Every year in August we attend Virtuoso Travel Week, where industry advisors get to meet with vendors and suppliers in the industry. In 2017, Princess Cruises was rolling out the Princess Medallion, with much fanfare and ceremony. At that time, my husband Bob interviewed Kim Franco from Princess, and we blogged about this new innovation.
At the time, we commented that the Princess Medallion was either going to be the cruise industry’s version of “New Coke”, or it would be a game-changer for the industry.
As it turns out, both those predictions ended up having some truth to them.
Princess outfitted its first vessel with Princess Medallion in late 2017, and then things got really, really quiet about this innovation. As best I can tell, the folks at Princess were convinced they had a really good idea, but apparently underestimated the complexity of rolling such a program out.
Skip ahead to 2019, and Princess is charging full steam ahead with the Medallion program, and the feedback so far appears to be really good.
From an industry point of view, Princess is considered a “premium” cruise line along with lines like Celebrity and Holland America. The Princess Medallion enables Princess to offer some luxury service offerings through the use of technology.
It’s also just kind of cool.
Here are some of the benefits of the Princess Ocean Medallion class ships:
- Expedited check-in and boarding – you upload your own picture to your profile, and put all your info in, which is electronically attached to your medallion – meaning you essentially just walk on to the ship upon embarkation.
- Your preferences for drinks, or any on board celebrations are attached to your Medallion, so ship staff have the opportunity to provide more personalized service. This is standard on luxury or river lines with only a few hundred people on board, but the Medallion enables Princess to do this on a larger ship.
- You can find other guests on the ship more easily if you choose to enable your Medallion to disclose your whereabouts to select others.
- You can interact with the crew, or with select other passengers using the smartphone app that accompanies the Medallion.
- The ubiquitous photo ops on the ships are now delivered electronically to your stateroom TV, rather than being printed and then displayed in the photo gallery amongst the thousands of others.
- As part of this technical upgrade, Princess has had to completely re-outfit their ships for WiFi, and they are now boasting the fastest Wifi at sea. I have not personally tested this yet, but they are claiming you will be able to stream video – this is a significant upgrade from other shipboard WiFi, which has a well earned reputation as slow and painful.
So, the Medallion does much more than just replace your on board key-card (although it does that too).
Currently the Ocean Medallion is available on the Caribbean, Regal, and Royal Princess. Before the end of the year, the Crown and Sky will be converted, and then six more ships in 2020.
At this point it appears as though the Princess Ocean Medallion is falling more into the “industry game-changer” category, than it is “New Coke”. It will be interesting to see if the other Carnival Corp. brands (or competing brands) follow suit.
If you’re thinking of a Princess, cruise it’s a great time to book! Princess is currently running their ‘Sip and Sail’ promotion, which gets you a free Premier Beverage Package for 2 if you book a Balcony or higher category, or a Free Premier Coffee & Soda Package† for Interior and Oceanview bookings. ***Must book before July 16th
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Sue Bradley
Sue Bradley
