Royal Caribbean Group owns both Royal Caribbean and Celebrity. Not many passengers notice this unless they look closely at Royal Caribbean's app, where logos for both brands appear.
When you board a Royal Caribbean ship, you have no idea that the company and Celebrity are connected. You can't book a Celebrity cruise at the Next Cruise desk, and while you're on board a ship from one of them, you don't ever see material promoting the other.
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The two cruise lines have separate leadership, even as both operate under the auspices of Royal Caribbean Group (RCL) -) CEO Jason Liberty. Both have separate casino programs and separate loyalty programs.
The two brands do, however, offer each other's customers some level of courtesy. If you have status on Royal Caribbean, Celebrity will match up to its second-highest level. The same applies to Celebrity passengers who wish to travel on Royal Caribbean.
That's nice from a perks point of view — cruisers used to having elite status on one of the two brands get that treatment on their sister line — but a match does have some weaknesses.
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Celebrity, Royal Caribbean consider loyalty program change
Cruise-line loyalty programs operate on a points basis. At both Royal Caribbean and Celebrity, passengers earn points based on nights spent on board. Different classes of rooms earn more points, and as you hit certain point levels, you reach higher tiers.
Earning points toward status helps keep people loyal. Regular cruisers want to move up in their preferred cruise line's loyalty program because the rewards offered by them are meaningful.
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Royal Caribbean Diamond members, a level that takes 80 points to earn, get access to a dedicated lounge on board, four free drinks per day, a concierge who can help with reservations, and other perks. Celebrity's Elite status, roughly the equivalent level, comes with daily receptions, a free happy hour from 5-7, and other perks.
When a Royal Caribbean passenger sails on Celebrity (or the reverse), they get a status match but earn points on the line they're sailing, not their main line. Those points accrue on the new cruise line toward earning the status they have gained from the match.
This does not help either cruise line's top customers work toward earning a higher status level with their preferred brand.
In theory, while the status match is a nice courtesy, rivals like MSC and Virgin Voyages offer matches as well, so nothing keeps Royal Caribbean or Celebrity customers from trying another company if they want to stray from their main brand.
Royal Caribbean Group, however, may change this calculation by combining Royal Caribbean's Crown & Anchor Society with Celebrity's Captain's Club.
Celebrity and Royal Caribbean may combine their loyalty programs
Loyalty programs are designed to keep cruisers coming back to specific brands. If Royal Caribbean and Celebrity combined their programs, it would give passengers looking to vary their cruises an incentive to stay in the family.
That would strike a blow to rivals like MSC and Virgin Voyages, which offer status matches, and even to Carnival Cruise Line (CCL) -), which does not.
During a Captain's Club webinar on Sept. 26 Celebrity cruise line's associate vice president of loyalty, Andrea Shay, floated the idea of combining the two programs, Matt Hochberg of the Royal Caribbean Blog reported.
"We have some status match between the brands today, but there's such a huge opportunity for us to do more and really take advantage of the connection and us being part of the same family," she said.
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A joint program could mean that Royal Caribbean and Celebrity passengers would more quickly earn higher-tier status. If the merged program combined points earned on each line, passengers who have cruised on both would see their totals rise.
Such a valuable change would benefit passengers but also help the cruise lines as it would greatly increase the incentive for passengers to be loyal to Royal, keeping them away from MSC, Virgin and Carnival.
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