Cruise Industry Needs New Pricing/Booking Model

It's time for the cruise industry to reassess and reengineer their pricing, booking and refund policies for U.S. and other customers. The current system that has been in place for decades is unlike any other system in the travel and hospitality business. 

For North American customers, one contacts either a travel agent or the cruise company directly, and makes the booking along with a modest deposit. If the customer elects not to go, the booking can be cancelled with a full refund of the deposit and nothing further due. If the customer elects to proceed with the booking, they make "final payment" (or the balance due) approximately 60-75 days (depending on the specific cruise and cruise line) prior to the day of sailing. After that date, there is a harsh, regressive, and draconian refund policy that limits the customer's options to little to no refund if they should need to cancel for any reason. Basically, prior to final payment, the customer is firmly in control. Once the customer however has made the final or full payment, the cruise company has your money and is highly unlikely to return any of it in the event of a customer cancellation.

Prior to about 2-3 years ago, customer who booked early and made final payment generally got decent (if not the lowest) fares and the best selection of staterooms. Sales, or the supply of staterooms, generally seemed to be linear so that the supply of unsold staterooms closer to sailing did not warrant massive discounting to sell them. 

Recently however, the cruise industry (and especially Celebrity Cruises from my experience) seems to be unable to sell a sufficient number of staterooms, even for their peak season cruises, prior to final payment. The resulting post-final-payment discounting has distorted the pricing and value proposition for savvy customers. Nowadays, it is knowable that booking closer to sailing, i.e. 14-60 days from sailing, easily offers the best value proposition for many of the larger-ship mainstream cruises on the most popular itineraries. 

From my perspective, the problem is due to poor management and/or insufficient information and tools when responding to periods of low demand and high supply. Clearly, the industry's people and/or sales/load management models don't properly price staterooms during the early sales phase so too little is sold. The result has been consistent and predictable wave of "last-minute" discounting to dispose of remaining inventory. In other words, prices are set way too high early so that too little is sold prior to final payment. Then after final payment, prices are driven very low to sell the balance of inventory. 

In addition, the industry's practice is to sell the unsold staterooms using "guarantees" to avoid having to refund the price difference for all those who already booked specific stateroom categories. The practical effect is that buyers of these heavily-discounted staterooms also happen to get the best staterooms too. Talking about adding insult to injury. One would think that a multi-billion dollar corporation would have the wherewithal and means to at least upgrade or otherwise compensate their early-booking, high-margin customers instead of giving away the better stateroom categories all to last-minute, discount buyers, but it appears that the cruiselines either don't have the willpower, manpower and/or the information systems to handle what should not be an insurmountable challenge. So except for upgrading some customers in higher stateroom to suites, most of the early-booking, high-margin customers are stuck and the other staterooms are virtually given away to last-minute, no margin customers instead. Does Celebrity Cruises think that these early booking, loyal customers do not notice or care? 

I don't know the impact on margins but I cannot believe that the current pricing and booking approach offers Celebrity Cruises, as just one example, maximum margins or profitability. In addition, there is another, less immediately tangible, perhaps even more serious negative impact in the long term: the signal you give your early booking customers (often your best and most loyal customers) that you've screwed them big time. By discounting staterooms (and often the best ones too) 30-50% less than what others have paid, the cruiseline punishes customers who both booked months earlier and paid much much more. 

All this is possible because of a draconian and extreme booking policy whereby the cruise lines have virtually no leverage prior to a customer making final payment, but can hold customers' monies hostage after final payment. It is simply and obviously a case whereby, after final payment, cruise lines exploit those who paid more for near-term profits with absolutely no consideration for the future.

I believe this entire booking model and sales approach is very short-sighted and creates enormous customer dissatisfaction. Does anyone within the industry have the courage to at least consider switching to an passenger airline-style booking model? Customers could pay more or less depending on the restrictions they are willing to accept. Customers could pay more for specific stateroom assignments or for cruise-assigned staterooms (currently done in the form of "guarantees"). Airlines have an excellent track-record of maximizing revenues per flight and making sure that no plane flies with an empty seat (i.e. no lost opportunity revenue). Clearly the way the cruise lines do it now cannot work well in the longer term. Either they need to be more realistic on early pricing so that ships are more full closer to final payment, or they need to use a different sales/booking model. 

Below, is my own recent letter to Richard Fain of RCI specifically regarding my unhappiness about the manner in which Celebrity Cruise has been handling their most recent cruise bookings and their massive post-final-payment discounts.

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Richard Fain

Royal Caribbean International

1050 Caribbean Way

Miami, FL 33132-2096

Dear Mr. Fain,

I had read with considerable interest your April comments to shareholders and others regarding pricing and last-minute discounting. As both a shareholder and a long-time and loyal customer, I had personally experienced the demoralizing and negative effect of post-final-payment, last-minute price drops and discounting. In the past, as with many other regular customers, we always booked early and made our final payment at the anointed time. Due to recent shifts in booking/pricing patterns however, for our three most recent cruises, we waited until after final payment to book because we knew that the best and lowest pricing would be available at the last-minute.

