Celebrity Cruises President Responds to Community Backlash

so in response to a lot of community backlash Celebrity Cruises president Laura hodgin has addressed some of the concerns that we raised in our recent videos today we'll listen to her statements and fact check some of our claims in the past few videos we discussed the community's outrage regarding recent decisions made by Celebrity Cruises such as reducing food quality services and amenities previously included in the cruise price some of these Chang include charging for cookies and eliminating Butler services for sweet guests if you need to catch up I'll link those videos for you above it seems our Collective voices have reached the ears of celebrity prompting a response in the recent webinar president Laura hudgin addressed these concerns and provided some explanations this webinar was available to Captain Circle members through their website and I recorded the most important segments to share with you today let's see what the president of Celebrity Cruises has to say about all of this and by the way if this is your first time here my name is Tom Sunday I make weekly cruise videos and if that floats your boat I'll be thrilled if you hit the Subscribe button okay so we're going to transition into a section that I am going to call hot the hot topics okay okay so as we know as we know there's a lot of online discussion and chatter about changes happening at celebrity the perception of changes happening at celebrity so I thought we'd Jump Right In and let you address some of those hot topics I know you thought this was going to be easy but let's uh let's jump in okay Deborah an Elite member from New York wants to know why did you decide to add Coco K to the itineraries for Celebrity Cruises it honestly was a real easy decision and it's because we I pay a lot of attention to what our customers are saying so I've read in the last four months I can't tell you how many mandalia comments that I've read um read all the different research that our team does listen to our most loyal members and one of the things that you all ask for is a private destination right something curated specifically for a celebrity those things knowing because I I did have something to do with perfect day take about 5 Years to you know make happen and so when I think about how highly rated that destination is um in our portfolio of Brands and how much it's coveted and loved the easiest thing to do the fastest way is to take advantage of something we already have in our portfolio so it was actually a pretty simple decision um and I think that once I spent time we talked about this on President's Cruz as well during conversations a celebrity when I start to explain what the experience is on perfect day I think our our most loyal guests go oh I am actually really excited to do that and two areas that I'd really love to point out one is Coco Beach Club and that is an area that is really private it's um 400 guests Max it's got these wonderful overwater Cabanas it's a completely chill experience with this really upgraded menu for lunch think surf and turf it's got the best lobster sandwich ever um so when you start to explain that so I guess they go oh no that actually does sound like something I would really love and then there's a new area opening and I think this was probably one of the clinchers for me as well there's a new area opening in January called Hideaway Beach and it's going to be an adults only area heated infinity pool with a great Sunset Bar a new restaurant so just this really great relaxed adultsonly Vibe and so I know that when you see the imagery of perfect day you see all of these colors and you see you know water park and slides and things of that nature and yes does exist but the reason that perfect day was created so it could be perfect for everyone and everybody's definition of perfect is different so I do believe that at a minimum even though I think there more at a minimum there's two areas on um on perfect day of Coco K that I think our guests are going to love and that's Hideway Beach and Coco Beach Club although I think they're going to love it all so all of the things that she's mentioning come at an extra cost you have to pay a lot of money to be able to use those areas Hideway Beach expansion of Coco K was something That Celebrity Community received positively because it was the adults only area of the island however that excitement was derailed when people found out that you have to pay close to $90 per person just to enter that area the private Cabanas cost even more I cover all of the details in the video above if this was created for everyone you wouldn't charge people for entry Laura it's clear that the decision to charge for these areas was primarily profit driven which some find quite disappointing you canceled months of European cruises that were already booked and repositioned many of your ships to Florida so you can make trips to COC k for example celebrity Beyond is now sailing permanently from Fort laale to the Caribbean and making basically round trips to Coco K it was not because you guest wanted it just read the comment section of the videos where I covered it many people who already had cruises booked on on this ship were quite upset one of them was a woman who had her honeymoon booked on the beyond for that Mediterranean cruise that you decided to cancel she said she will never book with celebrity again and that sentiment is shared across a lot of the other folks in the community when people asked for celebrity to have their own Island this is not what they had in mind how can you be so disconnected from the community to miss the mark by a mile majority of your customers are a adults and do not want water parks and zip lines which by the way cost over $150 per person remember Laura if we wanted that experience we would just sail with Royal Caribbean um okay so along these same lines we had a lot of comments a lot of questions about people asking if maybe celebrity might be going too far in the direction of our sister brand Royal Caribbean International some some related to you know adding Coco k um what do you say to that what are your thoughts on that the answer is absolutely not so the hard hard no um but I understand that again with the addition of perfect day because the imagery looks so