During the pandemic, Royal Caribbean (RCL) adopted what it called "Cruise with Confidence." That policy enabled customers to book cruises and cancel them as late as 48 hours before departure. If you canceled, you could opt for a refund or a "Future Cruise Credit."
More credits were earned by customers who booked cruises that the company later canceled. When that happened, the cruise line issued credits equal to 125% of the initial fares. Those policies led to a lot of people having significant credits that they could use to book future cruises.
Since cruising from the U.S. returned in early July, some customers have redeemed their credits. The problem for some potential passengers was that company issued the credits only in the names of the persons who booked the initial trips. Only those people could redeem the credits for future travel.
If you, for example, had a future cruise credit, you couldn't give it to someone else or use it to book a cruise in somebody else's name.
That's a policy that Royal Caribbean intends to change, according to a report from Matt Hochberg on the Royal Caribbean Blog.
TheStreet
Royal Caribbean Changes Its Future-Credit Policy
Even though cruising has returned to near prepandemic normal, some people can't cruise and others have opted not to.
Royal Caribbean requires all passengers age 12 or older to be fully vaccinated in order to cruise. That means that some people who had credits issued for cruises booked before that policy was put in place may not be eligible to cruise now.
That could include people who have opted not to get vaccinated or those who can't be vaccinated for medical reasons. In addition, some cruise customers have chosen not to return to cruise ships while the pandemic continues for personal or medical reasons.
Anyone who has a future credit and can't or won't cruise is in a tough spot. They have an asset -- sometimes valued at thousands of dollars -- and can't use it. That frustrated many of RCL's customers.
Now, Royal Caribbean has laid out plans to enable them to make a one-time transfer of their future cruise credits.
How Will Royal Caribbean's New Credit Policy Work?
Royal Caribbean on April 27 held a webinar with travel agents, during which it said that a person holding a future cruise credit could now do a one-time transfer of it to someone else.
"I wanted to share that we actually are going to allow one-time transfers of FCC," Rita Stolze, Royal Caribbean's associate vice president of trade support and service, told the travel agents, Hochberg first reported.
"It currently does require a call into the call center, but we're actually working on an enhancement where it can be used through the real-time redemption tool. ... [We] just don't have that enhancement completed yet, but very soon."
Royal Caribbean has automated the process of canceling cruises, which has made doing so much easier for customers. Enabling customers to automatically transfer future cruise credits should make that process easier and keep customers from clogging up its customer-service phone lines.
Royal Caribbean Chief Financial Officer Naftali Holtz, speaking on the cruise line's fourth-quarter earnings call, noted that about half the future cruise credits outstanding have already been redeemed.
"We're very pleased with that, and we've seen progress in the last quarter, both redemptions, as well as just new bookings," he added.