As you obviously know, such discounting only discourages booking early, and increasingly angers and alienates your best and most loyal customers who often book early and pay the most. I took your most recent comments to heart and for upcoming July 20th Europe sailing aboard Reflection, I booked early, and perhaps against my better judgment, made our final payment last month.

Recently however, and despite your commitment to stop the practice, Celebrity announced huge price drops for many Europe sailings. I am greatly disappointed and upset that Celebrity continues to do post-final-payment, last minute discounting on sailings, including on many peak season cruises such as our July 20th sailing. In our case, even factoring in the value of our 123Go promo, the latest discounted fares are $500-$600 less per person. In addition, as before, Celebrity will now assign many or most of the best staterooms to last-minute bookers. This only adds insult to injury for your early booking customers.

What I cannot understand are primarily two things:

1. Why does Celebrity continue to mismanage their booking/load management and pricing to the point that so few staterooms are sold prior to final payment, and why is such extensive discounting required after? Surely there must be better load management model for Celebrity to use to properly manage pricing, inventory and margins? And is there any consideration whatsoever to the negative impact on your early booking (i.e. high profit margin) customers? As time goes on, the early booking, high profit margin customers get smart, no longer book early, there will be fewer high-margin customers and the downward cycle goes on.

2. Even if last-minute discounts and guarantees must be utilized or offered after final payment, why can't Celebrity at least make an effort to give those who booked early and paid the most, some category upgrades or other consideration? I totally understand the dilemma that Celebrity faces in your need to maintain the price point for each stateroom category, and perhaps your information systems and/or personnel are limited in their ability to upgrade large numbers of customers and/or issue small refunds for category pricing differences, but certainly doing something mitigate the considerable negative effect to your most-loyal and highest margin customers. It would be better than simply giving away the best staterooms to the last-minute, low-margin folks booking guarantees. In the end, you would engender far less anger at the inherent unfairness of the current “two-class” early-booker/late-booker model.

I believe the use of cheap guarantees after final payment to overtly circumvent dealing with early-bookers of specific stateroom categories meets the short-term business need to sell staterooms quickly to fill ships and avoid issuing refunds to pre-existing customers, but the strategy is extremely short-sighted and damaging long-term. In summary, most of your problem is in your pricing and inventory management, and another part of the problem is how you sell that remaining inventory. Based on your earnings call comments, I sense that you know all this but wonder if you can and will solve this. Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.

Things I Didn't Know about the Baltics

- Due to the "white nights", it never gets truly dark and both the sunrises and sunsets are long and beautiful
- Taxis in Stockholm and Copenhagen accept credit cards, and to save time, you can have the driver scan your credit card during the ride. Then add any tip.
- While people all recommend going to Tivoli in Copenhagen at night because of the beautiful lights, remember that the sun doesn't set until after 10 pm during the summer so twilight is the best you will get--it will never get completely dark. And for us, going early when it opens allowed us to experience shorter ride lines.
- Consider riding bikes in Helsinki--especially on Sundays when vehicle traffic on most of the side streets was minimal!

Norfolk Versus Baltimore Cruise Sailings

For next year, Norfolk Virginia will be losing cruise sailings while Baltimore will be adding ships and sailings. The business rationale for this action was very obvious to me however, after a recent post and long thread on CruiseCritic, it became apparent that many people in the tidewater area simply don't understand or can't accept this trend.

In advocating for Norfolk over Baltimore, the following facts were thrown out to support the case for Norfolk:

1. Geographically closer to ocean so ships don't have to waste time and fuel traversing the length of the Chesapeake Bay
2. New or renovated cruise terminal and facility
3. Better and lower-cost dock workers
4. Proximity to great beaches and other tourist attractions

Even if one were to acknowledge these as minor tactical advantages, the argument that Norfolk is a better cruise port and market than Baltimore completely misses or ignores Baltimore’s massive demographic, economic and tourism strategic advantages.

First, this is a business decision that is based on demographics, the laws of supply and demand, overall economic conditions, and business profitability. A cruise line bases a cruise ship in most non-Florida cruise ports for one reason--to expand their market beyond its flying customers to attract customers primarily from that local metropolitan area. In other words, they put their ships within a short drive to their customers. Unlike the major cruise ports, these regional or local ports draw the majority of their customers locally, probably within a couple hours drive. The cruise lines have already put many cruise ships close to major U.S. cities such as like Seattle, San Diego, Galveston/Houston, Boston, New York and Washington D.C./Baltimore. Is Norfolk (like Charleston) in this class?

