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APRIL
2004
By
Keston Huntington
OLIVIA
Reaches out to Respond
May
7th, 2004
Keston,
I
think you’ll agree that the Olivia travel experience
is vastly different than a mainstream cruise or resort experience,
which makes a direct comparison of our pricing unrealistic.
It’s like comparing the price of a Toyota Echo with
a Jaguar XJS because they are both cars.
Olivia’s
business and pricing model is very different from Holland
America’s. For starters, Holland America (or any other
cruiseline) owns all of their ships; therefore, they control
the inventory of hundreds of departures throughout the year,
which means they can fluctuate pricing rather dramatically
to fill those ships. When a cruise route or time of year
is successful for a cruiseline, the price goes up. When
the peak is over and they need to fill ships, the price
falls. It’s simple. They charge what they can get
in order to not send out empty ships.
For
Olivia, it’s an entirely different proposition. When
we charter a ship, we pay market value at the time we charter
the ship (often a year or so prior to departure) and we
are locked into that price, despite market fluctuations.
Olivia takes a multi-million dollar risk in chartering a
ship before we have any passengers.
Aside
from operating under different business models, Olivia offers
an experience unparalleled in the travel industry. We take
over the entire experience on board. First, we educate the
staff from the captain to the cabin steward about the Olivia
experience, so they understand before our guests arrive
what it means to be a lesbian in this world and what a unique,
life-enriching experience spending a week with other women
is.
In
addition to education, we go over every detail of each cruise
or resort vacation with the staff to ensure that our guests’
needs are met. We make sure there are plenty of vegan, vegetarian,
low-fat and wheat-free menu options to accommodate our guests’
requests ahead of time. We look after all of these details
and check in with our special needs guests frequently to
make sure their meals are to their satisfaction. We review
every detail, from the number of towels in the room to the
films shown en route to tailor the experience for our guests.
Prior to departure, we send a well-prepared, book-length
memo to the ship, detailing our needs for the week. The
ship always thanks us for our thoroughness and attention
to detail.
Olivia
employs 35 people full time year round in order to create
these amazing vacation experiences, develop new ones, market
our vacations and attend to guests’ needs prior to
departure. On each vacation, we provide as many as 40 of
our own staff above and beyond the Holland America staff,
so we can offer more activities, more options and greater
attention to guest needs.
We
provide a robust schedule of activities that makes the cruise
an extraordinary experience for every woman, whether she’s
25 or 85, single or in a couple, gay, bi or straight, regardless
of ethnic or national origin or physical ability. Everyone
is welcome, respected and celebrated. We have programs for
older wiser lesbians (OWLs) and solos. We have networking
and regional lunches where people from similar professions
or areas of the world can meet.
More
than activities, we provide our own entertainers, from the
Indigo Girls to k.d. lang, from Kate Clinton to Suzanne
Westenhoefer, we offer our community’s best performers
on every vacation. Our entertainers also host a variety
of activities throughout the week, like bingo, pool games
and karaoke. You won’t see entertainment even close
to this on any mainstream cruise or resort vacation.
We
think the best testament to our value is our return rate.
Ninety-nine percent of our guests return for another vacation
with Olivia. Once someone experiences the value of an Olivia
vacation, she makes it a priority to travel with us. We’re
extremely proud of that. We want as many women as possible
to feel the magic and empowerment of a world composed uniquely
of women. For women who are more price sensitive, we offer
diverse choices in vacations in order to make our trips
more accessible. Our 4-Night Bahamas Cruise starts at $599,
when we introduced the trip it was just $67 a month on our
interest-free monthly payment plan.
I
invite you to visit our community forum and read for yourself
the incredible experiences of our guests. Here is an excerpt
that perfectly illustrates the value of Olivia from a guest
on our Western Caribbean Cruise:
“Wow,
what an incredible trip! I didn't want it to end. I was
griping a bit before the cruise about the high price, but
I can now say it was worth every penny. The Olivia staff
was terrific and worked hard to make sure everybody was
having a great time. I can't think of one single thing I
would have wanted to change except for being able to stay
on the ship for another week! Thank you, Olivia! I'll be
back for sure!”
For
31 years, Olivia has provided empowering and uplifting experiences
for women all over the world, from the millions who listened
to our records to the 70,000 who have traveled with us.
It has always been our goal to create a space of joy, hope,
strength, freedom and visibility for our community. We are
extraordinarily proud of our accomplishments and look forward
to many more years of celebrating the lives of women.
Olivia
is never going to be able to compete with mainstream cruises
and resorts on price, but as our guests tell us again and
again, the Olivia experience is priceless.
Sincerely,
Judy
Dlugacz
ORIGINAL
ARTICLE
We
generally know the pricing to women’s events and organized
travel may be inflated, but we also know that the women’s
travel events are a best pick in lesbian vacations and of
course, the promoters and hosts have to make money. LezBeOut
generally tells our readers to understand that they will
pay for what they get, pick, choose and suck it up.
However
in light of the volume and passion of complaints LBO’s representatives
received while interviewing women at Women’s Events, as
well as emails received and general overheard arguments
and displeasure at the costs involved in attending the Women’s
Events and Travel we decided to do a little investigating
on our own.
