Just returned from cruise - don't get it...

"Benjamin Smith" wrote in message But I'm not
looking for inexpensive. I'm looking for something that's
affordable for middle income clientele that's an alternative to the
mainstream cruise lines and perhaps priced somewhat higher. Smaller,
more focused, different entertainment options, no Park West art
auctions, different types of merchandise in the shops, different types
of activities, CDs without the canned material that they repeat cruise
after cruise, etc.

Ben S.


I think of all the smaller, unique cruise lines that have either been
swallowed up or couldn't compete with the big guys and it's sad. It really
shows just how homogenized the industry has become. Just in the last 15
years we used to have: Premier Cruises, Regency Cruises, Home Lines, Sitmar
Cruises, Dolphin Cruise Line, Majesty Cruise Line, Eastern Cruise Line,
Western Cruise Line, Admiral Cruise Line, Cape Canaveral Cruises, Royal
Viking Line, Royal Cruise Line, Sun Line, Epirotiki, Royal Olympic, Festival
Cruises, American Hawaii Cruises, United States Line, etc., etc. I'm sure
there are several that I left out.

Now we have one company that controls something like 60% of the cruise
industry, and two smaller players that basically make up the difference.
Sure there are multiple brands under each parent company, but regardless it
seems the brands lose much of their individuality once they become part of
the corporate family. Even the hardware suffers, which is a major reason I
take cruises to begin with. Let's face it, the cruise experience doesn't
differ significantly from line to line in the same price bracket (although
die hard loyalists would like to believe otherwise), so it's the hardware
that I get excited about. Currently there are no ships on the horizon that
even tweak my interest. They are all clones and hybrids of something
already out there. QM2 was the last new ship that I had any real desire to
sail on. Why, because she is unique. If Carnival builds five more like her
then her appeal will fade, at least for me. Carnival Corp. alone has a
single ship platform now being used for FIVE of their brands. A
Spirit/Vista Class hybrid is being used for Carnival, Costa, Holland
America, P&O Cruises, and Cunard. Why should I pay Cunard prices when I can
cruise the same type ship under P&O or HAL? RCI/Celebrity did a little
better job differentiating between the Radiance Class and M-Class, although
both classes share many similarities. These days even the "International"
staff is interchangeable between brands. We have Princess Cruises staff
working on the QM2, and Carnival staff working on Costa ships. What really
makes the experience different? Not a whole lot. Someone on another board
brought up an analogy of Carnival Corp. and General Motors. Basically
General Motors produced the same car for several of it's brands, with only
slight modifications and the signage on the car being different. Why buy a
Buick or Oldsmobile when you can basically have the same car under the
cheaper Chevrolet brand? The same could be said with Carnival's brands, or
at least they seem to be heading in that direction. GM learned that
strategy doesn't work, at least not for the long term. While production was
cheap, consumers are smarter than many corporate executives would like to
believe and they caught on. GM sales went down the toilette and now they
have a much different strategy.

Hopefully Carnival and other brands will not have to hit rock bottom in
order for cruise executives to realize that consumers want different
products to choose from, and not just a smoke screen, but real and true
differences that define a product.

Ernie

ps - I'm not holding my breath for Delta Queen considering who is President
of the line. Let's hope that "Fuzzy Wuzzy's Den" doesn't start appearing on
the DELTA QUEEN!

Sue and Kevin Mullen wrote in message ...
Rosalie B. wrote:

That's true - that's one of the downsides of cruising. If you don't
want to see the port, you might as well go on a cruise to no-where.

If they had a seven day cruise to nowhere and it sailed in the
carribean, I would gladly book it.

Me, too. A stop at a private island would be acceptable.

I divide my time away from home into two categories - travel and
vacation. When we plan "travel " we are moving around, staying at a
different spot every night or every couple of nights, and touring the
places we're visiting intensively. Not particularly relaxing but we
see a lot. get a taste of local flavor, etc. We don't stay in chain
hotels and we don't eat in chain restaurants, when we "travel".

When we "vacation" it's a totally different story. We "vacation" when
we need some down time - time to unpack, relax, be waited on for a
while. We don't want to have to think about where our next meal will
be or how much longer we need to drive to get to our next destination.
Cruises are one of the ways we "vacation". It's easy - you just show
up at the ship, and the rest is taken care of. We don't expect to
explore a culture in depth, in a port that we might visit on a cruise
- a little snorkeling, a little sun, a little shopping and we're
happy. We also use port visits on cruises for ideas on future
land-based "travel" when we will have the chance to explore a place
more intensely.

Sometimes "travel" and "vacation" overlap, like they did last year on
our cruise to Bermuda. Having 4 days in port to explore a country (as
small as Bermuda) is a decent amount of time. We felt that we pretty
much saw all of Bermuda that we would ever need to see (not that we
wouldn't go back, but our visit didn't seem like a tease - we really
saw a substantial amount).

Also, in Alaska, we combined our own land portion with a 5-6 day
cruise with Glacier Bay Cruiseline. While the cruise portion of our
trip was technically "vacation" we still got a lot of "travel" out of
it and we got a whole lot of "travel" out of our pre-cruise week of
exploration on our own.

Cruising isn't for everyone - I think that's been well established.
It's a shame, though, that TAs or friends, or other advisors plant
expectations in new cruisers that can't be met and lead to a
disappointing experience.

Lee

sue

Lee wrote:

Sue and Kevin Mullen wrote in message ...

