Royal Caribbean Offers Incentives to Ditch Summer Sailing
It can be great to get away for a long weekend, but can it be even greater to take advantage of an enticing offer to move your vacation plans?
Select guests booked on the July 5, 2025 departure of Royal Caribbean’s Liberty of the Seas are needing to make such a decision, as the cruise line has now reached out with rebooking offers for the 5-night Bermuda cruise.
“We are looking to see if you and your travel party have flexible travel plans,” the email inquired. “If your plans are set in stone, please mark this email as ‘Read’ and gear up for your upcoming adventure – although, there are some pretty sweet options.”
The options include moving the sailing to select August, September, or October cruises still aboard Liberty of the Seas, or select sailings aboard Symphony of the Seas.
If guests do choose to rebook on the offered sailings, they will receive a 100% refund for their original booking, as well as be moved to the new cruise date.
Hello? Full refund and you STILL get to go on another cruise? You can bet I’d make every effort to be flexible for that kind of offer, particularly since one of the alternative sailings is a 9-night Bermuda and Eastern Caribbean itinerary that is nearly double the length of the original booking.
Other options for rebooking include identical 5-night Bermuda itineraries as well as 7-night Bahamas cruises. All available departures are still from New Jersey.
Granted, not everyone who receives this tempting offer would be able to make the change, depending on their work requirements or other commitments, such as whether or not the original booking is during a pre-planned vacation or special occasion.
Some guests, in fact, are worried that this might be an overbooking situation and they could be left at the embarkation port if they don’t take advantage of the offer.
“The ship must be overbooked. We have already had a cabin number assigned. I am now concerned that we’re going to get to the port and they tell us we can’t board as it’s overbooked. Am I overthinking it?” the original poster asked on Reddit.
Other commenters were quick to respond, however, noting that the notification email specifically called out the idea that if plans are “set in stone” then there’s no need to worry.
Even if the ship does happen to be overbooked, the offer is such a spectacular one that there’s little doubt other cruisers would take advantage of it and change their plans, freeing up space for guests who aren’t able to be flexible.
Why Do Cruise Ships Overbook?
Of course it is in a cruise line’s best interest to always sail with ships full to capacity, but why would they take the chance of overbooking altogether?
After years of offering oceangoing vacations, cruise lines are well aware that some percentage of travelers will always cancel at the last minute, leaving some staterooms unsold.
Read Also: What Are the Different Royal Caribbean Ship Classes?
While it may seem like a gamble to sell more staterooms than are available onboard, most of the time, it works out well for the cruise line.
On the rare occasion when no one may have cancelled and the departure date is fast approaching, the line can offer these types of special deals to entice some travelers to move to another sailing.
This gives the cruise line flexibility with how to fulfill guaranteed cabin rates, as they can shuffle guests around without difficulty in the days before embarkation.
This is not the first time such intriguing offers have come from Royal Caribbean. In both April and May 2025, Allure of the Seas had similarly tempting offers for several sailings from Rome.
Such offers have often been made in previous years on other ships in the Royal Caribbean fleet. Most of the time, these offers are successful at clearing out any overbooking issues, but onboard Quantum of the Seas in November 2023, some guests were left behind without any available staterooms.
Hopefully, the current offers for Liberty of the Seas are impressive enough that everyone will be happy, whether they stay on the same cruise or take advantage of these very special circumstances.