One CX Touchpoint: Cruise Pricing

Customer Experience (CX) is everything that touches your target and current customers, and everything they can touch. Every interaction is an opportunity to build a relationship or potentially end the relationship. This is why Customer Experiences must be deliberately designed for customers’ satisfaction and success.

Today’s One CX Touchpoint is an experience I had while trying to book a November 2023 cruise for my husband and his mother (the three of us). His mother has never taken a cruise, so we wanted to find something local and inexpensive to introduce her. Being in Italy, we started with the two “Italian” cruise lines known for often having low prices, Costa and MSC.

We found a cruise from the right port on the right day on MSC. The system told us that for two people in an inside cabin, prices started around €630 per person. I changed the number of adults to three since we’re cheap and will all share one cabin. The page reloaded and the minimum price per person more than doubled to over €1400.

I checked the price for a single person traveling alone. Prices started at €780 per person. This meant I could get one cabin for us and a separate one for Mamma for around €1400 total, or I can put three of us in the same cabin for €4200 total. Just to make sure MSC wasn’t making only inside cabins wildly expensive, I checked balcony and suite cabins. They were even more expensive.

So I did what any potential customer receiving a clear message of alienation would do.

I left the website and moved to MSC’s competitor, Costa Cruises. I found a cruise leaving from the right port on the right date. I told it we would be three adults in one balcony cabin, and it showed around €1800 for three people in one cabin.

Not only is that a clear price and a decent price, but it’s a cheaper balcony cabin than MSC wanted for an inside cabin (with no windows). Both cruises were on “mega ships” (very large ships with high capacity), and both were cruising around the Mediterranean. You might see these as fairly direct competition.

Neither system asked me if anybody were a senior citizen or required assistance.

Cruise booking flows don’t take into consideration why we might be putting three adults in one cabin. What if my husband’s mother requires assistance with some of her day-to-day activities? It would be best if she is in our cabin versus elsewhere on the ship.

Neither booking process gave me an option to buy two cabins at the same time. I would have considered two adjoining cabins or two cabins near each other, but that didn’t exist in the booking process. I would have to completely purchase one cabin, and then start again for the second cabin, hoping I find something close or adjoining.

MSC’s booking flow asked if someone had reduced mobility. When I tried checking that box, it told me to call customer support. It threw me out of the booking process and back onto the homepage. This is also a moment of alienation.

My mother-in-law is independent and determined, but does have mobility issues. I wanted to see what our options were, but I wanted to self-service. I didn’t want to call one or multiple cruise lines to talk about this.

Norwegian Cruise Lines allows you to book an accessible cabin yourself. Other cruise lines should follow suit.

One CX Touchpoint: MSC uses high pricing to try to change what you choose. Does this make good business sense?

I hear MSC saying, “We absolutely do not want three adults in a cabin. We want to sell you two cabins.” Perhaps MSC uses “number of cabins sold per sailing” as a KPI, so they’d rather sell more cabins than stuff more passengers into a single cabin. If this is true, they need to change their online booking experience so that I can book more than one cabin at a time, and choose their exact locations.

KPIs manifest in decisions and design

If MSC’s KPIs or North Star Metric were the number of adult passengers per sailing, the cruise line would welcome a third passenger in the same cabin. They might even discount this cabin to get more humans on the ship without taking up another cabin that they can sell.

A cruise ship normally wants to pack as many people as they can in each cabin. The more people you get on the ship, the more people are spending money on excursions, drinks, premium restaurants, the casino, and other non-free items on the ship.

MSC’s KPI could also be hotel revenue per cabin, or hotel revenue for the sailing. This means that rather than letting you have the cabin cheap — and knowing that you will spend plenty of money on board — the company is more focused on getting more money out of you for the cost of your cabin. This can be a decent KPI if the cruise line knows that on that particular ship and/or route, people tend to spend very little money in addition to the price of the cabin. Therefore, we would need to get as much money as possible out of passengers for their cabin.

But we also might have a bit of snake eating it’s own tail here. Let’s say that on sailings such as these, the average passenger spends less around the ship because of how much they paid for their cabin. If the cabin cost is eating more of your budget, you might cut paid excursions and onboard expenses. This could lead to people being less happy with their vacation since they experienced fewer fun, exciting, unique, and delicious things.

A cruise line might decide that charging more for the cabin, even if it reduces onboard spending, is the winner because raising or doubling the price of the cabin requires no resources. The cruise line is not spending more in providing food and drinks, excursions, go kart rides, or other things that make money but cost the cruise line in physical resources, inventory, and human power to deliver. This is similar to how two passengers on a flight sitting next to each other will receive the same service from the airline, but might have paid very different amounts for their flights.

Conversely, MSC might know that even if they charge high prices for their cabins, their audience will still spend a good amount on paid extras. With that knowledge, why not get as much money as you can for a cabin? Though this doesn’t explain pushing a party of three towards buying two cabins to save money. The more occupied cabins you have, the more the ship spends on cleaning, laundry, and other cabin servicing, which burns resources and costs the cruise line money.

Costa might have the old Las Vegas approach of just get them on the ship, like give people a cheap Vegas hotel room to get them into our ecosystem of endless upcharges and gambling. And the less someone spends on the cabin, the more they might feel like they have in their budget to spend around the ship on extras.

I don’t have inside knowledge on any of these companies. These are guesses, assumptions, and hypotheses. But I don’t believe that MSC doubling the price per person once we wanted to put three adults in a larger cabin is some sort of mistake, bad decision, or website glitch. I believe this was an informed decision. Whether or not it’s a good decision is something I can’t know.

I can only say that MSC lost our business this time, and they lost the opportunity to make an impression on a first-time cruiser. Mamma will be telling everybody about her Costa cruise, showing them pictures, and telling them what she liked and didn’t like.

Which brings up another interesting question…

Should a cruise booking form ask if anybody in the traveling party is a first-time cruiser? The ship can cross-reference records, and see if this person has cruised with this company before. This is imperfect since some people might change names, addresses, or passport numbers. But most of the data should be good, and most people will be honest. :)

Should a cruise line consider charging less for someone traveling on their ships for the first time, giving the cruise line that chance to make an amazing first impression and possible brand loyalty?

Pricing decisions aren’t simple. It’s not like we check what the competitor charges, we charge the same or less, and that’s it for pricing. Pricing decisions are complicated, but should always take Customer Experiences into account. It can’t only be business KPIs and behaviors the company hopes to drive. Balance that with what potential buyers will find compelling. Don’t give them a reason to leave your site and check competitors.

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