The customer isn't always right, or at least it's not always right by a company's bottom line.
Just because people want something does not mean it makes sense for a business to give it to them. Red Lobster fans, for example, really wanted all-you-can-eat shrimp for $20. The chain gave it to them and those customers ate so much shrimp that it helped push the company into Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
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Cruise lines have to balance passenger wants and the bottom line all the time. Royal Caribbean, for example, took the "Classics" section off its main dining room menus which meant that customers could no longer have a basic NY strip steak, chicken, salmon, and pasta bolognese each night.
Those dishes were nice safety blankets for people who didn't like the menu choices that night, but offering them led to added cost and food waste. Taking them away made people angry, but the cruise line's rising sales and climbing profits suggest it made the right choice.
Carnival Cruise Line has made similar decisions as well. It no longer offers the midnight buffet which was once a staple of cruising. It has also dropped its popular affiliation with DreamWorks, and has cut cabin service, outside of suites, from twice a day to once.
The cruise line also plans to build new ships, but not the ones many of its passengers want.
Image source:Carnival Cruise Line
Carnival building 3 new huge ships
For family-friendly cruise lines, the shipbuilding trend has clearly been bigger is better. That's a standard set by Royal Caribbean which has consistently built the biggest cruise ship in the world and continues to add only huge ships to its fleet.
Carnival won't challenge Royal Caribbean's Icon of the Seas for the "biggest cruise ship in the world" title, but it has ordered three new mega-ships. The cruise line currently has two more ships ordered in its Excel-class line and it has placed an order for three ships in a new class.
"With over 3,000 guest staterooms, the new ships will be the largest in the Carnival Corporation global fleet and will be able to deliver fun to more guests than any ship in the world when carrying almost 8,000 guests at full capacity," the cruise line shared.
The cruise line has made it clear that at least through 2033, it's not planning to build the smaller ships that many passengers have asked for. Carnival Brand Ambassador John Heald addressed this issue on his Facebook page in March.
“There are no plans at all for us...to build smaller ships. It is not profitable, it is not something that is affordable, and it is not something that attracts the new cruiser," Heald wrote.
The brand ambassador did give fans of smaller ships some good news.
“If we do not attract the new cruiser, we will not survive, and we will not have the money to continue to invest in the smaller ships that we have, And we will continue to invest in them," he added.
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Royal Caribbean has a plan for smaller ships
Royal Caribbean has ordered two more Icon-class ships as well as another Oasis-class. Those are the largest cruise ships in the world, but the cruise line has shared that it's working on a new, smaller class, Discovery class.
Michael Bayley, Royal Caribbean International's CEO, has mentioned Discovery class on multiple occasions, but no ship has been ordered. He gave a definitive statement onboard Icon of the Seas in January about the new class.
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"From a brand perspective, we recognize that Radiance and Vision are getting older. We’re working on ideas and concepts on replacing those ships. We’re quite actively working on what that would be," he said. "If we go through all the process and get the approvals, they’re going to be amazing."
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Jewel of the Seas, the newest ship in the Radiance-class was built in 2004. All the other members of both the Radiance and Vision classes are at least 20 years old.
Many cruise fans want modern smaller ships because they can visit ports that larger ships cannot.
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