Royal Caribbean to stop price slashing…

With-in 30 days of sailing that is.

Royal Caribbean’s chairman and CEO Richard Fain has announced that their three brands, Royal Caribbean, Celebrity Cruises and Azamara Club Cruises will no longer have prices discounted within 30 days of sailing.

The exceptions to this will be the three and four night sailings.

This reason for this policy change is to ensure cruise prices do not drop drastically before a sailing, leaving passengers that have already booked angry and frustrated, which can happen on the rare occasions with Royal and Celebrity.

Personally I do not think it necessary to do this, when booking a cruise or any other holiday as consumers we buy if we are happy with the price. If the price comes down then that is hard luck and we should not expect to be refunded, you don’t get your 10ps back when Tesco reduce sugar.

Of course, and so often is the way with Royal the price goes up and we are happy and don’t make the complaint.

Royal Caribbean did have a price match type policy at one stage but they have now got round all of that now with terms and conditions allowing their special offers to be for “new bookings only”.

P&O did offer a price match also for a time on their “Vantage” fares a couple of years ago and this also did not work out for any customers.

My advice, once booked stop checking the price.