Royal Caribbean Makes Needed Changes To Beverage Program
Royal Caribbean Cruise Line has finally made some needed changes to their beverage program which has been out of whack since the pandemic.
Royal Caribbean International , with its Crown & Anchor Society, slowly doles out perks as customers accrue more points. (A point equals one night in a regular double-occupancy cabin.) At the lower status levels, you get some small perks, and as you move up, the benefits become more meaningful.
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Earn 80 points and you reach Diamond status, the first elite tier where you get meaningful benefits. These include access to a loyalty lounge that offers a light breakfast, 24/7 coffee from a fancy espresso machine, and appetizers/snacks in the early evening during happy hour.
Happy hour in the Diamond Lounge used to mean an open bar. That changed during the covid era because the cruise line did not want customers packing into the lounge. Now, Royal Caribbean offers Diamond members four free drink vouchers each day. Diamond+ members get 5, while Pinnacle members get 6.
These can be used for any added-fee beverage, not just alcohol, on the ship (or on CocoCay). You could redeem a voucher for a $3 bottle of water or a $14 mixed drink. That policy has led to problems as the cruise line, aiming to limit contact points due to covid, has stopped having passengers who have vouchers or a beverage package sign $0 receipts.
The lack of receipts. however, has caused some problems as well, and Royal Caribbean has taken a step to solve those issues.
Royal Caribbean Makes a Voucher Change
The problem with the voucher system is that the cruise line does not issue physical certificates. Instead, your free drinks are on your SeaPass card -- your room key. That makes it easy for a bartender to use a voucher to pay for a lower-priced drink that you intended to pay for with a credit card, saving your voucher for something more expensive.
Royal Caribbean noted in an email to Crown & Anchor members that many visits to its customer-service desk were "related to beverage vouchers provided to our higher tiered Crown & Anchor Society members."
These highly valuable customers were seeing their vouchers applied for water, soda, coffee, or even beer and wine, when they had intended to save them for pricier drinks. To stop this, Royal Caribbean shared two key changes it put into place Nov. 4.
Effective on sailings starting this Friday, November 4, we’ll have all members sign their check when using any beverage vouchers. The benefit of doing this is twofold:
1. The receipt has a count of your vouchers to help you better track how many you have left. So if you’re a Diamond member, and you have 4 a day -- it may tell you 2 of 4 have been redeemed.
2. We noticed many beverage voucher disputes are related to use on a drink you did not want to use it on. For instance, you ordered a $3 coffee and we may have applied your voucher -- and you don’t learn about it until you’re at dinner, wanting that nice $13 cocktail and you’re out of vouchers.
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First, no business wants its most loyal customers to be unhappy about anything (especially a free perk designed to make them happy). Second, the line at customer service can get long, and making a change that keeps people out of that line makes the experience easier for passengers with other customer-relations issues.
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