Pricing: A Moving Target

Patricia November 21st, 2007

Picture it, a giant cruise ship pulls up to the gas station in the ocean and the captain leans out and says, “Filler up.” Does anyone want to guess how much THAT fuel bill is?

So, if you’ve heard the news, almost every cruise line is appling a fuel surcharge on all bookings. And you guessed it, our little Sea Socks is affected. The actual surcharge is $5 per person per day or $35 per person for the cruise. I’m trying to go through all of the confirmations to get everyone an update. I will send you a package with the invoice for final payment in January and there will be the full letter explaining the charge from Celebrity in that.

However, within a week of announcing the surcharge, both the outside and inside cabin rates went down. So, since this will get to most of you before I can do the indivdual confirmations, I wanted to outline the current prices for the categories available. Do not hesitate to call or e-mail with questions on any of this.

Category Rate per person Rate per person

Double Occupancy Single Occupancy

Conceirge Class $1455 $2485

Balcony Cabin $1415 $2405

Oceanview Cabin $1105 $1785

Inside Cabin $995 $1565

Important notes from the letter from Celebrity include:

“Those guests who do not cancel their reservation and pay in full will receive one logo item per stateroom, onboard their cruise. Finally, the supplement will apply only to the first and second guests in each stateroom”

and

“The supplement will be periodically reviewed, with the intent of being temporary, and may be adjusted as fuel prices fluctuate.”

Now, I would hope that this means that the surcharge could go down or even away — but I need to inform you about this now. I’m continuing to watch to see if the prices don’t go down more to offset this too. At this point, anything can happen.

4 Responses to “Pricing: A Moving Target”

  1. # Andreaon 21 Nov 2007 at 6:20 pm

    Thanks, the image of a cruise ship pulling up at my corner Texaco and hollering ‘Fillerup!’ is now permanently etched in my mind.

    So are they saying they’ll give us schwag for not canceling because of a $70 increase on what is likely to be $2000+ trip?

  2. # AuntyNinon 21 Nov 2007 at 7:51 pm

    Okay, now you’ve made me laugh and have a headache at the same time.

  3. # Patriciaon 21 Nov 2007 at 8:06 pm

    Yes, Andrea — but are you ready for this math?

    1. They increased the price $70 per cabin.
    2. They reduced the price for MOST cabins by about $100.
    3. They are throwing in ONE logo item (ok, so let’s get honest, it will probably be about $10 cost to them, right? If I’m generous.)

    So, can SOMEONE please explain to me how they are NOT LOSING money with this? Otherwise, it is just driving me to drink — which is good, since once I finish this bottle I’ll have another paper bag to breathe into.

  4. # Andreaon 23 Nov 2007 at 3:14 am

    Yeah, I think the math there is in “most of the rooms”. As in, I think the inside cabins only dropped like $5, which could help offset someof your $100 drops if there are more inside cabins or something.

    But, yeah. It still seems like their losing money on this. Can they pull the same line of reasoning as airlines? Will they be able to change those booking closer to sail date a higher amount then they are charging us or something?

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