There’s been plenty about some cruise loyalty programs that’s gotten passengers upset in recent months, but Royal Caribbean is making a change that we think people will love. It should offer much more flexibility and allow some people to ramp up their loyalty status even faster.
Here’s the scoop: Royal Caribbean Group is the parent company of three major cruise lines: Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, and Silversea.
Each of these lines offers a different experience and aim for different segments of the market. But for a long time, they offered loyalty programs that were completely separate from each other, despite being from the same company. So if you held high status on say, Royal Caribbean, and decided to cruise on Celebrity, you’d have to start your loyalty climb from scratch.
That was largely solved when the company instituted a status match across their lines. With that change, you could move your status from one line to roughly the equivalent level on another line. This meant passengers no longer had to be hesitant to try another one of Royal Caribbean’s lines simply because they wouldn’t have the loyalty perks.
Now, the company is adding even more flexibility for those that want to move between lines. Royal Caribbean Group announced the introduction of a new program called “Points Choice.”
“Points Choice” Allows You to Move Points From One Line to Another
The new tweak to loyalty allows passengers sailing on one of their lines to now transfer those points to another line. Whereas before loyalty status would match across lines, this new tweak means that you can actually earn more loyalty points on one line even if you’re sailing a different one in the Royal Caribbean portfolio.
Here’s an example. Say you have status in Royal Caribbean’s Crown & Anchor loyalty program. However, you decide to take a Celebrity cruise to try out the line. You can now take the points earned on that Celebrity cruise (known as the Captain’s Club loyalty program) and have them directed instead to your Royal Caribbean Crown & Anchor points.
This allows you to maximize your points and status on one line, while also being able to cruise the other cruise lines in the company’s brands.
Now there is some fine print you need to know about. First, you can only apply the points up to 14 days after the sailing and it only applies to cruises departing on or after January 30, 2026. So if you have points from past cruises you’d like to move, you won’t be able to do so.
Keep in mind as well that once you move the points, you can’t swap them back again. Once they are moved, it’s permanent.
There is also a set exchange rate between each cruise line’s program. This is due to the different methods of counting loyalty but also, it ensures a passenger can’t sail a bunch of nights in the least expensive room on Royal Caribbean to build up high status on the higher-end cruise lines like Silversea.
Royal Caribbean Group says that these exchange rates will be published annually. The current rates are shown below:
For passengers, this new tweak should be welcome news. Now, not only does your status allow you a match on other lines, but if you want to maximize your points on one specific line, you can do that instead of having some loyalty points on one line and then some on another.
You can read more about the new program — including how to transfer points — here. Remember, the Points Choice option goes into effect starting January 30.
