One more question on booking from a Celebrity newbie....

I've been around these boards long enough to know in is not allowed to recommend a specific travel agent. Having said that, do: 1. most of you book your cruises directly through Celebrity by calling and talking with someone there, or 2. do you have a travel agent you prefer, or 3. Do you scour online websites?

I have looked around the web a bit and am finding quite a discrepancy in pricing. Just want to be an educated consumer. :)

Thanks. We are getting very excited about jumping to this line. It is somewhat uncomfortable, though, having been so accustomed to the other line's policies, etc, after 15 years with them. We feel like newbies!

Whether we book direct with Celebrity or with a TA I always talk to a person when booking. Booking on a website doesn't allow for questions, eg are there cabins available that are not showing on the website, is there a military or firefighter discount, can I be waitlist for my preferred dining time if it is full, etc.

95% of the we either book directly with a online TA or if we book with Celebrity we transfer the booking to a TA.

I prefer working with my TA, who is wonderful! She always finds us the best deals and provides little perks you cannot get online or with the cruise line.

I book with Celebrity Vacation Planner direct. He knows what we are looking for and want in a cabin.

We use 2 different agents (one local and the other online) depending on the cruise line, destination and air arrangements. After 47 cruises we still come up with questions and like some direction.

My suggestion is to find an agent that you are comfortable with and trust - either in person or an on-line agent. Oh, and one that you can communicate with when you want without waiting for a call center someplace in the world to connect you with a person reading from a script.

Hal

I use a high volume cruise only agent. You leave too much money on the table booking direct with the cruise line.

I use a high volume cruise only agent. You leave too much money on the table booking direct with the cruise line.

Does it depend on the cruise line? Some cruise lines don’t allow TAs to discount. Is it OBC and other perks?

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I book directly with Celebrity via a live travel planner. Been very happy with service and advice.

Does it depend on the cruise line? Some cruise lines don’t allow TAs to discount. Is it OBC and other perks?

 

 

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Well with mine, I'll get a decent chunk of OBC where she can't discount. Princess & HAL, she'll discount - I know the big box store that does travel will provide you with a gift card for their store. Just randomly checking big box store, a Med Cruise that's $2,700 Cdn pp comes with a $450 - $700 store card dependent on the level of balcony booked.

I use a high volume cruise only agent. You leave too much money on the table booking direct with the cruise line.

A good high volume agent gets group rates and passes along those savings as well as onboard credit to customers. For that reason, I agree 100% with your response.

I use a high volume cruise only agent. You leave too much money on the table booking direct with the cruise line.

Can't seem to find this type of agent. Once I say I'm from Canada .Their so called special disappear in the blink of an eye.

We book directly with the cruise line. I have seen prices drop and not been able to contact my TA...ended up losing the lower price. Booking direct, I can speak directly with the cruise line without waiting for a TA to return my call. We did book our next cruise with a high volume agency. Price was the same as the cruise line and all we got was a $50 OBC. Plus we got a $100 cancellation fee if we should cancelled...that would be credited to another cruise if we booked with that agency.

Another time I wanted to book a Guarantee stateroom and the TA refused to book stating that people complain when the get their stateroom assignment and agent was not doing it anymore. Sorry, we are the customer and it is our choice!

We just have not had great service from a TA to justify the little that they offer.

Booking on board a ship definitely gives some extra perks.

Thanks all for your answers to all my questions!!! We are booked. :)

While I do tons of shopping online, the one thing we do with a local brick and mortar business is booking our cruises. He has given us good advice over the years but after many cruises and lots of time on Cruise Critic, we've come to the point that we always call him knowing exactly what we want. However, sometimes after booking I'll find a cabin I prefer or see a price drop. The response I get is always immediate. He does not give us OBC. However, when it's time for final payment, he always makes a portion of the payment with his own credit card. Recently, we decided to try a European river cruise and had no idea what we were doing. We sat down with him for the first time in many years and he walked us through the options and helped us make our choices. If he should retire, we'll probably change to a big box agency but in the meantime, we like giving our business to someone we can reach easily.

We book directly with the cruise line. I have seen prices drop and not been able to contact my TA...ended up losing the lower price. Booking direct, I can speak directly with the cruise line without waiting for a TA to return my call.

 

For my upcoming cruise I saw a price drop late at night - an A2 for the price of an inside cabin - since my TA is not available 24x7, all I had to do was put a 24-hour hold on the cabin and then have my TA transfer my existing reservation to the new A2 cabin at the great rate that I had locked in with the 24-hour hold.

We did book our next cruise with a high volume agency. Price was the same as the cruise line and all we got was a $50 OBC. Plus we got a $100 cancellation fee if we should cancelled...that would be credited to another cruise if we booked with that agency.

 

Big Box Warehouse TA has no cancellation or transfer fees and gives you about 8% back post-cruise in the form of a store credit. We expect to pay $5000 to $6000 for our cabin on our next cruise; and $400 to $480 or more back is nothing to sneeze at. We will get the on-board booking bonus OBC of $200 per cabin by booking a "placeholder" cruise on board. Since we have a 60-day period to transfer the reservation to a TA, with the expectation that Celebrity will release their new 2019 cruises before our 60 days expire, we will have time to determine which TA will give us the best deal - Big Box or Online - on our intended cruise that we will have the TA we select book as a replacement for our placeholder reservation - all the while retaining our on-board-booking bonus OBC.

