Royal Caribbean Adds Hotel Booking Engine

Royal Caribbean is launching a new hotel booking called Royal Caribbean Hotels.

The booking engine, which is powered by Priceline, will offer exclusive rates at thousands of hotels in each of Royal departure and arrival ports in the Caribbean, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Americas, with discounts of up to 50% off, Royal said.

The motivation for Royal is to make it easier for travelers and travel advisors, who will be able to access it on Cruise Power, to arrange hotel accommodations around a sailing whether they want an ultra-luxury hotel or a hotel in a specific location in a port city.

For instance, in Miami, the engine includes the Mandarin Oriental Miami, InterContinental Miami, JW Marriott, along with other options from Sheraton, Best Western, and Holiday Inn.

The program is similar to what its sister-brand Celebrity Cruises launched earlier this year called Hotels by Celebrity. That program is also powered by Priceline and promises the same thing—a curated list of hotels with exclusive rates for their pre-and post-sailing travel.

That Celebrity program reportedly wasn’t commissionable for advisors and the same thing currently applies to the Royal program. 

In a statement to TMR, a spokesperson said that the new Royal hotel program is not commissionable for agents at this time.

“This is not commissionable for agents as we do not have the capabilities to do so at this time. It’s something that we’ll be looking into in the future.”