The demographics case for Washington D.C./Baltimore over Norfolk is both compelling and overwhelming. Based on median household income, the Washington DC/Baltimore metropolitan area is the nation's second most affluent with 7,608,070 people with a median household income of $57,291. Per capita income is fourth at $28,856. The Norfolk/Virginia Beach metropolitan area on the other hand is ranked 84th with 1,569,541 people and a median household income of $42,448. Per capita income is ranked 107th with $20,328. So not only does the Washington DC/Baltimore area have almost 5 times the number of people that Norfolk has, but those same people have almost 42% more money to spend. And these statistics are based on a 2000 Census that doesn't even reflect the reality of a likely wider gap today.

Add to this that Philadelphia and many large suburban Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland communities that are all within less than a 90 minute drive of Baltimore's cruise terminal. Except for Richmond, Norfolk doesn't have any other major city within a 2 hour drive to draw customers from. That’s a few million more customers to add to the advantage there.

Now let’s look at their respective tourist attractions and tourism businesses. The Washington D.C./ Baltimore area offers a rich assortment of historical, cultural, entertainment, dining and other tourist options. With over 20 million visitors annually, Washington DC is one of the most visited cities in America. Baltimore is in the top 30 with over 12 million visitors each year--comparable to Fort Lauderdale or Nashville and more than the entire tidewater region. The Norfolk area offers tourist attractions with mostly limited, regional appeal such as Busch Gardens, Williamsburg and Virginia Beach.

So in the end, if you want to put a cruise ship near customers who have the discretionary funds to partake in it on a regular basis, where would you put it? RCI Grandeur (and Enchantment next year), Carnival Price and Celebrity Mercury all sail out of Baltimore because they are conveniently accessible to one of the top five most affluent customer bases in America. If anything, more and more ships will call Baltimore home--not fewer. In fact, I'd bet RCI would consider putting a Voyager-class ship in Baltimore if only it could clear the low-spanning Bay Bridge.

The bottom line is that the Washington DC/Baltimore area is far ahead of the Norfolk region from a basic demographics, overall buying power or tourism perspective. Norfolk cheerleaders have been trying to compare their mid-sized city with an average economy and some regional tourist attractions, to a Top-5 major U.S. metropolitan area with some of the nation’s most affluent customers and attractions with substantial international and national drawing power.

Checklist Tourism

What is your travelling style? I like to research the history and culture of a destination. I like to experience the culture and immerse myself in where I am going. I even try to learn some of the local language in order to fit in better.

There are many people however who seem to go places mostly to say they've been there. I call it "checklist tourism". The objective is solely to check it off a long list of places they say they've always wanted to see. The important verb is "see"--not really visit, not experience, not learn something about, not immerse yourself in, and not understand anything--but rather to "see". Are so many people really that shallow and clueless? They get on a one or two hour city bus tour and actually believe they've seen everything there is to see!

A coworker friend and her family once drove the nearly 16 hours round-trip from San Francisco to Crater Lake, OR and back, and only spent approximately 45 minutes actually at the rim! When pressed as to how a "quick peek" was worth all that driving, she furled her eyebrows at me and said something like "we went and saw it, so what else was there for us to do?". The same family does this type of "drive by" sightseeing all the time. They've certainly "seen" much more of the world than me, but I think they miss so so much.

My dad is the same way. It took almost 48 hours of round-trip travel time to get to and from Hong Kong, but he elected to spend much of the trip in the condo watching the same Chinese TV shows he already watches back home in the US! One city tour was apparently enough touring for the week for him.

This past summer, we spent a couple weeks in Europe with my parents, and whenever I asked them what they'd like to do in a particular port, they'd say, "well, we'll just get off the ship and walk 100 meters to so and so and that's good enough so we can say we've been there". If I dragged them along on one of my extended tours (e.g. in Firenze or Pompeii/Sorrento/Amalfi), they fizzled very fast and looked bored for much of the tour. I was very disappointed, for example, when our day out of Napoli allowed us only about 20-30 minutes in Positano, but it was perfect for my parents!

Next month, my parents are sailing on RCI Independence of the Seas on her trans-Atlantic reposition cruise out of London. I asked my dad how much time he was spending in London pre-cruise, and he responded "We've been there (for a day or two) before and saw everything, so we don't want to waste time there." Another wasted opportunity to experience a wonderful and unique place on our planet...

What you should know for your first cruise!