Another time I wanted to book a Guarantee stateroom and the TA refused to book stating that people complain when the get their stateroom assignment and agent was not doing it anymore. Sorry, we are the customer and it is our choice!

 

We just have not had great service from a TA to justify the little that they offer.

 

Booking on board a ship definitely gives some extra perks.

But to each their own - happy cruising!

I too use a high volume cruise only agency but speak to someone on the phone at least at first. My next Celebrity cruise is in a suite so besides the "all in" I am getting a cool $1000/cabin OBC from the TA. There IS the possibility that if I cancel (rather than reschedule a cruise) I have to pay a cancellation fee which I wouldn't have to do going direct but for that amount of money I'll take the chance. B/c I know if I cancel, 99.9% of the time I'll rebook anyway. (and out of 70 cruises I've maybe cancelled once and rebooked 3 x's). If I were vaguely likely to cancel then I'd go w/ the "big box warehouse" and book thru them. In my cruises I've gotten literally tens of thousands of dollars either in savings due to the "group booking rates" or other perks.

.......do: 1. most of you book your cruises directly through Celebrity by calling and talking with someone there' date=' or 2. do you have a travel agent you prefer, or 3. Do you scour online websites?[/quote']

1. Yes - sometimes we do, if we have questions.

2. Yes - but different travel agencies offer better deals for different cruises, so the one we preferred to use the last time will not necessarily be the one we prefer for the next cruise.

3. Yes - sometimes, but it depends on the circumstances. More often it involves comparing offers that the travel agencies send to us.

 

Also

 

4. Or we book a cruise onboard to take advantage of the additional onboard booking bonus.

 

5. Or we see a cruise we want and book it online; having no need to talk to anyone else about it.

(This is actually the easiest way, as we see our billing and payment information and due dates right there in our own online account, and can make payments or changes ourselves at our own convenience without needing to contact a third party to do it for us).

There are pros and cons, whichever way you do it.

 

Even if we plan to give our booking to a travel agent, we prefer to take the 60 days that Celebrity allows after booking to compare offers before doing so.

 

We liked it so much better when Celebrity would let us wait right up until final payment date to transfer the reservation to a travel agent of our choice, but too many of us were doing that and they were being bombarded with transfer requests at final payment time. So they changed the rules.

 

As for deciding whether or not to use a travel agent at all, cabin category and price can be important factors in our decision.

 

In general, when booking a suite, or even booking a regular cabin at the regular published price, travel agents are able to offer us additional incentives that make it worthwhile for us to give them our booking.

(Although a few posters here have reported being able to get Celebrity's own reps to match offers from travel agents.)

However, when booking at last minute rock bottom closeout prices, we seldom find it worth bothering to use a travel agent at all because their commission is so small that they are unable to offer us any significant perks.

 

While there are good and honest travel agents, there are also some who unscrupulously try to claim they are "giving" you perks that are really coming from the cruise line; perks that you would receive anyway even if you do not book with them.

One more reason why I do not like using a TA.

Our next cruise is booked through a Big Box TA. Today I looked at the website and noted an available stateroom located in a better spot than what we were able to get when booking. I called the TA and while I am looking at the website that shows 4 staterooms available, the TA tells me there are NO staterooms available and I cannot change my stateroom location.

Total BS! Regrettable, I cannot call the cruise line directly because this booking is with a TA.

We have not had very good experiences with TA's except our Big Box Warehouse.

We booked an Alaska cruise with 3 other parties- this booking was made with a TA who we were acquainted with from our old neighborhood. She owned the agency and went on vacation a few weeks after we booked. Her co-worker decided that she knew best and responded to an upgrade call from the cruise line and moved my FIL more to the middle of the ship. We choose his cabin to be next to us because we were cruising together and he was 85 years old. After the owner returned from her vacation, she was able to get him moved back closer to us but not to his original booked cabin.

Yes, we always make sure to specify No Upgrade.

Anyway, now we always use our Big Box Warehouse because it appears that we always get a good deal and it would be too painful to look for another "private" TA.

However, if anyone has any pointers on how to do that research I am open!

JMG- Yes, I know what you are talking about. This also happened to us and I told the Big Box that the cabin was still available on the Cruise line website; he made a phone call and we were able to make the change.

Does it depend on the cruise line? Some cruise lines don’t allow TAs to discount. Is it OBC and other perks?

Royal Caribbean and Celebrity have limits as to what a TA can rebate to their customer. They also require that the customer pays the LAPACF (lowest applicable publicly available cruise fare). This still opens the door to creating groups that exist for the TA’s clients, but the client needs to pay the fare, not the TA (ie, no “$500 off” sale where the TA pays $500 and you pay the balance).

Generally, the cruise lines don’t seem to take it too seriously, if a TA rebates. As long as you’re not blasting it all over the internet that you will beat any TA’s rebate, and as long as it only happens 1:1 between the TA and their client, the cruise lines don’t seem to get all snoopy about it.

I can’t see this happening:

X: hey, mr. big box store, we’ve heard you rebate more than $200 on a one week cruise. Did you read the rebating policy?

Big box: yup. We have to in order to compete with everyone else. Will you stop the small TA’s from going over too?

X: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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