That’s Vintage Stuff Royal Caribbean!

I quite often get a call or an email from clients who have just returned from a cruise. It’s great to get the feedback, hopefully to hear that they were thrilled with the cruise I’d booked for them and that all the plans we made went smoothly. Very often, this is the case, but from time to time people do phone up with a gripe.

I had an interesting conversation with a lovely client of mine this afternoon who had just come back from a Royal Caribbean cruise to the Eastern Med, which on the whole he thoroughly enjoyed, however, he was phoning me to ask how he could register a complaint with the cruise line regards availability of wine on the cruise.

He was in a party of six people and at dinner in the evening they like to have a couple of bottles of wine. Each evening when they tried to order, they found that any bottle of wine under about $28 euros was out of stock, thus forcing them to order the higher priced wine. This happened throughout the cruise, and one evening when they chose to dine in Portofinos, the speciality restaurant on board that carries a cover charge, the lower priced wines were actually crossed out on the Wine List – same problem again! When he queried this with the waitress she actually huffed at him! Fortunately she was spotted doing this by the Maitre De, and removed from duty (maybe thrown overboard?).

While discussing this wine issue I realised that the client and I were thinking the same thing. Surely the cruise ships set sail fully stocked, so why would they be out of stock from the start of the voyage? How strange that only the cheaper wines were out of stock, not the dearer ones! It does make you wonder whether this is a ploy to earn some extra revenue. After all, you are a captive audience so to speak once on board, as you are not allowed to buy your own drinks when ashore and take them back on board with you, so it’s pay the cruise lines prices and lump it!

I would be very interested to hear if other passengers have experienced similar on any ship – let me know. I am going to watch this one with interest!
In this case, we will be looking into the situation for the gentleman in question.