Well – it’s probably about time really.  I’ve been booking cruises for 7 years and the expected gratuity for the service providers on cruise ships has been in the neighborhood of $10 a day per guest.  It’s gone from pay them cash in little envelopes to the cruise line just charges it to your hotel tab daily and you pay with the credit card you check in with.  Royal Caribbean and Celebrity had held off from the automatic gratuity thing until mid January and now they are doing it also.  They pushed the envelope with that announcement and said $11 something and now NCL is changing theirs  to $12 per guest, regardless of age.  This amount is split between the room seward, and his assistant, and the dinner waiter and his assistant and the mater’de that takes care of your section of the dining room.  

This amount may seem high, but when you realize that none of these ships are flagged in the US… minus the one in Hawaii – these workers are not getting minimum wage or overtime pay etc….  It’s still a great gig for them, as if they go back to their countries with great English stills they can get great jobs upon thier return.  

I just got off a ship and am desparately missing having my room cleaned twice a day and wishing someone would ask me what I would like for dinner… and dessert.

POLICY HIGHLIGHTS 

Deposit Requirements

 Princess has lowered the passenger deposit requirements for new bookings on summer 2009 voyages and beyond. Now all bookings will require a deposit of just 20% of the cruise or cruise tour fare, reduced from the previously announced 30% requirement. The World Cruise deposit will remain at 10% for the initial deposit.

New Fuel Supplement

Because of the continued rapid escalation of fuel prices, six of Carnival Corporation & plc’s brands, including Princess Cruises and Cunard Line, increased their current fuel supplement from $7 to $9 (USD) per person per day. The fuel supplement for third and fourth passengers will increase from $2 to $4 (USD) per person per day. The new fuel supplement will apply to all new bookings effective June 12, 2008. The fuel supplement will not exceed $126 per person per voyage for the first and second passengers, and $56 per person per voyage for the third and fourth passengers in a stateroom.

Air Policy Disclosures

Due to the volatility of the airline price changes, we want to highlight the fact that all air prices are not guaranteed until full payment is received by Princess. This is not new, but rather a re-communication of our existing policy. As long as a passenger has paid for their cruise and air in full, they will not be required to pay any additional air costs.

Platinum Vacation Protection

Starting with voyages departing in summer 2009, Princess is pleased to introduce Princess Platinum Vacation Protection. Our Platinum Plan provides a future cruise credit value of 100% of the normally non-refundable charges if you must cancel for a reason that is not eligible for 100% cash reimbursement. And, upgrading to our new Platinum Vacation Protection plan (or Travel Care Gold for voyages prior to the summer of 2009) will also double coverage for medical expenses, lost baggage and emergency medical evacuation. Also note that Princess purchases the Platinum coverage for Platinum and Elite Captains Circle members who purchase the standard program- a savings of up to several hundred dollars.

PRODUCT ENHANCEMENTS 

Star Princess and Caribbean Princess to Add Popular Amenities

The upcoming makeovers of Star Princess and Caribbean Princess will include a transformation of the Deck 5 atrium into the inviting piazza-style street café including Headline Entertainers as currently found on Crown Princess and Emerald Princess, a new wine bar concept including a walk-in cheese humidor and a fully stocked wine store. Additionally, we will add the company’s signature adults-only Sanctuary and showplace Crown Grill steak and seafood restaurant, along with a more centrally located casino and seven new suites. Star Princess will also receive a Movies Under The Stars screen during her September dry dock in San Francisco and Caribbean Princess will follow in January 2009.

Complimentary Hot Chocolate and Mid-Morning Bouillon

We are pleased to offer our passengers in cold weather itineraries, complimentary Hot Chocolate and mid-morning Bouillon. These special offerings are currently available on board our ships in Alaska.

Evian Misting Stewards

Launching in August, passengers will be able to take pleasure in being misted by our new Evian Misting Stewards while enjoying the sun on deck. This service is offered in our warm weather itineraries and is sure to be a hit with our passengers.

