Just Cruises Plus

Do you cruise in an inside stateroom?  We doubt it.  Only about 1 in 20 of our clients book an inside room.  Before the cruise industry discovered balconies, cruisers could select ocean-view or interior rooms.  More than 25% of our clients chose interior rooms. Since the introduction of balconies, cruise lines have had a hard time selling inside rooms.  Even ocean-view rooms have become less popular (Princess has eliminated them on their newer ships).

Cruise lines hate inside rooms.  They are far less profitable than balcony rooms.   A typical example is the March 3^rd sailing of the Crown Princess.  An interior room is priced at $649 while a balconied room is $1499.  Passengers in each get the same food, room service, entertainment and ports of call.  You can see why cruise lines hate inside rooms.  However, they are stuck with them.  With every deck of balconies, there is interior space that needs to be filled, thus we have a surge in unwanted interior rooms.

How do cruise lines handle this problem?   They offer extra discounts to the point that they are breaking even (or worse) on the sale of the interior rooms and are hoping that they make money with on-board spending.  Note that many cruise lines do not give amenities to passengers who select interior rooms.  They want these clients spending their own money.  Celebrity Cruises is having an “Insider” sale of interior rooms (click for sale).  If you’re one of the 5 percent who can live with an interior room, check out the Celebrity sale.  It ends Monday.

Royal Caribbean has sharply reduced the number of interior rooms on their Oasis class ships using a very unique design.  The Oasis Class ships are twice as wide as other cruise ships.  This enabled the architects to build two superstructures on the double-wide hull.  One side of each superstructure faces the ocean while the other side faces an open-air interior space.  They put balconies on both the ocean-facing and the interior facing superstructures.  In the interior facing space they created Central Park and Boardwalk.  The balconies overlooking Central Park and Boardwalk command a much higher price than a traditional interior stateroom.

Call us on Monday if you’re interested in the Celebrity Insider’s sale.