February 9, 2010, 11:00 pm
Q&A with Carolyn Spencer Brown, editor in chief of CruiseCritic.com
By MATT GROSSBack in 1996, if you were going to pick someone to cover the cruise industry, you might not immediately have thought of Carolyn Spencer Brown. A cruise virgin, Ms. Brown got easily seasick and was dumfounded by things like preset dining times. She described her attitude back then as, “Frankly, it’s not my style of travel.”
But that didn’t stop an editor at The Washington Post from assigning her the cruise beat, and after her first trip, on Celebrity’s Zenith ship, she got hooked. Thirteen years and 150 cruises later, the 47-year-old is now an aficionado (she even met her husband on a cruise), and has since moved on from The Post to become editor in chief of CruiseCritic.com, an online magazine and discussion board devoted to all things seaworthy (and not so seaworthy). I recently spoke with her by phone about a business that, all too often, seems out of reach of frugal travelers.
Q. My trips rarely top $100 a day, including airfare. Is that possible for a cruise?
A. Oh god, yes. In 2009, deals were falling out of the sky and hitting you on the head, they were so cheap. Norwegian Sky was doing $25 a day on its three- and four-day Bahamas cruises, and it was a decent ship—it wasn’t a tub. Once you get there, you don’t have to spend another penny beyond gratuity.
Today they’ve gone up. But you can get in about 50 bucks, 75 bucks a day very, very easily.
Q. How do you do that?
A. First of all, you cruise from someplace relatively close to home, so you don’t have to take a flight. Home-port cruising is completely resurging. You can now cruise year-round from Baltimore, New York; seasonally from Boston, Seattle; San Diego, L.A. all year, Galveston all year and New Orleans all year and Tampa all year.
Q. Are there lines that cater to budget travelers?
A. There’s no such thing anymore — there’s no Big Red Boat or Premier Cruise line. What happens now is, with the cruise lines, as the ships get older, the cheaper it’s going to be. And that’s because it doesn’t have all the same bells and whistles. Royal Caribbean’s Majesty of the Seas is going to have a whole different experience from its Oasis of the Seas, almost as if you weren’t even on the same cruise line.
Q. What does Oasis of the Seas have that Majesty of the Seas doesn’t?
A. Rock-climbing walls, zip-lining, surf parks, ice-skating rinks, 25 places to eat.
Q. So what does Majesty have?
A. It has a big dining room that you’ve already paid for in your cruise fare, and it has some bars. It has some pools. It has a casino. A small spa. But not all the extras that I think are where you start to get into trouble, money-wise.
Q. What are those troublesome extras?
A. Extras are alcohol, cocktails. You know how on the airlines it used to be four bucks for a beer and now it’s seven? They’re going up on the cruise ships as well. So cocktails are huge — and spa treatments, casino gambling, alternative restaurant fees — and some lines are now moving into the European mode where they have restaurants that are priced à la carte. So you don’t go in and pay a $20 fee to eat dinner, but you go in and you pay for your food. And then you pay a gratuity later on.
You’ve got to be really careful. Cruise lines like to say that they’re very inclusive, price-wise, but they’re never remotely anything close to all-inclusive. You can go on and not spend anything, but it’s pretty hard.
Q. Do any lines let you bring your own alcohol?
A. No. I took a bottle of wine in a suitcase on a Royal Caribbean ship last April. It was an eight-day cruise, and I thought it would be nice to have a bottle in my cabin, and they actually went through my luggage and took it out.
Q. Does time of year make a difference when you’re booking?
A. You want to go for shoulder season or off-season. So if you want the cheapest, cheapest, cheapest fares to the Caribbean, you should go during hurricane season. You might have a little bit of a rock-and-roll experience, but that’s when nobody wants to go, so it’s fantastic. I would say between mid-August and October are just the perfect times.
Q. Is that safe? What do ships do during hurricanes?
A. They just change itineraries. You can’t be too wedded to where you want to go. I mean, you’ll be somewhere in the Caribbean — the Caribbean’s huge! — but if you’re in the western Caribbean and there’s a storm in the Gulf, you may find yourself spending time in St. Thomas.
