Brattle

Thanks for the help. I always book towards the mid/aft elevators on S Class ships but now that Suites have activities towards the front I am moving my room to the front elevators. Thanks for the experienced advice.

Looking for opinions on the best location of the Sky Suite 2 location on the Edge. We are limited to the front (fore?) and back (aft?) set of elevators. So I guess my question is - What set of elevators  will I find most convenient to the majority of my cruise ?

I grew up w/ the Jefferson Airplane, Doors, Beatles etc. LOVED the music and never did any drugs my entire life. I would never let a song interfere w/ who I do business with. As someone else said, there are other cruise lines. I do believe "people" are getting way too sensitive. Life is too short.

I know that specific TA agencies cannot be named and I am good with that. If that were allowed this board would turn into nothing but sales pitches.

At this point I have exhausted the list of the largest TA's online and the best that I can do is not close to what others are reporting. It might be the date, the cruise or the ship but I am booking direct and maybe I will talk to people on my upcoming cruise and find someone with a good recommendation.

23 minutes ago, wrk2cruise said:

My agent gives me 10% of the cruise fare minus the non-commissionable cruise fare.  I have a spreadsheet which calculates it and his offer is the same every time.

 

I've received thousands in refundable OBC in the last several years.

I am clearly doing something wrong. Maybe I will try again tomorrow.-Brick and mortar if I can even find one and online. So far I am just not seeing it (5-8-10%)

12 minutes ago, grandgeezer said:

 

On a similar subject I posted about booking $9K cruise on Celebrity cruise which we just got home a couple of weeks ago. We got $1125 in refundable obc which was credited to our credit card after about three days. I gave up 0 control of my reservation from the time I booked it until the time we finished the cruise.

grandgeezer was this booked while onboard a Celebrity cruise? I am doing the Panamal Canal in a little over a month with Celebrity. I have a 24hr hold on a cruise on the Edge for Feb. but maybe I will wait until onboard if the offers are that good.

I am booking a 7k Sky Suite on Celebrity. After hearing about all the great TA deals I decided to do my due diligence and offer it to a travel agent. I used bigbox stores and the biggest online cruise sales companies that I could find. I probably used 9 different agents. Figuring that they make a 10-12% commission (or more) I thought there might be some room to make this profitable.-NOT  The worst offer that I got was a $65 pp obc and the best offer was $150 pp obc. I also found that some bigbox companies came in with higher prices and then offered larger rebates that brought the price back to what everyone else was offering. 

Good luck to those who have success with a TA and maybe it is just this particular cruise but I just did not find the value in giving up control of my 7 thousand dollar booking for a few hundred bucks. I hope that you do better.

11 hours ago, morfred said:

I decided today to book with a TA after hearing all the great stories of OBC etc, on this threat. I am booking a 7 day cruise on the Edge in a suite. I don't belong to any bigbox stores so I picked out the largest online cruise travel agents. My results have been less than stellar. The first agent offered $65 pp off the price and the best offer was $150 obc pp- far below the 6-10% rebates I hear of on this thread. I will be booking direct with Celebrity.

I do not think that you have found good agents. You should be getting a much better deal than those.

I have bought martinis at the martini bar with the classic package but they are in a smaller glass

It can be done but it depends on the ship