Waffle Stations

Available in late August, passengers can enjoy fresh waffles made to order at the Waffle Stations located in the Horizon Court buffet. Unlike other operations, Princess Cruises will offer fresh waffle creations for breakfast, brunch and throughout lunch. What better way to start the day!

Complimentary Lemonade

Complimentary Lemonade will be available later in 2008 on board all Princess ships.

In support of our ongoing partnership with Nintendo, Princess was the first cruise line to launch the new Wii Fit device on all vessels. Representatives from Nintendo of America introduced and trained cruise and teen staff on the popular Wii Fit through participative and interactive training courses. Family and adult tournaments are now featured on all vessels fleet wide.

If this photo represents flying to you… stop reading here. 

Where will the airlines stop in this new wave of setting the base price for a ticket and then surprising the traveler with new add on’s. 

First step that most of the airlines jumped on- is the second bag checked cost $25.  Now American is going to charge $15 for the first bag.  (tickets issued after June 15th)  How about getting a window seat… I’m an aisle person myself, but would you pay extra for a window.  It’s coming.

Of course all these extra’s are not for everyone, if you are a loyalty member with a little status, the airline doesn’t impose these things on you.  Loyalty pays in many ways in the travel industry. 

 It’s hard to remember how we used to make fun of airline food and how terrible it was, and now we are just grateful to get anything to snack on while we are stuck on the tarmac waiting for our gate to open as the clock tics and our connecting flight leaves without us.  I may be a little sensitive to this – this week as my hubby was stuck at SFO forever this week, and his flight kept getting delayed over and over.  Delays seem more common place lately – global warming… unusual weather? I don’t know … Mechanical issues?  Not sure, but it does put the adventure back into travel.

My husband travels alot – and this news is not exciting!  He uses United for a huge percentage of his business travel.  Read on…

United Adds Saturday Stay, Raises Ticket-Change Fees
Mon Apr 21 2008, by TravelTrade Staff

United Airlines is increasing business travel fares by requiring a Saturday night stay in about 65% of markets and will boost ticket-change fees to offset fuel costs.

The Saturday-night stay requirement has been tacked on to all tickets where United competes head-to-head with other legacy carriers, impacting business travelers, who usually don’t want to spend a Saturday night in their destination.

In addition, United’s fee for passengers to change tickets will rise from $100 to $150.

Last week, United added an additional $20 roundtrip fuel charge in markets that already had a fuel fee. A $10 surcharge was added in markets where no fee had been in effect.

After the recent news of the Cruise lines giving money back to customers after they charged fuel supplements on bookings already made.  NCL can stand proud on this one, as they didn’t do what the other did.  They only charged the fuel supplement on bookings made after the announcement.

NCL annouced this week that come May 1st – their fuel supplement charge that they started this past fall at $7 will go up to $9 per person (for first two passengers in each room) per day.  So on a 7 day cruise that’s $126 extra for a couple to cruise.  All of this makes looking at advertised prices a little tricky.  A cruise that’s posted for $699 – is going to cost a couple about $1589 with taxes.  (Cruises don’t include air unless you add that…)  Here in Oregon where we aren’t used to sales taxes… makes it even harder to tell someone the total price of their trip.

Carnival Corp (includes Princess, Holland, Seabourn, Cunard, Costa and Carnival) raised their fuel charge to $7 per person per day for all bookings made after TODAY April 20th.  They had been at $5 a day- same as Royal Caribbean and Celebrity.   At the present moment RCCL and Celebrity are still at $5 a day.  Kudos to them if they can stay there.

NEWS- Royal Caribbean is raising their also.. up to $8 – All bookings made after May 1st. That includes Celebrity and Azurmara (never sure if I’m spelling that right, new cruiseline…)

Then there is air…

Just got a message saying the United is charging a fuel supplement on their Hawaii flights, all fares - $40 per person.  Yikes!

