Will Royal Caribbean ever add new loyalty tiers?

Royal Caribbean Blog Podcast

The host examines whether Royal Caribbean will introduce new loyalty tiers to its Crown & Anchor Society program amid rising membership and the return of double points

Key takeaways

• Royal Caribbean is unlikely to add new loyalty tiers because it would annoy most members and complicate an already convoluted benefits structure.
• Crown Lounge crowding during happy hour primarily affects Diamond members on specific sailings, but limited access doesn't significantly impact overall perks since drink allowances are now standardized across lounges.
• The host strongly criticizes elite member gatekeeping, noting that status earned through double points or family inheritance is just as valid and has ruined the prestige of badges like Pinnacle Club pins.
• Royal Caribbean typically releases European summer deployment schedules in September/October for the following year, with Freedom or Voyager-class ships likely remaining stationed out of Southampton.
• Inheriting loyalty status when children turn 18 appears to be handled automatically by an unknown system, though anecdotal reports suggest some lose their tier if they don't cruise enough independently.

Main topics

• Crown & Anchor Society loyalty tiers
• Royal Caribbean guest experience and benefits
• Crown Lounge access and crowding management

Notable quotes

If there's an equivalent of The Great Gatsby to cruising, it's definitely Royal Caribbean's Crown and Anchor Society.