1. Tipping is complicated on cruise ships. Read the cruiseline's specific recommendations for your stateroom attendant, waiter and assistant waiter. Definitely take care of them if you feel they did a good job. Give them extra for going above and beyond. Tipping the head waiter and others is entirely at your discretion. And if you use the children's programs, I recommend a tip for the counselors even though it is optional.
2. Your room is usually ready and the luggage is delivered typically sometime between noon and 3 pm. But just in case you don't have access or your luggage is delayed, be sure to carry on anything you need for that afternoon such as medications, a swimsuit, etc.
3. Ship time may differ from local time so make sure you know the difference if you have excursions planned in port and so you don't miss the ship.
4. If you plan to use many AC-powered devices in your stateroom, bring a multiple outlet plug or power strip because there aren't many places to plug things in!
5. If you are large person and find it difficult to show in the microscopic showers in your stateroom, consider using the more spacious facilities in the spa or gym.
6. Staterooms don't have alarm clocks so bring one if you need it!
7. Your luggage will usually stow nicely under one or both beds
8. On some ships, the stateroom coffee table adjusts up and down!
9. Excursions, and specialty restaurant and spa reservations can usually be reserved on-line prior to boarding.
10. Private companies and tour operators in general offer tours and excursions that are better in quality, more flexible, just as reliable, and far cheaper than the ship tours!
11. On some lines like RCI, motion sickness medicines like meclizine (aka bonine) are complimentary at Guest Relations.
12. You pay for alcoholic beverages and sodas, but the coffee, tea, lemonade and milk are free. Carnival and RCI charge for espresso and cappuccinos but they are complimentary at dinner on HAL.
13. Order as much as you want in the main dining room--you're not limited to one appetizer or one entree!
14. In the main dining room, you can order or ask for things that aren't even on the menu!
15. You pay to eat at the specialty restaurants and there is no unlimited ordering there.
16. Room service is free but remember to tip!
    

Suggestions for Improving Royal Caribbean and Carnival's Web Sites!

Some greatly needed features or functions for RCI, Carnival and other cruise line web sites:

Web site registration and profile
- Allow customers to register and store their profiles with information on family, home address (including state of residence), passport information including ages, specific interests, special needs (physical disabilities, wheelchair needs, dietary restrictions, etc.), and payment options (including registering a credit card or Paypal).
- Upon signing in, use profile information to customize all searches.
- Integrate all past cruises, C&A status and benefits with this main profile.
- Upon booking a cruise, transfer all personal booking information including passport info.

Improvements to search:
- Search by one or more departure ports
- Search by one or more ships or by class of ship(s)
- Search by user-specified cost range and not preset cost ranges
- Search for itineraries to include one or more specific ports and not just "destination" regions
- Search by specific number of dates (e.g. 4-10 days) and not preset date ranges
- Search by date inclusion ranges. For example, I am off from January 5 through January 13 so return cruises that fit entirely within this range
- Search only for available adjoining, connecting, handicapped or other special attribute staterooms
- Exclude obstructed view or handicapped staterooms
- Allow comparison of various cruises (ship, itinerary, costs) that meet one or more search criteria

Search Results
- When returning search results, don't lump all sailings of the same ship and itinerary together. List them separately.
- Handle holds and bookings using pre-populated profile data
- Allow customers to make deposits and one or more incremental payments toward booking
- Allow final payment to automatically be made on final payment due date

Bookings
- Specify stateroom preferences, including bedding arrangement, pillow/bedding preferences, child life preservers, remove balcony partitions, and options such as robes and other amenities
- Ability to make stateroom changes including downgrades and upgrades
- Ability to transfer booking directly to travel agent online

Other
- Show more stateroom details such as virtual 360 views, multiple angle photos

Browsing and Emailing Off-line

Newbie cruisers often ask about what type of internet access they will have onboard a cruise ship, how well it works, how to use it, and how much it will cost.

First, one must understand that, because they are moving most of the time and because they travel around the world, cruise ships have to use satellite-based communications systems. Satellite-based communications is a very technically challenging problem to solve and and the solution is therefore very costly. And the connection is either very, very slow, or so slow as to be useless.

Most modern cruise ships have satellite connections with upwards of several hundred Kilobits per second bandwidth. By comparison, a typical home residence with cable modem or Verizon FIOS now has an internet connection capable of 15-50 Megabit per second range. Again, that's Megabits not Kilobits. So your typical home internet connection (shared with a handful of family users) has about 100 times the bandwidth of a large ship that must share its connection amongst dozens or even hundreds of users simultaneously! And, this slow satellite-based internet connection costs the cruise line at least tens of thousands of dollars per month, and naturally, they need to pass on these costs to you!

Given such internet bandwidth constraints and its associated high costs aboard a cruise ship, the best way to optimize your internet usage and to minimize the cost is to work offline. Most browsers and email clients now support offline use. Working offline means to be able to do things such as read emails or web pages while not being connected to the internet.

The reason most people never learned how to work off-line is because most of us have unlimited Internet connectivity at work and/or home, so working off-line is not necessary. We are all accustomed to casually browsing the web, hitting CNN.COM for example, and spending 10-15 minutes reading each article. However, on a cruise ship, when internet bandwidth is scarce and its use is costly (at up to 75 cents/minute!), working offline is critical to minimizing your internet-related expenses.

