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Anecdotally, there are stories about fewer give-aways on board, but I would have put this down to revenue-maximisation rather coping with a recession. Certainly P&O's traditional early-season promotions are still in place: free car parking at Southampton or free coach journeys, some OBC.
To be honest, for the typical (older) cruise passenger here in the UK, it's a case of "recession? what recession?". If you're working, or got a steady pension, and living in your own home (i.e. not renting) then you're probably quite comfortable.
Service-wise, our experience couldn't have been better. We certainly didn't see what appeared to be cut backs in staff. We usually timed going to dinner at about 8 to 830pm (we had anytime dining) and we almost always had wait staff falling over us. If our room steward was given more cabins to service, it didn't hurt the job he did for us.
If they are cutting back on the amount of paper they're using, such as for a daily newspaper, I don't have a problem with it as I've always thought it was a waste. And of course flyers for things like "gold by the inch" and "watch sales" always ended up in the can anyway, so, again, cutting back doesn't bother me. Not sure what version of CNN you had (is there more than one?), but we had plenty of US news available to watch.
-Russ
Cruising is not recession proof because, like all holidays, it is discretionary spending. Having said that, the all-inclusive nature of cruising makes it attractive in that you basically know what you are up for before you leave. I wouldn't be surprised if cruiselines introduced a package that includes alcohol (like Club Med) to further emphasise this.
There are 2 CNN feeds, which one you get depends on where you are. There is the US CNN which is very US focussed and sits between MSNBC and Fox on the political spectrum. There is also CNN International which is basically for everywhere else. It has much more international content with studios in Hong Kong, London etc as well as Atlanta.
Also I noted on our last Princess cruise, there were 7 tv channels, 4 were carrying advertising for Princess, 1 carried CNN, 1 carried movies which repeated every 4 days (on a 7 day cruise) and one carried a variety of channels, mostly Discovery.
Now, while I know we are not meant to spend a large amount of time in our cabins, but there are times when we (meaning the wife and I) just like to lay back and relax, the tv selection really didn't help with that.
One thing that is missing from this thread is fuel prices, it shot up and really, because of the soft economy, the cruise lines couldn't pass that along without having a dip in bookings. As noted the cruise prices really have not gone up in the last couple of years, so somewhere there has to be a break for the lines, the easy place to hit first is food, both the quality and the number of people preparing it.
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