Q. If you’re going to fly, is there a region of the world that’s cheapest?
A. The most popular places to cruise are the places where you’re going to get the best deals. So, for example, we were looking at the western Mediterranean, which is, next to the Caribbean, the most popular region of the world for cruising, and in June alone, 37 different cruise ships were offering itineraries. That’s the western Med —we’re not talking Greece or Turkey, we’re talking France, Italy, Spain. That’s a lot of ships in one area. So you’re going to see a lot of deals because with so many ships, there’s a lot of capacity and they need to fill it.
Q. Is it true that you don’t have to tip on a European cruise?
A. Yup, that’s true. Well, you have to tip a little bit.
Q. But not as much as you would on an American cruise?
A. No, absolutely not. One of the things people don’t know that haven’t cruised before is that you’re supposed to tip. It’s considered tacky if you don’t. The new thing is automatic tipping — auto-gratuity — where they just tack on 10 bucks a day per person. If you decide you don’t want to tip that way, you can have your name removed and do it the old-fashioned way, or you can just be skint and slip out and not do it. Well, Carnival had a situation where somebody actually posted in the crew quarters the names of people who decided they didn’t want to auto-tip. One of our members took a picture of it, and it was a scandal! But look, if you can afford to go on a cruise that’s $100 a day, you can afford to tip.
We also see a lot of deals lately where the big bonus is $100 onboard credit for your gratuity.
Q. How do you avoid the dreaded single supplement?
A. There seems to be a very small resurgence in solo-traveler trends, and the biggest movement in the past 10 years is the fact that Norwegian Cruise Lines, with its new Epic coming out in June had created this area on the ship of inside cabins, with windows that look into the hallway, and they were aiming them at the hipster, like the budget traveler who wants to be a Britney Spears wannabe. And they couldn’t sell them! So they refocused and re-marketed them as solo cabins. You can get on for $799 for a week. And they’re tiny! But it’s the first effort I’ve seen to really market to these travelers. Just understand: these cabins are minuscule.
Q. Are there cheap strategies to improve life in a minuscule cabin?
A. Don’t bring 45 pairs of shoes. Certainly don’t bring things like candles, because you can’t use them. My problem is books. I tend to bring books, and then I have to pay extra air.
Q. Are there lines with better libraries?
A. The library is one of these dinosaur traditions that’s disappearing a bit, but N.C.L. has decent libraries. Cunard has a fantastic library. But if you go on Carnival or Royal Caribbean, bring your own books. The lines going for the younger passenger typically don’t do much with the library.
Q. I loved easyCruise when I did it in the Caribbean in 2006. But it’s doing badly. What happened?
A. They couldn’t make any money on it. They went from two ships to one, and they went from it being a real hostel experience to ramping it up to make it more cruiselike. The one ship still does more intense days in port, and you’re in Mykonos till one o’clock in the morning. But clearly, it’s not growing. I mean, it’s a great idea, but people didn’t respond to it.
Q. Any affordable ways to improve boring food?
A. I’d smuggle in some hot sauce. Look at it this way: If you don’t want to do the alternative restaurants — which aren’t a bad deal if you really like food — keep it simple. This is banquet-hall dining. Just know that going in. Know that, for the most part, this is going to be okay food.
Q. Are shore excursions worth the expense?
A. No. The only time you should even bother with a shore excursion is if it’s a very complicated day trip. Let’s say you go to Naples and you want to go up to the Amalfi Coast; I’ve heard more stories about people who’ve missed the ship because they don’t get back on time because of traffic or they get lost. Generally, you can do whatever it is the cruise line is doing cheaper and, in most cases, getting a better experience, on your own.
Q. What about Internet access?
A. Oy. Don’t. Do it in port. It’s come down a lot since they introduced the Internet on cruise ships, and it is faster than it used to be, but it’s still going to be 50 cents a minute. We have port profiles on our site and we actually list the nearest Internet cafe.
Q. Is there a frugal remedy for seasickness?
A. You could hang out by the bathroom! I’ve had very good luck with Bonine, which is a chewable thing. I buy a box every couple of months. It costs $5 and it’s worth its weight in gold. If you really want to be frugal, go down to the purser’s desk and they have a free stash.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment