mickeyd
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
This is from part of an email that I received from Vacations To Go, an online company that tries to sell last minute cruises. I looks to me to be a pretty good explanation on why/how they can offer last-minute rates that are often 50% lower than the regular price.
I have always thought how convenient it would be to live near an embarkation port like Seattle or Ft. Lauderdale or even Houston and be able to drop everything on the spur of the moment and jump on a ship for a week or so to take advantage of $50/day cruise after driving to the local port in your car.
I have always thought how convenient it would be to live near an embarkation port like Seattle or Ft. Lauderdale or even Houston and be able to drop everything on the spur of the moment and jump on a ship for a week or so to take advantage of $50/day cruise after driving to the local port in your car.
Cruise lines can provide such outstanding value because of the efficiency with which they deliver their service.
For example, the typical cruise ship has teams of room stewards, chefs and waiters working 7 days a week to clean 1,000 cabins per day and prepare and serve three or four meals a day to 2,000 passengers. When the ship sails from the port of departure, the Hotel Director knows exactly how many meals will be served for the entire cruise and the ship has been provisioned accordingly. Every cabin, table and employee is fully utilized, every day.
That's much more efficient and less wasteful than the system land-based hotels and restaurants must employ to serve a much smaller group of customers who vary in number daily.
As ships have gotten larger and cruise lines have grown into billion-dollar enterprises, feeding and transporting more than 15 million passengers every year, the cruise lines' huge buying power has reduced their costs for everything consumed on the ship. Plus, larger ships and show lounges spread the cost of entertainers, the captain, officers and cruise director over more people.
And unlike airlines and hotels that accept empty seats and rooms during slow periods, cruise lines will do whatever it takes to sail full. All lines except the four 6-star cruise lines will slash prices as low as they need to in order to fill every cabin, and even the 6-star lines are now offering discounts that were once unheard of.
They do this for two reasons. First, on most lines, a significant percentage of the crews' compensation comes from gratuities -- and there are no gratuities from empty cabins.
Second, venues such as casinos, spas, boutiques, photography studios and excursion desks are completely dependent on onboard purchases, which of course are directly related to the number of people onboard.
Last edited: