NCL Cruises, Make Up Your Mind!

Can someone please tell NCL Cruises that they need to make up their mind on what they are doing!

Earlier this year they made the big announcement that they were to become a fully inclusive cruise line, offering all gratuities and the premium drinks package as a standard for all their ships across all sailings.  At the time this went down extremely well both with us as cruise consultants, and you as guests, as who doesn’t love an all-inclusive cruise?

All seemed to be going well (apart from the not so little price increases that have been obvious to include these within the cruise fare) until the last few weeks.  I am sure it was only last week, that NCL announced that they were introducing some guarantee grade cabins where guests booked on these would not be part of their all-inclusive promotion, and not get the drinks package or the gratuities included.

I will admit that this took me by surprise as they have been making rather a big deal surrounding being totally all inclusive as a brand, so to take a step back from this so soon after was a shock.

Then they have decided that they are going to increase their service charge on purchases on board including drinks, speciality dining and spa treatments from 18% to 20%.  Now usually when you have the drinks package included with your promotion at the time of booking you have been exempt from the service charge on your drinks, but it seems they are even applying it to these drinks now.

So for instance, if you book under their all inclusive drinks promotion and order $100.00 worth of drinks a day, they will charge you $20.00 a day gratuity on top of this. (I will add that I do think that $100.00 a day per person is perfectly acceptable for drinks, you are on holiday after all)

I know most cruise lines charge you this gratuity when you purchase drinks individually, not never have I heard of it being charged on drinks purchased under a drinks package?

With this in effect, can they really say that they are all inclusive?  In my opinion not!  If I go on an all-inclusive holiday, I don’t want to be paying any extra for any drinks or food that are included in the promotion.

Is anyone else confused at this point? Yeah, me too.

Come on NCL, make your mind up, your either all-inclusive or you’re not?