Need to start shopping for that electric car so I can still afford to travel!!

Big news for non-smokers like me that have not loved the smoking in staterooms policy of all cruise lines until NOW.  Read on…

Fri Apr 11 2008, by TravelTrade Staff

Celebrity Cruises will ban smoking in staterooms and on stateroom verandas beginning Oct. 1. The cruise line will also reduce the number of public areas in which guests can smoke onboard.

The new policy was created after Celebrity polled past guests and found a large demand for more smoke-free areas, the line said. Smoking will continue to be allowed on the port side of one lounge per ship and a designated slot machine area in each ship’s casino. Outdoor areas include the port side of the pool deck and sundecks on each ship, the port side of the Sunset Bar on Celebrity Century and on Celebrity’s Millennium class of ships and the port side aft outside of Winter Garden on Celebrity Galaxy and Mercury.

Celebrity’s new Solstice class of ships, which launches with the Solstice later this year, will follow the new policy beginning with the first sailing. The Solstice’s Lawn Club and the Sunset Bar at the Lawn Club will be smoke-free.

The new policy goes into effect on Celebrity’s fleet on the first day of each new sailing following Oct. 1. Violations to Celebrity’s smoking policy may result in a $250 cleaning fee charged to the guest’s onboard account.

“We pay careful attention to what our guests have to say, and approximately 90% of them have told us they are non-smokers,” said Dan Hanrahan, Celebrity Cruises’ president and CEO. “By increasing the number of smoke-free areas onboard while still designating areas for those who smoke, our aim is to make the onboard experience as pleasant as possible for all of our guests.”

I often say – if people didn’t need to get on a plane, I could sell a lot more travel.  You hear the horror storries of terrible experiences, long layovers, missed connections and sitting on the tarmac and you just think… sorry for them, so glad that’s never happened to me.  Then it happens to you.  Suddenly you think everyone needs travel insurance afterall and getting one that would assist you along the way would be priceless.

I had been at a large travel convention in New Orleans.  My flight home was on time, which was unlike my nightmare flight coming into the convention where I sat in my home airport for 8 hours waiting for a flight that would get me to the convention, missing the best dinner of the trip.

 So here I am thinking, this is going better. I even got the exit row. The first leg is one hour, nine minutes to Dallas.  After about an hour the pilots voice comes over the speaker and tells us that due to storms in the area we can not land.   I had been trying to sleep because I was very sleep deprived from convention life, and had pulled the shade on the window.  At this news of storms I opened the shade and gasped a loud gasp right along with the woman next to me.  Did we see lightening, dark scary clouds?  No… we saw the ground and clear skys with a few puffy white clouds in the distance.  We felt lied to in that instant. 

This common experience brought my neighboring seat partner and I to share our trip experience thus far, which included that we were both at the same convention.  Her husband was sitting next to her.  We were both travel agents.  If it wasn’t for my new friends this experience would have been much worse.  They were headed for Portland also, so we stuck together through it all. 

So our story included being detoured to Oklahoma City for refueling.  They let passengers that had this stop as they final destination off, but told them, sorry no luggage.  We were told we were 12th in line for fuel at one point.  We were never near a gate, just sitting in a line of planes on the tarmac.  They brought snacks onboard, and told us they didn’t have enough for everyone, so just take some if you need it.  I was pretty glad that I had decided to go to the breakfast buffet at the hotel and really ate a lot of protein for some rediculous amount – like $23 for breakfast.  I did finally eat in Dallas about 10 hours after we left New Orleans.

We, my new friends and I managed to get a reservationist to list us on a plane going to Seattle, just incase we missed the last flight to Portland.  When we finally got into the airport in Dallas we ran to the Portland flight which was delayed, but it was also oversold by 20 something and we weren’t getting on that one.  So off we fly to Seattle.