family that that you've probably been used to seeing um just from the world Caribbean group um that that can be a little jarring um we have always carried we've always been a brand that has carried quite a few families in the summer um because that's when you know uh folks vacation together and vacation together as families um I think it's you know we tend to carry older children so you know Twins and teens um we don't really carry a lot of of young kids um I do think that you'll see us continue to do that in the Summers on spring breaks and on holidays but you know we are not um uh going after young you know babies and kids uh we are a family of Brands so depending on the occasion that you're traveling with if you're traveling with your grandkids you might pick a Royal Caribbean International um ship and I encourage you to do that we want to keep you in the family um but when you're traveling with us you should expect the same types of families um that you've seen in the past in the Summers and on holidays that you've seen with us before no change in Direction there excellent okay next question Carol an elite plus member from Bradenton wants to know why did celebrity eliminate buters from the sky Suites well the good news is is that we didn't eliminate Butlers from the sky Suites um so I want to level set for a second um we've always had buters in our Sky suets we still have Butlers in our Sky sues they're now just a butler team so before the scenario was one Butler to a certain number of staterooms and what we found and what we heard from our guests is that if I want my tea at 3:00 and you want your tea at 3:00 and your friend wants at 3:00 the butler can't do all of that at 3:00 um for everybody and so we wanted to have an an even further elevated level of service so that everybody could get what they want when they wanted it and that's why we created this Butler team um and so we've been at this for about a month on board our guests are overall really happy with the service and so I think that once our most loyal members get on board and sale with us again and experience it they're going to be happy too so what about the higher suedes then Laura what if all of them wanted their tea at 3:00 by your logic the people with more premium Suites should also have a butler team right since it's an elevation of service how come they don't every Suite above Sky still has a personal Butler and the reason is because the retreat team is not better at all it's a cost cutting measure spinning it in any other way just insults people's intelligence it's a decrease in service levels for Sky sweets a little piece of advice here nickel and diming your retreat guest is a bad idea it will just go to Oceania it's the same price even less in some cases just read some of the comments from the community no one likes this change where do you even get the data to say that your guests are happy with this people are outraged they're even canceling their cruises because of this furthermore even your competitors like virgin voyages for example are taking shots at celebrity about this change you are very disconnected from your community if you think that people like this change now this is one of my favorite questions let's talk about cookie gate oh cookies I love a hot chocolate chip cookie as you know um there's been a lot of discussion online recently about the selling of the hot chocolate chip cookie on board um what was that about so again customer research right um but but I also this will be one of the times that I'll also say that we could have done a better job explaining this right um and I think if we would have we might still have the p we might we might still have it um and the reason I say that is because we made no changes to our complimentary offering none whatsoever um but we didn't merchandise it right on the ship um we didn't talk about it the right way but it really was again um connecting to this feeling of nostalgia um we hear loud and clear from our guests that you guys are reminiscing when you're on board you know you like nostalgic things when you're on vacation and what's more nostalgic than being in the kitchen and making cookies with your your parents and then you know eating the warm out of the oven and so that's what we were trying to create the reason for the charge is because we would not have been able to handle the volume um and have it done well if we wouldn't have charged for it um so I I think again fun fact uh each day that we had it on board for that one sailing it was on for 3 days we had a 100 people get a cookie each of those three days and on board the guests were loving it Nostalgia Laura really I remember baking cookies with my mom she never charged me $2 plus gratuity for them I always got them for free I made an entire video about this as soon as the news broke I had people in the comment section of the video that were still on the Equinox when the pilot was happening according to them the free cookies were removed from Cafe bachio during this pilot program you had to go to the buffet to get them for free the free cookies on celebrities are worse than something I can get at a local supermarket anyway I highly suggest you improve the cold pre-made ones before trying to squeeze more money from your guest for the hot ones it's not that you guys didn't talk about it the right way or Market it in a correct format it's the fact that the quality of the free food is going down Laura and in order to get anything good you are making people pay for it this cookie pilot program as you call it just put it right in people's faces and got them very mad rightly so this just showcases the disconnect that celebrity has with their Community nobody liked this so much that you actually had to cancel and walk it back after only 3 days um okay lastly there were a lot of questions about food um our members are very passionate about food as we are but I'm super passionate about food um and because of that it was hard to kind of narrow it down to just a couple of questions because food is very personal and people have their own preferences about food so rather than try to ask all the questions about food in this webinar you and I spoke and you mentioned it before but we're going to do some separate sessions some focus groups all about food so we can tackle kind of that