Arvia wifi, and finding your family onboard

Arvia is the largest ship P&O has ever operated — roughly 345 metres, about sixteen guest decks, around 5,200 passengers. The wifi packages are the same as the rest of the fleet, but the problem they are supposed to solve is bigger here than anywhere else in it.

The free bit, and the paid bit

Joining Arvia's onboard network costs nothing. That gets you My Holiday — the daily programme, dining and theatre bookings, virtual queues, your onboard account — which is a web page rather than an app, and works with your phone in airplane mode.

What you pay for is that network carrying you out to the internet. P&O sells it in tiers, per device, and the cheaper ones are more limited than people expect. What P&O charges, and what each tier covers.

My Holiday has no guest messaging. That is worth knowing before you sail rather than discovering on day two. More on that here.

Why a package each is usually the wrong answer

The common pattern is a family of four buying four packages so they can message each other. That is paying four times to send a message to somebody who is two decks away, routed up to a satellite and back down.

The better arrangement is almost always one package, for whoever might genuinely be needed at home, and something local for reaching each other onboard. The full reasoning is here.

What 345 metres actually means

This is where Arvia differs from a smaller ship in kind, not just degree.

• Checking three places takes twenty minutes. On a small ship you walk round and find people. Here you do not.
• "The pool" is not a place. Arvia has several, across different decks, plus the SkyDome. Name the deck. How to agree a meeting point that works.
• Five thousand people share the connection. Morning is fine. Eight in the evening on a sea day is not.
• Steel stops signals going down far more than along. That is why walkie talkies disappoint people here. The physics, briefly.

What we do, and what we do not

CruiseLink passes messages straight between the phones in your group over Bluetooth and the ship's local network. No package, no account, free, airplane mode throughout.

On a ship this size the limits matter and we would rather say them here than have you find out at sea. It reaches only the group you set up. Everyone needs it before you sail. And a message travels when phones come near enough — directly, or carried by somebody else in your group who moves between you. From a top-deck bar to a cabin low down with nobody in between, a message waits until somebody walks. On a ship of five thousand people that is usually quick, because somebody always is. It is not instant, and we will not pretend it is.

Agree a meeting point as well. On Arvia, both.

Get CruiseLink

Free, no account, nothing to set up beyond your group. On iPhone and Android, and the two work together.

Not affiliated with P&O Cruises. Ship figures are approximate and vary between published sources. Checked October 2026.