Is There Such A Thing As A Free Drinks Package?

Is There Such A Thing As A Free Drinks Package?

What do you think?

More then ever I am being asked for a cruise that is ” all inclusive ” and by this most people think of an inclusive drinks package, but is it worth it?

A couple of months ago I gave a customer a price on a Royal Caribbean cruise, at the time the drinks weren’t included, but he wanted to wait until they did include one, and by chance 3 days later Royal Caribbean changed their promotion and once again the drinks package was included – so, I jumped onto my system and costed up the cruise again – Imagine my horror, and my customers, to find that the price had increased by over £2000.00 – fair enough,  I know fluid pricing means that the costs can go up and down – but £2000 more and there were still the same cabins available, so the only thing that had changed was the addition of a ” free drinks package” – needless to say Royal Caribbean has lost that persons business and lucky enough for me he decided to book a Princess Cruise, without a drinks package!

I have always thought that MSC had it right, occasionally they have included the package in their promotion, but for the majority of cruises the all inclusive package was £22.00 per person per night and it included soft drinks, wines, beers, cocktails etc – more than sufficient for your needs, in fact, they had a range of packages for both adults and children that were so reasonably priced. Well, I think that someone from MSC has been looking at what the other cruise lines do and they have decided to follow – but as usual MSC do try to complicate matters a little – they now have 3 packages – Easy, Premium and Premium plus, the drinks available on each type have a limit on value from 6 Euros, 10 Euros and no upper limit on the Premium Plus package, and then whatever part of the world you are in dictates what you get included – see what I mean about complicated!

So – what do you think?  – does a drinks package help with your decision to book or do you think they are a bit of a rip off?