Microsoft's web browser, Internet Explorer for example, has an offline mode. You simply connect to the internet, and visit the sites and pages you are interested in (but don't read them while connected). Then after hitting all your sites, disconnect. Since your browser was in offline mode, it basically stored the text and images of each page locally on your hard disk so you can now read them at your convenience--rather than rushing because you are connected and spending 50 cents a minute!

You do the same type of thing with email using any number of commercially available offline mail readers, e.g. Outlook Express. Even the most popular web-based email services such as Google's Gmail or Yahoo Mail now offer offline clients. Simply connect, fetch and send your email, and then disconnect. You can read or compose messages at your leisure. Later, you can reconnect and get/send emails again.

If the benefits are still not clear, here are two identical scenarios, but one offline and one online, for getting the same five hypothetical emails, reading them and then composing five replies:

Work online via web-based email

1. Connect to Internet
2. Start browser (30 seconds)
3. Hit your email web server (30 seconds)
4. Open email and read it (1 minute)
5. Compose a reply and send it (2 minutes)
6. Repeat 4 and 5 four more times (12 minutes)
7. Logoff

Total time and cost: 16 minutes and $8.00

Working offline using your own computer

1. Open email client
2. Connect to Internet
3. Send/receive emails (30 seconds)
4. Disconnect
5. Casually read all new emails and compose replies while relaxing by the pool, in your cabin or at the lounge!
6. Reconnect to Internet
7. Send/Receive all messages (30 seconds)

Total time and cost: 1 minute and $0.50

And a couple other thoughts:

1. On a cruise ship, avoid using the internet during peak usage times. The bandwidth bottleneck during peak times can make the internet connection virtually unusable to try to connect during dinner, in the early morning or late evening hours, or when the ship is in port.

2. Remember to turn off Windows and other automatic software updates. You don't want these services to initiate download activities in such a non-broadband situations.

As you can see, if you learn work in off-line mode, you can cut your internet usage and cost by by a huge amount without much inconvenience at all!

Credit Card Acceptance in Europe

In response to a recent question about credit card acceptance in Europe, I went back through my Quicken transactions and came up with the following statistics for the number of restaurants, stores, museums, churches, attractions or service providers that accepted (or were willing to accept) credit cards over our recent 25 days in the Mediterranean:

3 of 17 museums, churches or attraction (Vatican Museums, Basilica di Santa Croce in Firenze and the Time Elevator in Roma!)
6 of 15 vendors or shops (low because this includes street vendors)
2 of 4 tour companies (5 tours total)
0 of 22 taxi drivers or transfer companies
0 of 4 train, tram or cable car tickets
12 of 21 restaurants (lunch and dinner only, and does not include gelati places)

In purely dollar terms, if you exclude the cruise and hotel portions of the trip (the two most expensive items), credit cards were only accepted for less than a third of all our expenses.

As you can see, credit card acceptance definitely lags in Europe and around the Mediterranean so you'd better have lots of cash!

Single Supplement on Cruises

Recently a single cruiser commented on the apparent unfairness of the cruise business's single supplement. Passengers wishing to cruise solo typically have to pay 150% to 200% of the per person cruise fare. The protester did not feel that it was fair that, as a single traveler, she should have to pay so much more when she was not consuming the food or using the services of two passengers. During the discussion, she and others brought up hotels and airlines as examples of other travel industry sectors that price per room and seat respectively, and wondered why cruises couldn't be priced similarly to be more fair. However cruises, hotels and airplanes are not comparable and thus are not and cannot be, priced similarly.

A hotel room is priced as basically a facility charge, i.e. you are paying mostly for a room. That room is a fixed cost to the hotel that does not change much whether you put one person or four people in it. The incremental cost of accommodating the second, third and fourth person into a hotel room is negligible.

Airplane flights are priced per seat and that cost is fixed. So if you are big and need two seats, you pay for it. Otherwise you pay for a single seat. It does not matter to the airline whether you are single, traveling with a spouse or significant other, or with 20 other family and friends. They each pay the same fare because there are no additional services being provided in the base fare.

A cruise operates with an entirely different operational paradigm. Because a good portion of a cruise's profits are based on excursions, on-board activities and purchases, a cruise line is heavily dependent on the number of passengers on-board. Thus, cruises must be priced per person. A single traveler costs a cruise line all the potential revenues and profits of the other passenger that does not exist. There is a significant "opportunity cost" is lost because the single traveler takes up a cabin that is designed and priced to be double occupancy.

