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Cruise Reviews
Independent cruising Tips for the professional at Leisure
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Here are my observations of the income segregation of the cruise market, one
that has opened-up the area I call "redneck cruising".
The cruise market is highly segmented with something for every budget, with the
redneck cruises entrenched in the blue collar lines:
-
Independently wealthy - (Cunard) - Truly fine dining,
attentive service. Caters to old money, business owners, dot com
zillionaires.
-
Professional class - (Crystal, Celebrity) - Great food,
optional extra cost restaurants for fine dining. Popular with doctors,
lawyers and executives.
-
Middle class - (NCL, Royal Caribbean, Holland America) - an
upper class vacation for middle class passengers. Optional luxury
available. Popular with white collar workers.
-
Blue Collar - (Costa, Carnival, Royal Caribbean's older ships*)
- These lines offer steerage class travel. Nothing fancy and food like
your elementary school cafeteria. Popular with rednecks, the working
poor, welfare recipients, ex-cons and practicing Catholic and Mormon
families who want to take the whole family.
Each year these cruise ships become larger and more
opulent, leaving a vacuum to fill the seats on the older cruise ships. The
new
Genesis class cruise ships cost over a billion dollars and hold over 6,000
passengers.
The Genesis - Fall 2009 - A $1.2b floating
trailer park with room for 6,400 rednecks
While Cunard Cruises offers the ultimate in highbrow luxury
with 5-star restaurants like Spago, and Crystal cruises is designed for professionals at
leisure, rednecks gravitate to the lower end with the no-frills cruise lines
like Costa and Carnival.
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Even within the same cruise line you see segmented
classes. The older, smaller ships offer cheaper rates, and I
suspect that the cruise lines use these "redneck cruises" to train their
staff for the larger ships. If you take a look
at the construction of a cruise ship, they are really nothing more than
a freighter, stacked up with tiny single-wide trailers.
It's just like redneck nirvana, a floating trailer
park stacked up like kindling. |
The cruise market is highly segmented with something for every budget, with the
redneck cruises entrenched in the blue collar lines:
-
Independently wealthy - (Cunard) - Truly fine dining,
attentive service. Caters to old money, business owners, dot com
zillionaires.
-
Professional class - (Crystal, Celebrity) - Great food,
optional extra cost restaurants for fine dining. Popular with doctors,
lawyers and executives.
-
Middle class - (NCL, Royal Caribbean, Holland America) - an
upper class vacation for middle class passengers. Optional luxury
available. Popular with white collar workers.
Each year these cruise ships become larger and more
opulent, leaving a vacuum to fill the seats on the older cruise ships. The
new
Genesis class cruise ships cost over a billion dollars and hold over 6,000
passengers.
The Genesis - Fall 2009 - A $1.2b floating
trailer park with room for 6,400 rednecks
So, what do the cruise lines do with their elderly ships?
Let's take a closer look at their ingenious marketing of luxury cruises for the
poor!
Riding the older scows - redneck cruising
With over 40,000 passengers plying the Caribbean every
week, the cruise lines offer spectacular discounts to passengers who are willing
to sail the older scows, generally any ship that is over a decade old.
Here is a list of
cruise ships by
date built. Note that any ship over 10 years old is likely to offer
far cheaper rates, and far inferior food and service.
Some cruise lines are revamping their older scows,
packaging them as "intimate" cruises. The new
Azamara cruise line is just one
example.
Some cruise lines are placing their older scows in ports
like Norfolk, where people who cannot afford an airline ticket can drive to the
port, and save even more money.
Not all Rednecks can afford to fly to the cruise port
The new Genesis class cruise ships are also a redneck paradise, a virtual
floating trailer park at sea:
Redneck cruises
xx
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