Royal’s Onboard Revenue Spike Driven by Experiences

Onboard revenue for Royal Caribbean Cruises was up significantly in the company’s first quarter, going from $602 million in 2018 to $729 million in 2019.

“Guests spend for onboard activities has continued to shift towards areas that involve experiences over buying things and this quarter was no different,” said Jason T. Liberty, CFO, Royal Caribbean Cruises.

Passengers spent an average of $69.10 (gross) per day in the first quarter compared to $62.55 a year prior.

Liberty said shore excursions and various types of packages were key in driving the onboard revenue performance.

“We saw an over the index of spend on shore excursions and products like beverage packages, internet packages and again it is more focused on the experiential stuff versus seeing more spend occur within the retail shops,” he said.

German cruise line introduces social media access fee

German line AIDA Cruises is introducing a flat fee for internet access to social media networks on board its ships.

Passengers will be able to share their experiences on board with friends on social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or WhatsApp for €4 a day or €19 a week.

AIDA claims to be “dramatically increasing” the bandwidth and speed of internet connections in addition to the new social media flat rate.

New internet packages to be introduced soon will allow unlimited access rather than be based on minutes of use.

Three options will be available with packages costing €25 for 250MB, €39 for 500MB and €99 for 3 GB of access.

Thomas Pfitzer, chief technical officer at the Carnival Corporation-owned line, said: “The use of mobile devices is continuously growing. We want to accommodate this trend and are offering our guests an additional service with the flat rate.

“With these package offers, we help keep the costs of satellite-based internet connections at sea reasonable and calculable for our guests.”

Six ships in the fleet will be equipped with enhanced internet access by next month, with completion due by November.

The new internet packages and fees will be part of the standard offering on new flagship AIDAprima (pictured).

Passengers who book internet packages in advance through the MyAIDA portal will receive a 5% discount.

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."

Carnival introduces Internet plans based on type of usage

Carnival Cruise Line is testing a new method of delivering Internet service to guests, giving them a choice of three packages based on their online activities instead of charging guests for minutes used.

Carnival is piloting the new Internet packages on three ships: the Freedom, Sunshine and Breeze.

The least expensive option is the social media package, which enables guests to use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat and Pinterest for a flat fee of $5 per day or $25 per voyage during the initial testing period. 

Those who want to check email and surf the Web can upgrade to a value package for $16 per day or $60 per cruise. 

A premium package provides “the fastest available connection speed,” said Carnival, and is for heavy Internet usage. Those who want to use the Skype video calling application must buy the premium package. It costs $25 per day or $99 per cruise.

Guests do not have to log on or off while their plan lasts. 

On Carnival’s other ships, the cruise line charges $29 for 45 minutes, $59 for 120 minutes, $89 for 240 minutes and $159 for 480 minutes.

Also, the cruise line is piloting a free smartphone app on the Carnival Breeze. The app provides a searchable deck plan, information about restaurants, the guest’s Sail & Sign account balance, itinerary details and a schedule of shipboard events. 

A chat feature that costs $5 for the entire cruise enables guests to exchange messages with traveling companions. 

The mobile app and new Internet packages will roll out to additional ships following successful completion of pilot programs, Carnival said.

Norwegian's new amenities package draws agent interest

By Tom Stieghorst

Going all in

Norwegian Cruise Line has created an all-inclusive package of cruise amenities. Here’s how a passenger could come out, using one set of assumptions about what it might cost to buy all the items in the package a la carte during a seven-night cruise. 

A la carte:

Beverage: $448 (eight drinks per day at average cost of $8 each)
Dining: $140 (seven specialty restaurant meals averaging $20 per person)
Prepaid gratuities: $84 ($12 a day)
Shore excursions: $320 (four excursions at $80 per person)
Internet: $100 (250-minute package)
Photos: $274 (15 small photos at $12 each; five 8-by-10 photos at $20 each)
Bingo: $39
Wine: $29
Water: $21.95 (six large bottles)
Chocolate-covered strawberries: $12

• A la carte total = $1,467.95
• Package $899 + $120 (shore excursion in excess of $200) = $1,019
• Savings = $448.95 

Andy Stuart, Norwegian Cruise Line’s executive vice president of global sales, said some 3,000 agents joined a webinar about its new all-in-one amenities package, about a third more than the typical audience for a Norwegian webinar.

Called the All-Inclusive, the new product is a package of packages, bundling Norwegian’s Ultimate Dining and Ultimate Beverage packages with Internet minutes, plus a bevy of other items not included in the cruise fare.

“We got a ton of positive feedback,” Stuart said.

The All-Inclusive package is offered on cruises of three to 14 days in 2015. For a seven-day cruise, it is priced at $899 per person, with higher or lower prices for shorter or longer cruise lengths.

Norwegian will pay commission on the package at the same rate as the cruise fare, with the exception of the gratuities that are included in the package.

“There’s absolutely no way to make a big promotion and offer a package that for a seven-night cruise is $899 and ask the travel agents to support it without paying commission,” said Stuart.

Norwegian ran numerous examples to test the idea that selling the package could double an agent’s commission and feels that is a valid claim, he added.

Vicky Garcia, COO of Cruise Planners in Coral Springs, Fla., called the package an “extraordinary” value and said it would help agents get customers focused on 2015.

“Also, this all-inclusive offer is combinable with other sales or promotions that are currently in the market,” Garcia said.

