Royal Caribbean International is making its VOOM high-speed internet service available fleetwide on their 24 ships sailing to destinations around the world. VOOM allows guests to stream their favorite music, movies and TV shows, share photos on Instagram or Snapchat, video-chat using FaceTime or Skype and more at a reasonable price.  The Royal Caribbean fast Internet has some significant qualities worth considering.

“Everything our guests and crew can do online at home, they will now be able to do from onboard all of our ships around the world.” –  Michael Bayley, President and CEO, Royal Caribbean International.

Through a combination of Wi-Fi service providers, Royal Caribbean claims the ability to deliver more overall bandwidth fleetwide than any other cruise line. New enhancements will provide speeds at least twice as fast as before.  Better yet, Royal Caribbean fast Internet is less expensive too.

 

Royal Caribbean Fast Internet: Three Out Of Four Is Not Bad

In Viking Sea Christening: Beyond The Headlines we examined the notion of how some major cruise lines had become slaves to low prices.  In order to subsidize fares lower than what is needed to support a quality operation, cruise lines charge for optional things and charge more than a fair price for others.  $6.50 cans of beer come to mind.

Royal Caribbean providing fast Internet is a great move that many (including me) are willing to pay for.  We’re so tired of slow Internet, it does not matter all that much what the price is.  If it’s fast, we’ll pay for it.  For now.   There are four elements of this issue at work here:

1. We want fast Internet at sea.
2. The technology exists.
3. It can be done.
4. It should be free.

Three out of four of those elements are a reality now.  #4 comes with the big question:  “Who will be the first to do it?”  No one wants to be that first cruise line, even though the initial effect would surely be a positive one.  Six months later, everyone else would offer complimentary Internet access, the playing field would be level again and they would have thrown $millions in onboard revenue overboard.    That’s revenue they need to offset lower than what they really need cruise fares, sales, discounts, special offers, past guest benefits and other promotions.  The commonality of these ‘deals’  have made paying full price for a cruise almost as rare as paying sticker price for a new car.

Travelers sailing on all Royal Caribbean ships can choose from two packages:

• Surf- provides guests the opportunity to surf the web, stay in touch via email, and share their vacation photos on social media. Surf packages start at $12.99 per device per day ($90.33 for a seven day cruise) with additional devices added at a discounted cost.
• Surf and Stream- brings the capability to stream movies and music from Netflix or Spotify, and to connect using video chat apps such as Skype. This package is available for $17.99 per device per day. ($125.93 for a seven day cruise)

Additional devices can be connected at a discount. Family packages of 5 devices or more start at $11.99 per device per day.  ($419.65 for those five devices for a week)

To be fair, it’s not like Royal Caribbean is the only cruise line charging for Internet access, most do. Pricing varies as does speed and efficiency.  That they have high speed fleetwide is significant and surely a step in the right direction.  Now just include it in the price and we’ll have something to get really excited about.