It has been about a week since the rumors began to circle that Carnival was eliminating its free room service. The claim was that in January the cruise line would no longer be offering free room service for all meals. The new offering was going to be more of an a la carte menu, but the continental breakfast would remain free.
The proposed menu was to include items such as salads, pizza, wings, sandwiches, and cheesecake. The cost would range from $2 to $5 per item in most cases. These changes were marked up as an effort by the cruise line to reduce food waste, but it was not well received by the general public, who saw it as a potentially large expense added to the cost of their vacations.
Now, just four days after this big announcement, the cruise line has backed down from its previous announcement stating that it will be keeping the free room service “for the time being.” Management further added that they were planning to make changes to the plan but have determined that this action needs to proceed more slowly allowing for more time to communicate with guests and travel agency partners.
As it turns out, many guests who appear to be loyal travelers on the Carnival line were very upset by the loss of free room service. Many travel websites who had released versions of the Carnival press release were documenting thousands of comments of a very negative tone. And it didn’t take long for these consumers to be heard and to elicit the second press release of the week regarding the Carnival free room service policy.
As it stands now, free room service is still a feature on the Carnival line, but that could be changing in the future. Many are expecting room service to be offered for a flat per day fee much as it is on other lines such as Royal Caribbean and Norwegian. Both of those lines offer room service for a daily service fee of $7.95.
But whatever the executives at Carnival decide to do, it is certain that they will begin the announcement process long before the changes are scheduled to occur. They have been inundated with comments by annoyed passengers and future guests who felt that this fast change to a major service was unfair and unwarranted.