Conclusion

The episode concludes that Royal Caribbean will likely maintain its cur

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) If there's an equivalent of The Great Gatsby to cruising, it's definitely Royal Caribbean's Crown and Anchor Society. If you're familiar with The Great Gatsby, it is a great American novel, one of the best ever. I don't know, I really don't know much about reading, but I was assigned to read at one point during, I think, high school or middle school. And as I recall, it has to deal with, well, really someone being completely fake and a fraud. That's not what Royal Caribbean's Crown and Anchor Society is about. But you've got that new versus old money motif. And in the story, There is people who have been rich for a while versus people who have made their riches more recently thanks to the Industrial Revolution. Nonetheless, you might be wondering, what the heck does that have to do with crown and anchor? And that is, with more people reaching higher status, there's been a very similar debate, in my opinion, in terms of this perception that more people are reaching higher crown and anchor levels. And I actually had a question about this on our YouTube Live that we did on Monday about... With people reaching more higher levels, do you think Royal Caribbean is going to have an adjustment in the benefits expected? And this is a question I've fielded a while and a long time. It's not a new question. But with Royal Caribbean bringing back double points, this question now of changing the crown and anchor levels or something along those lines that I think become more relevant. Now, full disclosure, I am recording this episode before we go on the president's cruise. And I kind of expect this question to get. asked of Michael Bailey maybe not I don't know but anyway I still think the answer is gonna be the same I'll predict this answer and we'll see but um I really don't think Royal Caribbean wants to change anything or rather I don't think there's any winning if Royal Caribbean changes the crown and anchor levels I mean number one they already have the most tiers of any cruise line loyalty program So it's already not convoluted enough, but it's already complicated enough. And I don't think adding another tier solves much in that regard. More so, the second they change that, all it's going to do is it's going to annoy people. It's not going to benefit anybody. Maybe if you're already, I guess somebody who already like maxed it, I'd give like, you know, 3000 crown and anchor points and the new crown anchor tiers don't change anything for you. Then sure, those people will be happy. But for everybody else, it. has this perception of moving the goalposts, right? There's just, there's no winning with that. And that's why I don't think Royal Caribbean really has any interest in doing that. One mantra Royal Caribbean seems to have, still, even though one of their mantras is also to make as much money as seemingly possible, but the other mantra is the guest experience. They really pay attention to that. We see this all the time with net promoter scores, right? Surveys, making sure that people are enjoying their cruise and all that. They really put a high emphasis on that. And... Anytime you talk about something that's going to have a widespread or perhaps a widespread negative impact on the guest experience, I think that is a formula that they don't want to replicate in terms of trying to do that. I think, quite frankly, Royal Caribbean is just okay with leaving everything just the way it is. Is everything just the way it is good or perfect? Absolutely not. But you know what? That's the system where we know we come to expect and... It's not perfect, but it's going to be the path of least resistance in terms of people going forward. At least we all know what the expectations are, right? Whether you're on your first, third, 100th cruise, right? We all know where those markers in the sand are, where we need to get to in order to get to Diamond, Diamond Plus, the benefits that come with it. And while the benefits do change, Royal Caribbean has... clearly demonstrated they're not afraid to change some benefits. And in some cases, I think they actually did improve the benefits. But the point is that they can tweak benefits, but they've been very unwilling to ever touch those mile markers. As long as I've been doing RoyalCrimineBlog.com, it has been the same statuses, the same thresholds for a long, long time. And to me, that speaks to... why Royal Caribbean I don't think has any interest in moving the needle in terms of adding new tiers, moving tiers around. Probably the most common idea I've heard is to add a new tier between Diamond Plus and Pinnacle because it's a huge jump. I mean, you're talking about hundreds of points. Probably the most interesting thing came out of last year's President's Cruise in which Michael Bailey said that really the issues, the perceived issues of overcrowding in the Crown Lounge and things of that nature. really are only on certain sailings, like a President's Cruise, which has a lot of Crown Anchor members, Transatlantic, Trans-Pacific, specific sailings in which superfans really congregate on. And those are few and far between. Most sailings, you don't have that issue at all. And he does have, I think, some point to it. I mean, on all the cruises I've taken, I'm a Pinnacle Club member, to be fair, but I have not been denied entry into Coastal Kitchen or the Sweet Lounge as a result of not having... like enough points. Now, maybe that'll change for Icon, since he's going to go on the President's Cruise here right after recording this podcast. But the point is, is that it's a very small portion of the overall cruises in which that's an issue. But to Michael Bailey's counterpoint, I'd say, I think the issue is more pronounced with Diamond members and being able to get access to the Crown Lounge. Now. This is more common in which a diamond member gets an email before the cruise or a letter in their cabin saying, hey, there's too many diamond, diamond plus members on board. As a result, you will not be allowed to go into the crown lounge between the hours of, you know, four and eight o'clock for the happy hour or whatnot. Now, I have said this before. I will say it again. If this happens to you, if you're one of these people, I'm telling you, it doesn't matter. And the reason why I say that is it used to matter. Back in the day when you could go to the Crown Lounge, back then the Diamond Lounge, and have unlimited drinks. Because back then, before the whole drink voucher program, you could go into the Diamond Lounge and have as many drinks as you wanted in a happy hour. And it was a reduced menu, but it was unlimited. If your goal was to have, you know, a lot of drinks, well, that's why you needed to get in there. And thus being denied access was a problem. Today, that's not the case. When you're in the Crown Lounge, it's no different than being in the Schooner Bar in the sense that you have whatever drinks you have, the four drinks a day for being Diamond, five for Diamond Plus, six for Pinnacle. And that's what you have. There's not unlimited drinks there anymore. So if you can't get into the Crown Lounge, I say this with all respect, who cares? Because you can go to any other bar on the ship. And I would argue any other bar on the ship is better. Because the Crown Lounge has no entertainment in there. I mean, there's people. Sure, you can make the argument, well, I might have some friends there. Or you might want to meet some other Crown and Anchor members. People who are like me and cruise a lot. Sure, I kind of understand that. But at the end of the day, I'd rather be in a bar with entertainment. That's the most important thing. Like you can go to, I'd rather go to the pub, the schooner bar, the mason jar, and use my diamond drinks over there. Now, remember, this... ban on Diamond members in the Crown Lounge, only for a couple hours. It's not for the whole day. You can still go there any other hour, basically everything but about three or four hours of the day. You can still use that