Rosalie B. wrote:


That's true - that's one of the downsides of cruising. If you don't
want to see the port, you might as well go on a cruise to no-where.

If they had a seven day cruise to nowhere and it sailed in the
carribean, I would gladly book it.


Me, too. A stop at a private island would be acceptable.


Me, three.

Howie

"E.k.R." wrote:

Ernie, do you have any interest in Clipper Odyssey, especially doing some of
her more exotic itineraries?

Clipper and Cruise West haven't been swallowed up yet, have they?

A Mon, 12 Jul 2004 15:40:44 -0400, "E.k.R."
escribió:
QM2 was the last new ship that I had any real desire to
sail on. Why, because she is unique. If Carnival builds five more like her
then her appeal will fade, at least for me.

Yeah. This is the bit that doesn't work out the same for
me. The fact that (many) others can enjoy something doesn't
really take anything about from the experience for me.


--
bicker®
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/GMA/D...ry_040602.html

"Howie" wrote in message
...


Lee wrote:

Sue and Kevin Mullen wrote in message
...

Rosalie B. wrote:


That's true - that's one of the downsides of cruising. If you don't
want to see the port, you might as well go on a cruise to no-where.

If they had a seven day cruise to nowhere and it sailed in the
carribean, I would gladly book it.


Me, too. A stop at a private island would be acceptable.


Me, three.

Howie

I just posed the question of "Who would like a 7 day cruise to nowhere?" on
cruisecritic the other day and out of close to 30 responses only 3 said no.
I think after you have been to the same ports over and over MOST people
would much prefer the ship to another port call of the same old place. My
wife and I love days at sea and could do a 7 day cruise to nowhere.

Bill

"Howie" wrote in message
...


Lee wrote:

Sue and Kevin Mullen wrote in message
...

Rosalie B. wrote:


That's true - that's one of the downsides of cruising. If you don't
want to see the port, you might as well go on a cruise to no-where.

If they had a seven day cruise to nowhere and it sailed in the
carribean, I would gladly book it.


Me, too. A stop at a private island would be acceptable.


Me, three.

Howie

I just posed the question of "Who would like a 7 day cruise to nowhere?" on
cruisecritic the other day and out of close to 30 responses only 3 said no.
I think after you have been to the same ports over and over MOST people
would much prefer the ship to another port call of the same old place. My
wife and I love days at sea and could do a 7 day cruise to nowhere.

Bill

A 12 Jul 2004 12:04:22 -0700, (Benjamin
Smith) escribió:
you choose the shareholder over the consumer?

I believe every shareholder would choose to maximize their
return. I would be unable believe any shareholder (other
than folks already rolling in dough) who claimed they'd
choose otherwise.


--
bicker®
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/GMA/D...ry_040602.html

A 12 Jul 2004 12:17:14 -0700, (Benjamin
Smith) escribió:
*bicker* wrote in message ...
A Mon, 12 Jul 2004 01:01:23 GMT, Benjamin Smith
escribió:
Mass market you'll say, my
problem is more they are corporate, but in a sense it is the same thing.
Expand and standardize. I think this is fine for some of them, but not
all of them. I'm quite frankly tired of being told that if I want a
"different" cruise experience I have to go to expensive lines.
That should not be the case and it *does not* have to be the case.
Folks often begrudge the premium they have to pay for
something exclusive, yet that is the nature of economies of
scale. I can understand your frustration at that fact,
though.
I'm not. What I'm saying is that some products may cost more to offer
to a smaller clientele, but they don't have to be in the "luxury"
category to have enough of a clientele to sustain a profitable
business.

I didn't say anything about "luxury" so it seems to me that
you're talking about something other than what you replied
to.

I used bed and breakfasts and small shops in small towns as
an example.

Low barrier-to-entry. Try that with a $100 million
bed-and-breakfast.

And I'd love if some of the premium lines would start
charging premium prices again.

The number of people who *say* that they would pay a premium
for a premium product doesn't have any impact on the
profitability of the business. Only the number of people
who actually *do* pay the premium for a premium product can.
You may be one of those who actually *would* but clearly
there aren't enough of such folks, as evidenced by these
premium lines moving closer and closer over time to the
mainstream lines.

What we
need is not more expensive lines, but new lines that aren't corporate
owned.
That's a red-herring, IMHO. If I owned a cruise line --
invested my own money -- I'd want to make the best decisions
I could to foster my long-term financial security, even if
that means crafting a cruise line that isn't to my own
personal specifications. I can always use the extra money I
make to buy the specific aspects I want, over-and-on-top of
what is offered to the mass market.
The we I'm talking about are consumers.

Granted. It's a bit like saying, "What we television
viewers need is not more pay channels, but new free channels
that don't have commercials." It is unquestionably true
(given the way you used "need" above), but isn't very
enlightening as a statement.

Your business decisions are
sound but you would not have the type of consumer-based focus and
vision that I would be interested in as a client.

You're mistaken. A business that provides products and
services that its customers aren't willing to pay for isn't
focusing on its customers. (I used to work for Ma Bell,
back when it was Ma Bell, so I can tell you great stories
about all the great stuff we just *knew* you wanted, even
though you didn't express any appreciable interest it
beforehand.) Customer-based focus is actively listening to
your customers and crafting from that information the most
profitable product and service offerings, to best satisfy
your fiduciary responsibilities.


--
bicker®
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We sailed on both SITMAR & HOMELINES and loved both of them. Wish they
were still around