Norwegian said the package represents more than $2,400 of value per stateroom. Although the exact value will vary according to an individual’s choices, Travel Weekly found a seven-night guest paying a la carte could spend about $1,350 for what’s in the package (see breakdown, above left).

Inclusive packages are also valued because they create certainty about costs.

“A lot of people like to be done with it before the cruise starts,” Stuart said. “They like to have that element done, and they get on their vacation, and they’re not thinking about … should I do this or should I not do that because there’s a cost attached to it.”

Beyond the dining, beverage and Internet packages, the All-Inclusive package includes a $200-per-person credit toward shore excursions, prepaid gratuities, 20 photos of any size, three bingo cards, a bottle of wine, chocolate-covered strawberries and six large bottles of water.
For cruises from three to five days, the shore excursion credit is $100 per person; and for sailings from nine to 14 days, the package includes 12 bottles of water.

“We felt very comfortable presenting this as an all-inclusive package,” Stuart said, adding that it will help Norwegian compete with all-inclusive resorts as well as with other cruise lines.

On select cruises, buying the All-Inclusive package also qualifies a guest for a 10% discount on the cruise fare.

At least initially, All-Inclusive will be available only from Aug. 4 through 29 on all 2015 cruises except those on the Pride of America. Stuart said there will be discussion later of how long to continue the package.

“It’s the first time the industry has ever done this, so we want to get a sense of whether it resonates with travel agents,” he said.

Stuart said Norwegian has seen a growing interest in inclusivity among its guests, and did research about what elements to include in the package. It found the most valued benefit was prepaid service charges, followed by the Ultimate Dining package and then the Ultimate Beverage package.

One unexpected result of the research was that first-time cruisers expressed as much or more interest as past cruisers in buying the package.

“That took us by surprise, I must say,” Stuart said. “But it encouraged us, because it really showed there was a broad audience for this promotion.”

Royal Caribbean WiFi, Internet, Prices and tips

Royal Caribbean WiFi, Internet, Prices and tips

Jul2014

Staying connected at sea is something more and more cruisers want to know how they can get internet access while at sea.  Royal Caribbean WiFi has received renewed emphasis recently with better technology offering superior coverage and faster speeds.  Here's what you need to know to surf, chat and share your cruise vacation via social media.

How can I get connected on my Royal Caribbean cruise?

All Royal Caribbean ships offer shared computers and wifi internet access.  Older ships have select locations in public areas where guests can log in, but newer ships and ships that have been refurbished in the last few years have gotten "stem to stern" WiFi coverage that allows internet access from anywhere, including staterooms.

At the very least, you can turn your internet device on and log onto the WiFi signal in common areas such as the Promenade, Library or lounges.  If your Royal Caribbean ship is Oasis or Quantum class, it will have internet access everywhere.  Other older ships have slowly been getting upgrades to allow access everywhere.  

How is wifi access controlled?

Your access to the internet on-board your Royal Caribbean ship is tied to your stateroom and account you create.  

When you first login to Royal Caribbean's wifi, you will see an option to create an account and there you can sign up for a plan or pay for the internet by the minute.  In either case, the charge for internet usage will be applied to your stateroom account.

What devices can access the internet? 

Photo by Nick Jones

Any internet device that can access a 802.11b wireless connection can connect to the internet.  This include most smart phones, laptops and tablets.  

Royal Caribbean does provide workstations that are shared and available on a first-come, first served basis but we've found them to be slow in terms of performance.

Is the internet speeds slow or fast?

Compared to land connections these days, Royal Caribbean's wifi is slow but it's still better than no connection at all.  Speeds will vary based on the ship's location, weather conditions and how many other people are trying to log on.

Generally speaking we've found the internet speeds to be best late at night and in the early morning hours when the least people are on-line.  Actual speeds and performance vary and normally it's moderately slow but can get bogged down depending on the conditions noted earlier.

Royal Caribbean is about to improve the wifi speed dramatically when it partners with a new internet provider that will launch new satellites that promise speeds just as good as on land. 

Please remember that the internet speed in general is outside of Royal Caribbean's control and because it's satellite based, sometimes there's just nothing they can do.  We do recommend if you do waste a lot of time trying to connect to graciously speak to someone in Guest Services because they will often refund some of your time so you can try again later.

What about using Skype or Face-time on my Royal Caribbean cruise?

In the past Royal Caribbean blocked Skype and other VOIP applications because they were bandwidth hogs and the speeds were just too slow to use.  These days, we've seen them unblocked on some cruises and blocked on other cruises.

When Royal Caribbean implements their speed upgrades, expect those type of services to be available again.

How much does internet access cost?

Royal Caribbean's internet prices vary from ship to ship but the base rate for internet access is 65 cents per minute.  

Royal Caribbean offers a number of internet packages that lower the per-minute cost.  On some newer ships and refurbished ships they also offer unlimited internet access plans for the duration of your cruise.

In general, you should opt for an internet package rather than paying per minute to get the best deal.  Crown and Anchor Society members get discounts on internet packages that you can apply to your plan at Guest Services onboard.

Alternatives to Royal Caribbean WiFi

If the price of Royal Caribbean's internet is too much, you may be better off financially (and speed wise) by connecting when you are in port.

There's lots of restaurants, bars and other establishments that offer WiFi access for free or a small fee. Many will offer you access if you buy something and the cost is negligible compared to what Royal Caribbean charges.

A great tip is to ask crew members on your cruise where they go for internet access because they visit these ports regularly and know where to find the best deals.