that um area there and really learn from our guests great as we're going to do with a whole slew of other topics abut absolutely okay so before we finish the Hot Topics we're want to play a little game called Factor fiction okay let's do it as we know in the world we live in today it's very easy with all these social forums and online groups for rumors to just kind of start and spread like wildfire so wanted to share a couple of things that are kind of circulating rumors that are out there and you let it you set the record straight is it fact or fiction okay number one we reduced Aqua class and concierge class amenities fact or fiction fiction um one thing that we did do we made no changes to the offering at all um but in some cases depending on the program whether it's Aqua or concierge um there's food amenities and we were noticing a lot of food waste um and we know that our guests don't want to um throw away food and and so what we did was we delivered the the food amenity on the first night and then we ask you how many more nights do you want it do you want it every night do you want it three nights do you want it two nights do you not want it any of the nights and so you're kind of getting to curate exactly what you want but there's been no changes at all to Aqua class or coners nor are any anticipated I very much disagree with that statement not fiction at all I've sailed on the celebrity Beyond in aquo class very recently canip pays were never offered not even once during the entire sailing I mean it was even removed as a benefit from the website Laura I was also never offered the champagne that you're supposed to get either I mean this is a straight up lie I don't know of any other way of calling it on top of that because of the outrage your office sent out emails to guests they were complaining about this and that email said that you will be reinstating and improving canopies for aqua class guests so how can you say you didn't make any changes when in fact you are reassuring people that you will be returning those Services back to them we made changes to the menu in Lumin and blue we did not fiction um made no changes okay I can't speak to Lumin but the menus that blue were definitely changed mostly portion sizes they're much smaller I'm reading a ton of complaints about the menus at Blue to be honest with you one of our very own subscribers Mark just stepped off of the celebrity reflection he was in aqua class and decided to offer from the main dining room rather than Blue menu itself I'll let him comment down below about his own experience with the menus but Laura you're either Miss misinformed or just not telling us the truth last one we removed items from the main dining room menu and then added them back for charge I'm realizing now these are all about food but and we weren't going to talk about that right we wer going to talk about it um no so actually we didn't remove things from the main dining room menu we're always going um through revamps of our of our menus so that's going to be a consistent thing that's going to be constantly changing we did test removing some of our Classics that did not go over well we put those right back on but the additions that we have on the main dining room menu for charge are because we hear from our guests that are traveling in large groups and like I want to go to Specialty but you don't want to go to Specialty but I really want to eat the steak from fine cut or I really want the steak um from Tuscan so now I can go to the main dining room you can have what you want on your Classics menu and then I can order either the surf or the surf and turf um just like if I was in main dining so it's really about catering to a broad uh a group of guests that are traveling together and have different wants and needs and providing the ability that we keep hearing about from all of our members absolutely This Is A Lie once again you absolutely remove things from the main dining room menus and added them back for a charge F minan and beef wellington was completely removed from the main dining room F minan was added back for a charge I just stepped off of the Celebrity Equinox you can't tell me it's not true I'm working on a detailed video that will cover the main dining room changes the menus and basically everything everything I ate so stay tuned for that but I can say with 100% confidence that the main dining room menus went through major changes not only were the dishes removed but the quality of the food went down significantly quality dishes were replaced by cafeteria style food with much smaller portions it's so bad that I dreaded going to the main dining room both the main dining room and the buffet which by the way served Beanie Weenies and mushy peas for dinner went through significant menu changes I've sailed on Celebrity six times in the last year and a half don't make me pull up the footage and actually start comparing meals again Laura you are either misinformed or just not telling us the truth I mean this is just ridiculous like how can you sit here and tell us that the menus have not changed just even in the last year when is the last time that you sailed on your own cruise ships they also talked about a few other things like Port changes to the itineraries new Innovations the fifth Edge class cruise ships allowing Zenith members to access Retreat Lounge for the five people who have that level more Captain Club tiers and even morphing Royal Caribbean and celebrity loyalty programs into one that's the one change that I'm looking forward to in this entire webinar as always I'd love to hear what you have to say about this in the comments down below thanks so much for watching I'll see you you in the next video

Channel: Tom Sunday

Views: 30,605

Keywords: celebrity cruises, celebrity cruise line, cruise news, celebrity cruise, celebrity cruise ship, latest cruise news, celebrity cruise changes, cruise news update, celebrity cruises must know, celebrity edge, celebrity reflection, celebrity summit, celebrity equinox, celebrity cruises tips, cruise news latest, cruise ship news, celebrity cruises review, cruise line news, cruise news latest update, celebrity cruise food, celebrity solstice, celebrity cruises exposed

Id: 9rhaM6ZwGMU

Length: 17min 30sec (1050 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 15 2023