The great thing about a cruise is that everything is included. Isn’t it? Sadly not these days. Here, a neuromarketer analyses the pain Crown Princess passengers feel when they tot up all those little extras.
I thought at first that it was a minor ratcheting up of the normal trivial charges, but the “nickel and diming” aspect was raised by so many fellow passengers that it was clear that Princess was putting the pain back into cruising. The odd thing is how meaningless most of these charges are. A typical passenger paid thousands of dollars for the cruise, and most of the passengers I met were well-heeled enough to not care in the least about an extra dollar or two. Many I spoke to clearly had annual travel budgets in the tens of thousands of dollars. Nevertheless, they WERE irritated by these tiny charges. If you asked them, they would say it’s the principle that’s involved – they didn’t like being subjected to miniscule additional charges after paying thousands for what they thought was a more inclusive cruise. In neuromarketing terms, though, their brain’s pain center was getting a tweak when they had to pay for something they might well have expected to be provided at no charge.
link: Neuromarketing » Princess Puts Pain into Cruising
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