Can I ask how much you Drink?
In all the years I have been working in Travel I never imagined that this would become one of my questions I would be regularly asking customers along with How many nights or What date can you travel?
But in recent months this is a question I seem to be constantly asking with the rise in popularity of Drinks Packages being offered by cruise lines.
Nobody likes to admit how much they do actually Drink Alcohol and whilst you might expect it to be a question your asked by your GP. It always seems to come as a surprise when your Travel Agent asks you, but its with all the best intentions of saving you money!
NCL where the 1st of the big lines to go All Inclusive back in 2017 and with Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises having offers on with drinks included. They are now a big deciding factor in not only what line you cruise with but also what offer to go for. After a year of becoming the first All Inclusive cruise line NCL soon realised that they were losing loyal non drinking passengers and so have now introduced a new rate on a guarantee cabin with no added extras included.
With a beer costing around $7 and a Glass of Wine or a Cocktail $10 on Royal Caribbean taking advantage of the Free Drinks Packages being offered at the moment can be so beneficial if you where to drink more than 3-4 a day but for customers that don’t drink alcohol they often find themselves paying an inflated price for there cruise.
Celebrity Cruises offer a Free Drinks Package if you take an Ocean View cabin or higher but recently I have found prices between inside and outside cabins can be £1000pp difference……
P&O trialled Drinks Packages in the Summer on Azura last year and soon after announced they would also be introducing them onto there fleet but then ever since have not announced anything more..
So it looks like All Inclusive Drinks and my new Drinking habits question are here to stay as they become more and more popular but I personally think it should be something that should be added as a choice rather than an enforced FREE offer.
4 Comments on “Can I ask how much you Drink?”
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Well Hello There, thank you for visiting my Blog. I'm Sarah, Wife, Mother, Daughter and Cruise Fanatic !! Based in Crosby, Liverpool where I am lucky to see Cruise ships passing our beach during the Summer months. I have a husband, 3 Children a Dog and a Cat so my…
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Your comments on the spread of all inclusive packages are interesting. We are booked on a Princess Cruise to New Zealand and Australia for November 2019 where no pre-order drinks (alcoholic or otherwise) package is available. We have been told that packages will be available when we get on board. We like to book and pay for our packages as part of our cruise payment rather than queuing when we get on board. Can anyone explain why this change on Princess’ part?
I don’t know when this was written but P&O have now rolled out their drinks packages and the prices are extortionate.
You would have to be an alcoholic or end up one to benefit. I also read an article on the variety of packages on other cruise lines but no prices given which made it rather useless and I was unable to comment. Something about signing in which just took me to a blank Facebook page.
As for drinks we only have a specialty coffee or hot chocolate twice a day and maybe 1-2 soft drinks or a beer for my husband. No drinks package would benefit us. If we want water we boil a kettle in the cabin and use that.
P and O scrapped gratutities only to make up the loss with inflated drinks packages….I wondered how they would do that?
We often cruise with Thomson (now Marella), as we book early the standard drinks package was always available for free. In almost every cruise after the free drinks offer was withdrawn, if you checked the total cost including the cost of the drinks package over the time to the cruise, you would never be any less than £50.00 to the good, sometimes it was quite a large saving. At the moment it is £28.50pp per night for the standard package at full price + a further £50.00pp per week to upgrade to the premium package, that’s £71.29 per night for two people. £71.29 buys a lot of drink, try as I might I do not think I could consume that amount daily, even with a little help from my partner.
I wonder what enticements Marella will use now to encourage early booking as they are now all inclusive, (free premium drinks package), I can always live in hope.