Carnival Rewards, the drastic about-face in loyalty from Carnival Cruises, just hit another setback in its attempt to convince passengers it’s worthy.

A brief reminder on Carnival Rewards

In case you need a refresher on the Carnival Rewards loyalty program, think of it as a move from lifetime status (the general norm in the cruise industry) under the VIFP moniker to biannual qualification periods. The program’s first announcement said all guests–even the most-loyal–need to continue to earn their status with high amounts of spend. It felt more like a what have you done for me lately kind of scenario, ignoring all the history for the sake of a quick buck.

A few months later on September 15, 2025, Carnival then announces that Carnival Rewards will only honor lifetime Diamond status to guests who already have it. Of course, there’s a problem with this.

• Guests have less than a year to earn the status.
• The booking window for cruises is well beyond one year out.
• Thus, many cruises have already been booked.

That makes it tough for anyone to make changes to their schedule. And it assumes no one canceled their Carnival cruise over the loyalty mess in the first place. They create a limited-time incentive for guests to continue cruising with them with this carrot of lifetime status only for the top tier elites.

And then there’s the newest set of changes.

New changes are impacting the loyalty program

The start date for program changes has been pushed back

As of a November 20, 2025 announcement, the Carnival Rewards loyalty program start date moved from June 2026 to September 2026. The stated intention is to ensure that summer cruise activity is counted towards guests’ final VIFP status.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that pushing back the launch date of a program that has minimal positive reviews from guests seems like a prudent thing to do.

There will be a refresh of their credit card

In a move that shocks almost no one, Carnival will be refreshing the benefits of their U.S.-based credit card to capitalize on the launch of the new program. Recall that credit card spending will count towards status under the new Carnival Rewards program. However, don’t expect the card to provide anything more than one star per dollar spent. This implies that you’ll need to spend $10,000 over two years to get Gold, the first level of status.

That doesn’t sound too bad, but Gold only gives members two things over a base non-status member: access to Gold member customer service and one free drink on a sailing of at least five days long. Have fun spending on your card just to earn that.

Milestone awards will be honored

Carnival’s VIFP loyalty program gave special benefits to customers who reached 25, 50, 75, and 100 revenue sailings with the company. They get a special Sail & Sign card, and get a bonus onboard credit equal to 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100%, respectively, towards a cruise. Those who reach 100 cruises also get a free 8-day cruise of their choice to the Caribbean, Mexican Riviera, Alaska, or Australia in an Ocean Suite.

Carnival now says that customers can earn these milestones through August 31, 2026 and redeem them through August 31, 2030.

What’s not clear is if they were intending not to honor milestone rewards prior to this update. Did they not remember about it at all and only made a change when customers pointed it out? Does Carnival not see value in rewarding life-long customers who make it to 100 unique cruises anymore? Perhaps not if they’re just based everything on spend in the last two years. This seems like a miss.

Everyone gets 28 months to earn status in the first wave

While the intent under Carnival Rewards is to have all earning done on a two-year basis, there will be a small bone thrown to guests. Since the new program changes starting September 1, 2026, they’re going to make the first qualification period last the rest of 2026, plus all of 2027 and 2028.

While some might bill this as a positive change, we view it as just minimally necessary. The proper positive change should have been to count all of 2026 activity, not just anything that begins September 2026. It’s up to them on whether to allow 2028 to be included in the calculation. They’re encouraging everyone to rush out and book cruises before the program change happens.

This loyalty change is meant to emphasize recent spend with the company, but apparently it’s only when they say it counts. Guests who aren’t looking to become a Diamond for life are better off not spending anything with Carnival until after the program change occurs. That’s short-sighted of them.

They snuck variable points language into the FAQ

This isn’t called out explicitly in their November announcement, but it’s buried in the fine print. Under the new Carnival Rewards loyalty program, points will have variable value.

Your Carnival Rewards Points are flexible! You will be able to redeem your Carnival Rewards Points for almost anything Carnival offers. 100 points ≈ $1 in value, depending on demand—similar to how cruise fares vary.

They’re promising no floor in value from these points. Is the intent to have $0.01 in value per point be the average? That’s not clear either. With this switch in loyalty programs, they’ve offered nothing to assuage fears on what this will look like. And it’s incredibly deceptive of them to add in this wrinkle within the fine print rather than calling it out explicitly as a program update.

Carnival Rewards has a perception problem

Believe it or not, Carnival can’t get out of its way with this loyalty program change. Carnival Rewards just is not earning trust from anyone. Sure, there may be some customers who are close to Diamond and will stretch just to earn it for life and not have to worry about the new program. But for everyone else, the program changes are largely negative.

This is what happens when a loyalty program moves from recognizing a customer’s worth over a lifetime of sailings and instead moves towards recent money spent. At that point, it’s not loyalty but rather just who has the biggest wallet. There’s already a thing for those who have the biggest wallet–they can just buy the best room on the ship and all the benefits that come with it. That isn’t what loyalty should mean. Loyalty is supposed to be a reflection of how often you dedicate your travel life towards a particular company. And Carnival lost the messaging,

On top of damaged trust, their insistence on sneaking in new negative updates continues to harm the new program before it launches. The timing of all the announcements just feels like they didn’t plan this well at all. They didn’t expect all the blowback or else they wouldn’t be making changes to it.

Still no real update for non-U.S. members

At the September 2025 program update, Carnival admitted that there was no solution for customers outside of the United States to earn status via credit cards. The whole point of the high thresholds for each status level was to be a carrot for spending on the cards. But if you don’t have access to credit cards, it’s going to be awfully tough to earn that status. Carnival at the time left it as they are “actively exploring options”.

Flash forward to November 2025, and they changed their verbiage to “we are in active discussions with financial institutions in Australia and Canada to find a suitable product”. No timeline is given, and no promise of a deal. If you reside in any other country, Carnival seems to imply they don’t care about you when it comes to securing a credit card option.

Could it hurt them to offer up alternative elite qualification levels for members outside the U.S. who don’t have access to credit cards? What Carnival has done just adds to the negative news, and makes those members feel worthless and forgotten.

Competitors aren’t touching this

Perhaps the most noteworthy recognition of all of this is how competitors aren’t making changes. Royal Caribbean, Carnival’s biggest competitor, announced no changes to their program. It feels like loyalty programs of late have lacked innovative features and that each program tends to just be a mirror image. (Just look at how most of the airline industry awards miles for taking a flight.)

Perhaps some of it is just being blindsided by the news and not having the IT resources dedicated towards this project, but it’s still notable that nothing imminent is happening. Carnival’s mistakes are providing competitors plenty of insight into what actually motivates customers in today’s world. It’d be prudent of them to gather more intel before making a commitment.

Does the latest change to Carnival Rewards impact you?

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