strong selling period around Thanksgiving and Black Friday.”

Royal’s November promotion includes a 25% discount on 2017 European and Dubai sailings, up to $400 onboard spend and low deposits from £25 per person.

Get away from it all? Cruise passengers want MORE.......

Get away from it all? Cruise passengers want MORE intrusion from the outside world with free wifi the innovation they'd most like to see on ships (...it can cost £20 an hour)

• Poll of 1,000 passengers found demand for internet access was top
• But logging on can prove costly...and the signal can struggle at sea
• Experts say younger travellers like to share holidays on social media 

By TOM KELLY FOR THE DAILY MAIL

With their on-board entertainment and air of relaxed seclusion, cruise liners seem the ideal place to get away from it all.

But it appears that what holidaymakers really want is more intrusion from the outside world.

Almost nine in ten passengers said free wifi and email access is the innovation they would most like to see on cruise ships, a poll found.

Get connected: nine in ten passengers said free wifi and email access is the innovation they would most like to see on cruise ships

With many now including smartphones and tablets in their luggage, travellers increasingly expect to be able to browse the internet even when far from land. And while many liners try to accommodate their demands with wifi hotspots, logging on can prove costly at up to £20 an hour.

There are also problems with repeated signal interruptions and slow service. ‘This is a particularly prevalent issue for younger families,’ said Sukie Rapal of Cruise.co.uk, which carried out the poll of 1,000 passengers.

‘Teenagers use their devices to stay in touch with friends on social media, access mobile applications and play games – meaning cruisers are susceptible to receiving a very unexpected cost at the end of their trip.’

The demand for better internet access is partly down to the falling average age of passengers, which the survey found has dropped from 60 to 55 years in the last decade.

‘With a 195 per cent rise in the number of searches for cruises on mobile devices this Christmas, it’s apparent that cruisers have become more tech savvy,’ she added.

‘Cruisers need to do their research to find the most reasonable rates for wifi use, because if they fail to do so, it could end up costing them more than the holiday itself.’

Get away from it all? No thanks: Many travellers increasingly expect to be able to browse the internet even when far from land

The poll also showed that world class entertainment came high up on cruisers’ wishlists, while around a fifth said their biggest demand was flat screen televisions in their cabins.

The least desired innovation was robot barmen, which have already been installed on a Royal Caribbean ship. Just one per cent said they were interested in seeing these on board.

The most popular ocean destination for this year is the Far East, while Europe’s Danube is the preferred river trip.

Royal Caribbean tests Internet capability by offering free WiFi

Royal Caribbean International has given away Internet access for the past couple of weeks on its newest ship, Quantum of the Seas.

The ship is one of three to be rigged for communications with the O3b mid-level satellite network, that provides for greater bandwidth and communications speeds.

The debut of a new, faster Internet service on Royal Caribbean International ships is only weeks away.

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. Chairman Richard Fain said in a conference call with Wall Street analysts on Thursday that the system is now in testing on Oasis of the Seas, and full rollout is expected in early summer.

Provider O3B is using a series of mid-orbit satellites for the service, rather than one geostationary satellite orbiting at 22,000 miles. That means signals travel shorter distances, increasing speeds.

Fain said that the change will give Oasis “more Internet bandwidth than every other cruise ship of every other cruise line in the world combined.” 

The service is initially targeted for Oasis of the Seas and the upcoming Quantum-class ships.

Internet service with speeds closer to those on land will help Royal Caribbean attract Millennial generation cruisers (ages 14-34) in particular, Fain said.

Royal Caribbean President Michael Bayley said guests were encouraged to use as much Internet capacity as they wanted or needed at no charge during recent cruises. 

"On Quantum, because we have so much bandwidth, over the past three weeks we’ve given out free WiFi. I mean free, free, free all the time,” Bayley told a group of travel agents on Freedom of the Seas over the weekend.

Royal Caribbean officials said the experiment was a kind of “stress test” to see just how much demand the system can handle.

"So we’ve been monitoring the consumption of bandwidth when we let everybody have free bandwidth — the crew, the guests, everybody — and we’ve only used a fraction of it,” Bayley said.

The standard charge on most Royal Caribbean ships for Internet access is 65 cents a minute.

Cruise line officials said it is unlikely that Internet access will become free on ships equipped with O3b. The current working model is to charge like many land resorts a fee of $10 to $15 a day for unlimited access, Royal Caribbean spokesman Harry Liu said.

There will be a premium package for large-bandwidth usage like streaming video, and Bayley said the line is exploring what it can do with such applications. 

"Soon we’re going to start speaking more about this capability,” Bayley told the agents. "Because of the scale and size of this bandwidth, we could do streaming videos. It’s genuinely as good as being in a city somewhere in the United States. It is better than that."