NCL joins Royal Caribbean in offering loyalty status match – here’s why Carnival won’t do the same

• NCL has implemented a new status match for their loyalty program.
• This means that guests can match their loyalty status against the three NCL-owned cruise lines, Norwegian Cruise Line, Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises.
• Royal Caribbean offers this for its brands as well, but Carnival doesn’t. Here’s why.

Norwegian Cruise Line Holding has introduced a new loyalty program status match, meaning that if you have loyalty status with NCL, you can match your status across other the two other NCL holdings brands, Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas. The status match also of course, works the other way around as well.

This incentivises cruisers who until now have been loyal to just one of these brands to check out the other lines and try a different type of cruising. While NCL is more of a family fun offering, Oceania offers a luxury experience, and Regent Seven Seas is all about all-included ultraluxury, meaning each line is very distinct.

While more details are still to come on the logistics, the new rules will apply to cruises after October 15, 2025, and requests have to be made directly to the cruise line at least 10 days before the sailing. 

This comes at an interesting time in the world of cruise line loyalty programs.

Carnival does not offer loyalty status matches between its many brands, such as Carnival Cruise Line, P&O Cruises, Princess Cruises, Seabourn, Holland America, Cunard and more. 

This has at times proved to be controversial, particularly for Aussies. For example, when P&O Cruises Australia was dissolved and its ships were moved across to Carnival, Aussie’s weren’t able to carry over their P&O cruises into Carnival’s loyalty program. Despite the fact they’d be sailing on the exact same ships and the ships were still owned by the same parent company. 

In fact, Carnival has been moving in the opposite direction, recently making significant cuts to its loyalty program, which means thousands of cruisers are being kicked off their loyalty status. 

Royal Caribbean Group does offer status matches, meaning guests can match their status across Royal Caribbean, Celebrity Cruises and Silversea. 

Now one of the most clear reason why Carnival doesn’t offer this loyalty status match is pretty simple, it’s because while NCL Holdings and Royal Caribbean have just three cruise lines each that they own, Carnival owns eight. This means that the status matches would likely be used a lot more frequently and it would cost Carnival more to uphold the benefits across all of its lines.

However, cruisers would assumedly still be excited about a partial status match that offer a status match across at least some of Carnival’s brands.

There is another key reason, which is that the higher tiers of the loyalty program of many Carnival-owned cruise lines are much easier to reach than those of Royal Caribbean or NCL lines.

For example, Princess Cruises’s top loyalty tier can be reached in 150 days of sailing, sometimes even less, depending on which cruises you take, and Carnival’s, under the previous system, could be reached in 200 days of sailing. This is very different to Royal Caribbean or Norwegian Cruise Line, which both require 700 days of sailing to reach the top tier. 

The problem for Carnival currently, as stated by the company, is that they have too many customers in the top tiers and simply can’t keep offering the promised benefits. Other loyalty programs avoided this by making these top tiers harder to reach in the first place.

This is why Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line can afford to freely offer status matches and Carnival cannot, not just because they have less cruise lines, but because they have less cruisers in the top tiers.