The Royal Caribbean Deluxe Beverage Package has its own Facebook group with tens of thousands of members.
That's at least partly because unlike rivals Carnival Cruise Line (CCL) -) and MSC, Royal Caribbean does not sell the package at a fixed price. Instead, it uses variable pricing, which can change many times before a cruise sails. And using variable pricing creates a number of issues that get people talking.
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First, there's endless debate about what constitutes a good price. The deluxe drink package may sell for less than $60 a day or as as much as about $110 a day (plus an 18% gratuity). If you buy it and the price goes down, you can cancel it, but you then must wait for a refund from your credit-card company.
Royal Caribbean (RCL) -) also offers various sales, usually expressed in "percentage off" or "buy one, get one at 50% off," but those numbers don't mean much, given that the package has no fixed price in the first place.
In addition, people love to discuss whether the Deluxe Beverage Package is a good value. In some ways, that's just math. If you consume beverages worth more than what you spend, then you get good value. Some cruisers, however, say that peace of mind matters, too.
When you get the Deluxe Beverage Package, it's truly all-inclusive (up to $15 per drink). It includes soda, specialty coffee, milkshakes, juice, and bottled water. That means you can drink as much as you want, unless you become visibly intoxicated.
On port days, the value may not be there since you're off the boar, but for many the overall proposition remains worth it. And since the price is a moving target, there's no clear formula to help people decide.
Royal Caribbean, however, has made an interesting change to how to purchase the Deluxe Beverage Package — and people should love it.
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Royal Caribbean makes buying the deluxe drink package easier
Currently, you cannot book the Deluxe Beverage Package, or look at its price, until you have booked your cruise. That means that if your cruise is cheap, but the price for the drink package is high, you might face a pricier vacation than you had planned on.
Now, Royal Caribbean has been allowing some passengers to see the price of the package and purchase it before their cruises, the Royal Caribbean Blog's Matt Hochberg reported.
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The cruise line appears to be rolling out that change, as the option comes up only on select bookings. Royal Caribbean is offering the choices of its Deluxe Beverage Package, Refreshment Package, and its Classic Soda Package while you book your cruise.
Booking before your cruise does not mean that you can't cancel and rebook if the price goes down. In addition, Royal Caribbean requires that if one adult in a room books the deluxe drink package, everyone in that room over 21 has to as well.
The cruise line will generally make exceptions to that rule, allowing adults to purchase the Refreshment Package if they don't want the deluxe one. Requesting exceptions requires calling Royal Caribbean as they cannot be booked online.
Royal Caribbean passengers are spending more
In addition to cruise fares generally moving back to, or even above, 2019 levels, passengers are spending more money before their cruises. Royal Caribbean Chief Executive Jason Liberty spoke about passenger-spending trends during the cruise line's second-quarter-earnings call.
"Even as we take on the bookings and as we increase pricing, we're not really seeing that point where price is impacting our demand," he said.
"And then, the other component of this is just onboard spend, which is obviously a combination of — to a degree — of price. But really, the main driver of that has been our ability to be much more effective to curate and take friction out of the process for our customers to book their activities on the ship."
Liberty says that making the precruise booking experience easier will help passengers have more fun on their vacations.
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"Our ultimate goal here is to try to give a day back to our guests to come on our ships and instead of them having to spend a day booking their restaurants and booking their spa appointments and shore excursions," he says. "They're able to do that ahead of time. And we are really in the early innings of that."
You can buy the Deluxe Beverage Package on the ship, but generally you'll pay more than you would have if you'd booked it precruise.