 When we arrived in Seattle it was 1-2AM and the flights to Portland didn’t start until 6AM.  We booked the 7:30 or something and started to look for an inexpensive hotel with airport shuttle.  Three of us working on this and it still took a while.  We settle on a place that had a sofa bed in a separate room and shared the cost of the room.  Yes – I said we are now close friends.  In the morning had a good breakfast at the hotel - strawberries on waffle with whipped cream.  When we got to the airport we were able to catch an earlier flight and off to Portland,  door to door – 24 hours to get home.

What I learned from my trip:

1. Always call the airline and check to see if you are delayed.  I didn’t do that on the way down and  I should have.  Sitting in the airport for 8 hours was silly.

2. Make sure your cell phone is completely charged, and don’t leave the charger in the hotel room as you leave, or it will die on you while you are on hold for 45 minutes trying to get through to an airline to change your flight.  ( I did get my charger back, or someone elses, the hotel even sent me an extra one – said they had a room full of chargers)

3. Trust your gut.  I wouldn’t have shared a hotel room with just anyone, but I instinctly knew this couple were just great.  In fact she joined the agency I use right after this ordeal.  Reaching out and remaining friendly really helped this be less of a nightmare.  I was so thankful to be in an exit room though. If I had my super long legs in the regular seats that long, I would have died.  The flight from Dallas to Seattle was worse, I had this monster size guy infront of me that put his seat back to fit, and his weight pushed the chair back farther than it should go, pinning me.  My knees were killing me after that flight. Plus person space issues had been violated, so I was pretty fed up.

So how to fix this mess.  I don’t know.  Don’t travel during summer storm season? Don’t go to Texas?  Don’t use American Airlines? Don’t book flights with tight connections? Don’t go anywhere, just watch the travel channel and live through others? 

Well, I’m going to continue to travel and remember that even while this nightmare was happening it was more of an adventure and a race to see how we were going to get home – a puzzle.  And everyone in my house knows I LOVE PUZZLES.

Yesterday I had a chance to tour and dine on the NCL (Norweigian Cruise Line) new ship the Pearl.  (Gem will be her sister ship being built now)

This ship wowed me, and that’s pretty hard to do after you’ve seen almost 40 ships.  Innovative decorating and furniture design, and the word fun don’t begin to tell the story.  Things to do include; bowling (4 lanes, $5 a game), rock wall climbing, water slide, a basketball, volleyball, tennis court, nice spa with tons of treadmills and other equipment and all the regular things a cruise can have.  NCL has a wide variety of dining rooms and just touring around to see how they were all decorated was a blast.  The surprise room was the La Cusina Italian Restaurant.  It was so original in it’s design for a cruise ship.  Reminded me of a lovely little restaurant we ate at in France.  Warm, cozy feeling with lots of wood and so much character.

 The main theater on the Pearl is wonderful, not a bad seat in the place.  Love that.  In the main lobby there is a huge screen that you can play Nintendo Weii on during the cruise.  They had the video of shore excursions playing when we walked by.  Fun furniture in the lobby too.  Snail looking foot stools, encouraging to put your feet up.  When was the last time you saw that outside a private home.

The lounge where the bowling alleys are is just something you got to see.  It has two small private rooms you can host a party in.  Sign said something to the effect of buying a bottle of some sort of spirits gets you the privilege of using that area.  The main part of the room has large beds to lounge on.  You could get very comfortable here.   I was also thinking – if your roommate snores there are plenty of great places to sleep around this ship.  Bed looking things all over the place.  Keeping kids from jumping on them, could be an issue.  The bowling lounge is for over 21 after 9PM.  That’s good.

The private garden court for the super nice suites $$$ was “over the top” wonderful.  It’s on floor 14, tricky to find, but you should try to take a peek.  Making friends with someone in a suite would be a good thing on this ship.

First time cruisers that sail on this first are going to think the rest the ships in the industry are a little boring in their designs after experiencing this eyeful.  It’s a bright and vibrant ship and looks like a ton of fun.

Excited to have a place to keep my list and to be able to share important and fun travel information as I receive it.