In addition, and just as important, a cruise's costs are relatively fixed. They plan for a specific number of passengers or customers, i.e. a ship full of staterooms with double occupancy. In other words, they have enough staff, and order enough food, drink and supplies, for a full ship. Thus with each single traveler, one traveler's worth of overhead, services and consumables are "wasted".

In conclusion, one cannot apply the "logic" of hotel or air flight pricing to cruise pricing. Thus, the single supplement for single travelers makes complete sense from a business and practical perspective. The cruise line business model clearly favors passengers traveling in groups of two or more, and does not work well for single passengers. So single travelers, if you can't afford the single supplement, you'd better find someone to share that stateroom with!

The Fifteen Oddest Moments During Our Mediterranean Vacation

1. In organizing two CruiseCritic social gatherings onboard, I was inexplicably considered a travel agent and HAL had to confiscate my passport for a couple days.
2. On the cruise, coffee, espresso, cappuccino and fresh squeezed orange juice are free, but you have to pay for sodas.
3. Can’t take pictures in the Sistine Chapel because Sony owns the photo rights.
4. Having to pay for using the toilet in some places in Italy and other countries.
5. Pooping, flushing and washing your hands in Italy was a challenge at first, because most men’s toilets in Italy don’t have seats, the flusher is wall mounted, and most sinks are operated by a hidden foot pedal.
6. Noticing that there are more gelati stores in Italy than any other type of food or retail outlet.
7. La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona reminded me of the Bug’s Life Tree in Animal Kingdom in Disney World.
8. The nicest bathroom in the Mediterranean was on the old City Walls of Dubrovnik!
9. Paying to take pictures inside the Bardo Museum and Sidi Bou Said in Tunisia.
10. Taking pictures inside the Ancient Olympia Museum is permitted, but you are prohibited from “posing”.
11. Greek women all seem to wear their pants one size too small.
12. Stuffing 75+ people into a public bus on the ride from Oia to Fira in Santorini
13. Watching the poor Greek Royal guards dressed in heavy formal uniforms and standing in the heat motionless for an hour at a time.14. A Roma taxi driver claiming she didn’t know where the Pantheon was.
15. Watching 150-200 people stand in line waiting to buy tickets to enter the Colisseum knowing that, not 400 meters away, there is another ticket window with no line.

Lessons Learned From Our Mediterranean Vacation

1. Don’t overplan with too much walking for seniors and kids. Use more taxis, or car and bus tours to get around.

2. Make sure to carry lots of snacks for mid-morning and mid-afternoon blood sugar boosts.

3. Using a reputable tour company that has good communications takes a lot of stress out of the pre-trip planning. Jany from Romeinlimo, for example, was always helpful, courteous and responsive despite my frequent, and probably sometimes annoying, emails. She was that rare coordinator who understands that she needs to answer questions and do it promptly in order that her customers can have confidence that a specific tour will take place when, where, how and for how much, the customer expects.

4. As tours and transfers consume a huge part of a vacation budget, sharing them with others makes a lot of practical and financial sense. And it's more fun!

5. Due to the cruise length and breadth of ports (the two B2B itineraries were clearly designed to compliment each other), the distances between ports are smaller than on other cruise itineraries. Thus we could spend more time in most ports and this greatly increased touring flexibility and reduced stress.

6. Despite HAL’s reputation for skewing older demographically, the guests on our sailing were the youngest we’ve ever sailed with. The Mediterranean itinerary is definitely more demanding physically and perhaps this skewed the guest list to younger and more physically fit guests.

7. HAL’s approach to turnaround days on B2Bs was a very pleasant surprise: no annoying morning announcements; special lunch, spa and tour options; and no muster drill.

8. Loved HAL’s silent disembarkation process (as compared to our RCI and Carnival experiences). Very effective, quiet and orderly.

9. The port shuttles that charge a fee are almost always a rip-off.

10. Bring and wear sandals for the beaches in Croatia—very rocky and painful to walk on barefooted!

11. Relatively few places accepted (or wanted to accept) credit cards. While perhaps half of restaurants took plastic, virtually none of the museum, church or site admissions accepted them. This resulted in me withdrawing and using much more cash than originally planned.

12. Even when a restaurant accepted credit cards, nearly every one of them wanted tips in cash only.

13. As long as you are not a timid or conservative driver, renting a car makes a lot of sense in many ports. The rental process is very quick and easy. Renting a car is much more convenient, gives you a lot of flexibility to go where and when you please, and is more cost effective than hiring a private driver or taxi.

14. In Italy (and perhaps other places in Europe too), you need to buy your train or bus tickets BEFORE you get onboard one.

15. To drink directly from the ancient public water fountains in Roma, stick your finger into the end or bottom of the pipe, and the water will shoot up the small hole in the top surface of the pipe.

16. To board and ride a bus in Santorini, you need to be really aggressive, push your way onboard and squeeze into any available orifice. Then the onboard worker will push and squeeze his way to you somehow to collect the 1.20 Euro fare.