There
is one thing for sure that you can count on in the lesbian
community. We love to gather, we love our women’s weekends,
we love our lesbian cruises and we love meeting with our
friends and other women in our community. Why would we want
to travel outside our community where we cannot be ourselves?
So like good little sheep following the leaders we frantically
plan our lesbian cruises, our Dinah Shore weekends, our
Key West women’s trips and we pay a small fortune. We say
well we are supporting our community and the causes.
We
all know that most lesbian clientele based businesses are
not profitable and it is a shame that on a whole we are
not more supportive of them, but what is very surprising
is the rates some gay & lesbian clientele based businesses
charge to the their audience in comparison to the same exact
sort of functions charged to any other typical audience.
Why?
Just
a quick look… at the parties & events
Just
to attend one Dinah Shore Nightclub Party costs almost as
much as getting into DisneyLand ? But you get no fantasy
rides, no extravagant parades or shows and no Mickey Mouse!
$45 will get you into the door and that is about it. I am
sorry to say but the entertainment is most often mediocre,
the music is often too fast to dance to and the lines to
both the bars and the facilities are shockingly long. What
you do get is more women and more lesbian
women then you can imagine in one room. While paying $25-$45
may not be that bad for one night, what kills us is that
it is for four nights… and two days. Totaling almost $175
just for one person to get into the events, and that is
not mentioning the inflated costs of drinks at $6.00 for
a single domestic beer, and only one beer brand to choose
from!. You can easily spend another $200 on drinks for the
weekend. The same types of dance parties for men in Las
Vegas and Palm Springs can cost up to $70 for admission
alone, but they also are up and running until 6am in the
morning!!! You go boyz!
A
pass to all seven events at Dinah Shore will cost you $125-150
while the Gay Men’s Palm Springs Weekend costs $240 for
just three parties! Holy Mackerel Batman!
In
our research for similar private non gay related parties
the costs averaged from $10 to $30 admittance. And also
in our research we found that not all
lesbian related parties were priced at such inflated rates
and some were quite reasonable.
This
only scratches the surface. Most promoters of these events
also make large commissions on rooms that they book and
what’s more, most have corporate sponsors! They often receive
free alcohol (hence only one type of beer brand), promotional
items to put into gift bags or as door prizes, advertising
and often large sums of cash! In the same breathe most do
have huge costs involved. They most often have to ensure
very comprehensive insurance policies, security and their
own staff to run the events.
Keeping
in mind that straight privately hosted parties run anywhere
between $10-30 here is how similar Gay & Womens events
compare:
| |
Orlando's
Girl Days |
Dinah
Shore |
Straight
singles events |
| Kick
Off parties |
none |
$15 |
$5 |
| Friday
Night |
$15 |
$40 |
$10-20 |
| Sat
Pool party |
$10 |
$25 |
$10 |
| Saturday
Night |
$10 |
$55 |
$10-20 |
| Sunday
Pool |
$10 |
$25 |
$10 |
| Sunday
Finale |
none |
$25 |
$10 |
| TOTAL |
$45 |
$185 |
$40 |
The
Cruises
You
are not going to believe this!
On
average the gay cruise lines charge anywhere from 10 – 20%
higher than the direct cruise rates for the same exact trips.
Don’t they get a large discount already for booking? The
average Travel Agent receives 15-20% commissions and some
even get up to 40%.
Gay
Men’s cruise lines
Mexican
Riviera
|
Atlantis
|
Royal
Caribbean direct |
Other
Travel Agencies |
How
much more you pay |
|
Junior
Suite |
$1,999 |
$1,649 |
$
912 |
|
| Large
Out Stateroom |
$1,599 |
$1,399 |
$1,024 |
|
Large
In Stateroom |
$1,079 |
$
824 |
$
594 |
|
Lesbian
cruise EARLY BIRD SPECIAL RATES
Caribbean
Cruise - And
these are early bird specials????!!!!
| |
Olivia |
Holland
direct |
Other
Travel Agencies |
How
much more you pay |
| Verandah
suites |
$2,199 |
$1,140 |
$921 |
|
| Large
outside stateroom |
$1,799 |
$ 809 |
$ 795 |
|
| Large
inside Stateroom |
$1,049 |
$622 |
$515 |
|
What
they say?
Nothing.
Mostly nothing. It is rumored that the promoters of the
events simply do not care what their audience thinks or
how they feel. They have cornered their market and know
it. LBO has received many emails from LBO readers describing
heated conversations with such promoters and the general
consensus is that the “If you do not like it, do not come”
attitude is more common than one would think.
When
I interviewed Mariah Hanson of The Dinah Shore fame back
in December, she no doubt knew that the most passionate
& frequent complaint was the costs of the events. Her
reply was simply that the pricing is not high compared to
the costs of an average date. She has also been quoted to
describing The Dinah Shore Women’s Weekend as “Spring
Break with credit cards” .
We
sent out several requests for feedback and have thus far
received no feedback from the powers that be. We truly want
their feedback, good bad and ugly. If there are monsterous
costs that go along the lines here, we would love to publish
the truth, but as of yet “No Comment” seems to be in order.
