Carnival Takes a Bite From Apple

Apple is known for quality products, great customer service at its Apple stores, and a strict pricing policy.  Ever wonder why Apple products are never discounted?  Apple requires all of its suppliers to charge the same price – no discounting and extremely limited value adds.  Late last month Carnival announced a new policy effective 8/1/12 to all their suppliers regarding how their product can be marketed and priced – no discounting an no value adds (IE onboard credit offers)– period!  How does this affect you the consumer, Carnival, and us the suppliers …..

Why did Carnival make this decision? Carnival feels as though they have a very competitively priced quality product.  They want to avoid confusion in the marketplace with many vendors offering different promotions at different times.  They feel as though discounting devalues the Carnival brand and want to maintain integrity in their pricing models.  I believe they also feel that any of the suppliers who are working with razor thin margins by large discounting cannot afford to service their clients very well.  If the supplier is not providing outstanding service to the client they end up calling Carnival – defeating the whole purpose of paying the supplier to sell Carnival cruises and service their guests.

How does this affect you?  First, you can now be assured that whoever you call to help you with your dream vacation on Carnival you will be getting the same price and same offer for the cruise portion of your vacation.  Consumers will now be selecting who they wish to book their cruise with based on service and not price.  Often CruiseOne will have special promotions such as no deposits required, shore excursion credits, or cash back offers.  These can no longer be offered on Carnival cruises.  Any supplier found to be discounting or adding these value additions will lose their ability to sell Carnival.

How does this effect CruiseOne?  From my perspective I think it will help the industry as a whole.  We pride ourselves on providing outstanding service to our clients.  We can save money for clients in other ways such as recommending shore excursions that save clients up to 25% on cruise line excursions.  We often book transfers at 50% the cost of booking with the cruise lines.  We recently saved a client over $700 from published airfare by utilizing one of our partnerships with an air consolidators.  A supplier who might spend one to two hours working with a client to find them the perfect cruise will now not have to worry about a competitor coming in after the fact and offering a small discount (because they did not do any of the work) and ‘stealing’ the client.  Carnival wants to protect the work the original agent did and we applaud that!

Donna and I always have believed we offered great prices and exceptional service.  We believe that finding the best value to match a client to their dream vacation is not the same as the finding the ‘cheapest cruise’.    And now we have Carnival backing us up!

Happy Cruising!

Carnival Dream - Is it really?

It is day six on our spring break cruise and we are at sea.  I am sitting here on my balcony looking at deep blue ocean as far as the eye can see, sunny, with a nice breeze from the slowly moving marvel at sea.   It has been a while since we have sailed a full seven days with Carnival.  They have made many changes and upgrades with their new ships and Fun Ship 2.0 enhancements.  Having a travel business is tough!  We need to give our clients firsthand experience and knowledge on the products we recommend.    We hear all the time ‘I do not want Carnival - they are a party ship’ …. Well I have to say on this cruise during spring break that was not the case.  That reputation is from many many years ago and the focus now is on fun and multi-generational offerings for all – not a drunk fest or ‘party ship’ in the slightest.

There are 4500 passengers on board this week and about 1400 are kids under 18 years old.  I can honestly say we have not noticed that there are that many passengers on board which is a great comment about how the ship handles crowds – we even found pool chairs by the pool mid – afternoon!  Below are my thoughts on the pluses and minuses from the Carnival Dream.

Pluses:  

Crew – They have been fantastic from our room steward remembering all of our names after the first day, to the dining room staff accommodating our Gluten Free dining requests.  A quick story …. It was Donna’s birthday this week and as she is gluten free she cannot have cake and desserts have been hard to find for Donna on board.  At the last minute right before dinner I asked the Maitre’d if he could maybe bring some chocolate covered strawberries for dessert since I could not order the cake.  Well after dinner out comes not only a gluten free cheesecake (not on menu) with a candle but 6 beautifully decorated strawberries on a plate with Happy Birthday Donna written in pastry frosting.  I thought this went well above my last minute request … well done Carnival!!

Waterworks – For the kids you cannot beat the longest waterslides at sea with four distinct slides, play areas, and pools.  Kids loved to use them whenever they could.

Dining – Again exceeded my expectation.  There is usually one meal I do not care for on a cruise, but everything the family ordered was delicious.  We did not have one bad meal and lots of variety.  Our dining staff was some of the best as well!  The lobster was scrumptious and the quality above what we have had on any of the other main cruise lines.

Carnival is a great value … but since we have started our business I look at our cruises from a different perspective now.  Below are some cons I see on where Carnival is ‘saving’ money in order to have lower pricing than some competitors.

Cons:

Ship Design – Frankly I dislike the design of their ships from a logistics standpoint.  It appears they are designed for maximum utilization of space and in some cases in disregard to the convenience of guests.    Case in point the sports desk is two decks down and across the pool area from where most of the sports actually are.  

Staffing – Even with the helpful and pleasant staff, at times there do not seem to be enough staff from the ship stores, to pool attendants, and bar staff.  This does reduce the level of service you might receive on a Carnival cruise … still good but not up to the level of other cruise lines.

Activities – Less than others lines – especially during the day.    Nighttime entertainment was where the focus is on Carnival.  Many of the day time activities focuses on selling opportunities rather than some shows or other type of activities or entertainment.  Even the pool deck activities were limited.

Overall – Carnival is a great cruise line for the right client looking for a specific type of vacation.  Staff and Dining room food completely exceeded our expectations.  When you are getting a well-priced cruise there are some trade-offs such as a lower staff to guest ratio, a bit less daytime activities, and more basic entertainment.  With that said Carnival is a great value and we are planning our next Carnival Cruise on the brand new Breeze next year!!