17. When taking pictures of large buildings, objects or scenery that won’t fit in a single camera frame, take multiple shots (making sure to overlap the images) and use photo stiching or merging software to create the final aggregated image when you return home. A great way to get those too-big-to-fit shots and for panoramas!

Thoughts about our HAL Noordam Mediterranean Cruise

This was our first HAL cruise after several with Royal Caribbean and one each with Carnival and Princess. After spending 20 days onboard, here are my observations about HAL and the Noordam—ship, services and crew:
- Servers clear and clean tables very fast in the Lido so this was superior to RCI and Carnival. We found the behind-the-buffet service to be nice but less efficient overall. IOW, we much prefer RCI’s food stations or islands and helping yourself to what you want in the portions you want.
- Dining room, room stewards and room service were comparable to RCI
- Lido and main dining food quality was very good overall but I personally would call it a draw with RCI. My wife liked HAL better because of the superior seafood, but my parents liked RCI because their beefs was better.
- HAL uniquely offers free freshly squeezed orange juice for breakfast and cappuccino/espresso at dinner
- Excellent and quiet handling of turnaround day for B2B passengers with custom tours, spa service, lunches, etc.
- HAL has virtually no night life and mediocre entertainment. This was okay for a port-intensive Mediterranean cruise but we’re not sure about it for all the sea days of a Caribbean cruise.
- There are far fewer activities and things to do onboard the ship, especially for kids. Specifically, Noordam has no rock climbing, wave pool, water slides or fountains, bowling alley, or ice rink. On the plus side, Noordam has an excellent library/computer center in their Explorations Café.
- Can’t understand why with a near-new ship, HAL doesn’t offer on-demand movies and entertainment (not check-out DVDs from library), or on-line billing, on-line shore excursion booking, and other on-line features directly from your stateroom either via TV or wifi access.
- The three elevator banks midship on the Vista-class are not linked or coordinated so they are not efficiently utilized
- Love the silent disembarkation—much improved over Carnival or RCI’s noisy and stressful debarkation routines

Last Day of Cruise: Civitavecchia, Italy

Debarkation was quiet, smooth and stress-free. We bid farewell to Noordam and her fine crew. We shared a Romeinlimo transfer with the Fosters into Roma. After having our hotel hold their luggage, we walked them to the Tiber and bid them farewell as they headed off to their Vatican tour and we headed south to stroll.

After lunch, we spent the afternoon checking out the Colisseum. We wasted some time looking for lunch and dinner places because a few of the recommend restaurants were closed. Not sure if they were just closed for lunch and/or dinner, or if they were closed for the rest of the summer.

Messina/Taormina, Sicily & Stromboli

We spent the morning visiting lovely Taormina, with a long visit to the Greco-Roman theatre. It was neat to see Mount Etna as a backdrop to this ancient theatre. The kids remained onboard in ClubHAL. On the return back to the ship, we caught part of the clock bell tower show in Messina—I was unimpressed. Later that afternoon, as we sailed north out of Messina, we got to see the smoldering volcano: Stromboli!

And just before dinner, we had a nice gathering of most of our CruiseCritic friends in the Crow's Nest. We dranks some champagne and took lots of pictures! Some of us had spent 19 days together on the ship and we really bonded.

Favorite kid moment—Not sure because they were in ClubHAL all day and claimed they didn’t do anything. Maybe they enjoyed Stromboli?

Sea Day

The kids’ confidence has been growing during this trip. Both Cara and Adam order their custom waffles at breakfast in the Lido, their dinners in the evenings, ask stewards for things, checkout DVDs and games from the librarian, etc.—all by themselves.

Adam’s swimming also progressed very nicely during the cruise. Today he did more forward floating and kicking and started to float backward. Carol Foster helped him a lot. Kids always seem to be more receptive to teaching from anybody who is not their parent.

Piraeus/Athens, Greece

I had originally planned another “daddy death-march walking day” for Athens, but after our experience in Barcelona, we agreed that it would be best to spend the money for a guided van/bus tour. So we hooked on with Maria’s group the night before. Maria welcomed us but I ended up having to do all the collecting, reconciling and paying of the tour driver monies. I still can’t believe the owner, driver and guide got 1,000 Euros for this full-day tour!

The morning started off a little rough for Cara—she threw up right after disembarking the tour bus at the foot of the Acropolis. Fortunately, she immediately felt better and hung in with the group just fine after that. The itinerary spent a lot of time at the Acropolis and the new Acropolis museum, we had lunch in Monastiraki, and got a city tour that included seeing the changing of the guards at Syntagma, Temple of Zeus

and the 1896 Olympic stadium. The only downside was that we didn’t spend any time in the Plaka. I’m glad we got in and out of the Acropolis by 11 am because there were massive crowds trying to get in just before 11 am! Someone later said those crowds waited an hour to enter.

