Interesting thought. Might be possible if it was done right.
For example, point requirements would have to be per person and not per room (such as a
DVC resort) since the direct costs are affected more on a per person basis (such as food) rather than a per stateroom basis. For example a DVC room is the same amount of points whether it's one person or 4 people. A cruise is different. A per person point requirement is what they have now for the regular cruises and I think makes sense.
I could see a point system that allowed one cruise every few years. In other words the minimum purchase would be whatever is needed for a cruise every 3rd year by banking and borrowing. I for one would not cruise EVERY year so this would make it more affordable. If the lowest category stateroom was 300 points/person then for 2 people a 600 point minimum purchase might be too much, but a 200 point purchase with banking and borrowing might be OK. This would be similar to some timeshares that have an every-other-year option. The nice thing is you could be paying monthly 'maintenance' fees, and after 36 months take the cruise with no basic out of pocket expenses required. (Well, theoretically)
Maintenance fees might be an issue, but I suppose cruise points could be adjusted accordingly. I could see a need to change destinations on a somewhat regular basis. Now with regular DVC stays we can change to different DVC resorts which gives us more variety (and the resorts have different
point charts). So just like changing DVC resorts, for a cruise you wouldn't want to keep repeating the exact cruise (and ports) over and over and over every time, so they could adjust the point requirements based on where the cruise went to. That would cover different fuel expenditures, port fees etc. Perhaps week 1 of every month the cruise goes to point 'A', and on week 2 it goes to point 'B', week 3 to point 'C', week 4 somewhere else, and then repeating that routine again the next month. The point requirements for trip 'A' would be different than trip 'B' for example because one destination might be 500 miles further than the other so running the ship costs more. This then gives members variety, a choice on which cruise they want to take.
Regular maintenance fees could be used to cover the basic fixed costs such as salaries, insurance, upkeep, etc.
A couple of unknowns: Would tips still be expected for the cabin steward, meal stewards, etc?
Would the ship be allowed to use
Castaway Cay? I think right now with the current ships, that CC is used 3-times a week? That should leave some days available.
Interesting thought. If the ship held 2000 passengers and made 50 trips a year (assuming 7-day trips), and everybody did 1-trip a year, that would be 100,000 'members'.
I wonder what 1/100,000 th of a ship costs.