After seeing his dad order chicken souvlaki in Corfu, Adam got it in both Oia and Athens. He ordered seafood pastas in Sorrento and Dubrovnik. Cara seems to have enjoyed her “greek” spaghettis in both places. They’re both definitely more adventurous with food than before!

As for my cold, today was the first day I think I can say I’m close to 100% again. While my cough still lingers, I definitely feel much better.

Favorite kid moment—Climbing the steps and stones around the Acropolis and goofing in the Acropolis museum. They also enjoyed the 5Euro orange slushy after the Acropolis tour.

Kusadasi/Ephesus, Turkey

Had a full and interesting day in Ephesus with our guide, Yelda. Terrace Houses are amazing. I’m very disappointed for all the people on the ship tours who never get to see them. Didn’t have any energy left on the return to Kusadasi to shop or hit the beach—maybe next time.

Favorite kid moment—Running and sliding on the glass floors at the Terrace Houses, and on the slippery marble steps all around Ephesus.

Santorini, Greece

Our day in Santorini started out with an exciting ride up the cliffs on the backs of donkeys. I’m very proud of Andrea for doing it despite every fiber of her being telling her that it was a bad and unsafe idea. It was slow, uncomfortable and a little dangerous (what with the being on the side of a cliff, concrete/rock pavement, and on-coming donkey traffic!) but you only live once, right?

The views from Fira and Oia were stunning and it was fun to walk the narrow passageways and steps in and around both towns. On the downside, we waited an hour for a taxi to take us from Fira to Oia, but fortunately we were in port for a full day, and weren’t in any hurry. We were also really squished in the bus on the return to Fira.
In Oia, we enjoyed our lunch at Lotza’s. The view was fantastic (what restaurant in Santorini doesn’t have a view?). We noticed a change about Cara during this trip: she now eats spaghetti with lots of sauce and no longer complains about not wanting too much sauce. In Rome, Corfu and now Oia (and probably other places I’ve forgotten), she’s ordered something off the menu and happily enjoyed her meal!

On our return to the ship, we decided not to rush our showers and be very late for the main dining room so opted for the Lido. Unfortunately, we later discovered that the Lido was closed for dinner on this one evening because HAL was doing a Santorini sailaway outdoor deck BBQ this evening. Had we known (or should I say, paid attention to the Daily Planner), we would have gone to the main dining room. For me, the BBQ chicken, ribs and accompaniments sufficed, but poor Andrea really had a hard time finding something good to eat and she regretted missing the main dining room this night!

Favorite kid moment—The donkey ride up the caldera and searching for donkey-related souvenirs

Katakolo/Olympia, Greece

We planned to take the train to Olympia from Katakolo, but during breakfast, Linda from my Cruisecritic group mentioned how easy and inexpensive it was to rent a car in Katakolo. Sure enough, the car rental process was as fast (and perhaps even faster) than in Corfu!

Driving to Olympia didn’t involve anything like Corfu’s hairpin turns and crazy side roads so we never got lost. Didn’t appreciate however the stupid woman at the gas station who “accidentally” put in 5 Euros too much gasoline into the rental car. She’s probably the car rental company owner’s sister. After returning the car, we did a lot of shopping, including buying some cool Greek glass plates and other stuff.

We had a surprisingly good day in Olympia—better than I had expected. While the ruins were nothing special, the site was pretty with lots of trees and some shade. The museum was interesting and the museum worker ladies all wore super tight pants!
Anyhow, I’m glad we didn’t take this day off!

Favorite kid moment—Running a 200 yard dash on the original Olympic stadium! And the funny-sounding Pelopian fascinated them to no end…

Corfu, Greece

We were late meeting the rental car rep in Corfu, but fortunately there were still plenty of cars available with another company right at the dock. We were off and on our way within minutes. Unfortunately, the Garmin Nuvi didn’t have any local maps so we got lost trying to find Kononi. I gave up and headed straight for Achillion Palace instead. Afterwards, we drove across the island to Palekas for lunch. Palekas sits atop the mountains with a nice view of the ocean. After lunch, we drove down to Palekas Beach for an afternoon at the beach. The water was cold but the kids had fun! We tried to buy water from these two Greek guys just off the beach but they were both asleep and wouldn’t wake up. So I took the water and only paid them when we were leaving!

One thing I’ve noticed is that, if you wake Cara up in the morning before she is ready to wake up, she is very groggy and grouchy for at least a few hours during the rest of the morning. Mom thinks it’s because she is tired, but that doesn’t explain why she is usually fine after noon. I think it’s because if her sleep is disrupted, it just takes her a few hours to regroup.

Favorite kid moment—Fun at Palekas Beach including the sleeping vendors