Resident Discounts

[crzrr]

Does anyone know how the resident discounts are determined? We are booked on the March 8th Journey. They are offering resident discounts to residents of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and the District of Columbia (maybe more but that's all I checked). We live in Delaware and are not being offered the discount. This is our third Azamara cruise and we have taken 10 Celebrity cruises and I have never seen a resident discount for Delaware. I sent an email to Azamara but no reply. Since every state that we touch is being offered a discount and, if they do it by region, it would seem that Delaware should be included. The discounts are substantial.

[mstrc1]

Does anyone know how the resident discounts are determined? We are booked on the March 8th Journey. They are offering resident discounts to residents of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and the District of Columbia (maybe more but that's all I checked). We live in Delaware and are not being offered the discount. This is our third Azamara cruise and we have taken 10 Celebrity cruises and I have never seen a resident discount for Delaware. I sent an email to Azamara but no reply. Since every state that we touch is being offered a discount and, if they do it by region, it would seem that Delaware should be included. The discounts are substantial.

 

You are right, the discounts are substantial. We live in Illinois and we are being offered the discount and we were last year as well. I would call up one of their travel consultants and ask directly. Good luck

[crzrr]

I have spoken with 3 representatives, all of whom told me that it is a regional thing. Obviously, they need to be provided with maps of the USA so that they can see where Delaware is located. I finally got a supervisor who said that he would pass my concerns along to the people making the determinations. If (and it's a big "if" now) we take this cruise, it will be our last with Azamara - we'll take our Delaware dollars elsewhere.

[azalice]

I don't understand the idea behind such a discount. Why a discount for a Northern state and not for another? Do they have research that shows that those of us in AZ (Arizona, not Azamara) book this cruise line without any incentives and those closer to the East Coast need prompting?

 

Alice

[DaveP]

CRZRR

On another website these discounts are listed for people over 55. If you're old enough you can try that. Azamara also lists discounted airfare from Pa. for certain rooms (outsides). When I went through their booking engine for several of their listed cruises $539 came up for every catagory vs. $249 listed in their promo. Keep trying, maybe Azamara will find out where Delaware is located. Good Luck Dave

[nikless]

I called, all they did was ask in what state I lived...and they applied a SUBSTANTIAL discount. Took less than 3 minutes.

[crzrr]

Alice - there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to how they determine the states. At first they said it was by region but when I pointed out that we touch 2 states (PA and MD) and are adjacent to a third (NJ) where discounts are being offered, they changed the story to our state being too small. When I pointed out that the discounts are being offered in Rhode Island which is the smallest state in the country, they reverted back to regions. Obviously the travel consultants don't know how it is determined. Probably someone in the marketing department making the determination based on what, I don't know. And that is my problem with the whole process. At first I was amused figuring that they had made a mistake since every other state around us was being offered what is a very substantial discount. Now I am really annoyed and will be mailing a letter to Larry Pimentel today - snail mail since my emails are not being answered.

 

I would think that Arizona would be a targeted area for Azamara but I guess not.

 

Nikless - I'm glad that you got your discount but you live in a state where the discount is being offered. Not all states are being offered the "substantial" discount.

[nikless]

crzrr- I wasnt gloating, just trying to make the point that all they did was ask...although I assume that they looked up the mailing address on my reservation. You apparently need a MAILING address in PA or NJ.

[Literary Lynne]

:( Sadly for us in the UK, we are stateless and therefore discountless!

 

Lynne

[crzrr]

Nikless - you will need to show a drivers license at checkin to show that PA is your principle residence. If you can't produce that they will charge you the brochure rate. We actually own property in MD but that is not our principle residence so no discount. I know you weren't gloating - as I said, I'm happy that people get to take advantage of the discounts as every penny counts.

 

Lynne - I feel your pain ;)!

[DaveP]

CRZRR

I am looking at the Azamara site right now-0820 est. They are listing these discounts as "Senior Discounts" for all catagories on the Mar. 8th sailing. Discount comes up for Delaware. AZ site was down last night. Maybe you rattled some chains somewhere in their system. Dave

[alidor]

These regional discounts, senior discounts are offered by ALL the cruise lines. They are normally offered as a way to fill up a ship. When the ship first becomes offered for sales, it would be very rare to find these discounts. As it gets closer to sailing, these MAY be offered to fill up the ship. If you currently hold a reservation, you might be able to get your reservation switched to take advantage of the new rates.

[NewPennCruiser]

I could be wrong but I believe the Senior Discount and the Resident Discount might be different. I'm under 55 and was able to rebook our March 2010 cruise on the Quest for a substantial discount using the Resident Discount that was being advertised for our cruise in October. Like many who have posted here, we live in PA and the Resident Discount that we rebooked with had no age restrictions. At least they didn't have issues with my age and that was something they knew because we were booked for the cruise already with a pretty standard rate.

 

These "resident" discounts do seem odd though don't they...why target PA so much but not other states? The marketing dept. must spend hours trying to figure out some of these promotions. I'm certainly not complaining because we managed to rebook our cruise and upgrade to a substantially better cabin for less money. However it just doesn't make a lot of sense to the casual cruiser like myself.

 

One thing we learned out of all this was that you should always watch the rates on your planned cruise even if you booked it well in advance with what you thought was a good rate. Many of the ships right now are not sailing full so the rates seem to continuously change and the promotions come and go so they can fill cabins.

 

Dave

[alidor]

They are different. Both or either one could be offered on specific sailings (usually ones they need to fill up) and they aren't necessarily the same price. I need to qualify what I said about ALL lines offering them. I've never seen this on Regent or Seabourn or Cunard, but, then again, it may not be offered with sailings I was dealing with. Have definitely seen them, and often routinely this past year, with the Royal Caribbean ships (Celebrity, Azamara) and most of the Carnival ships (Princess, Holland America, etc.)

[crzrr]

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on the point of view ;), we don't qualify for over 55 so I haven't even looked at those. I have just been looking at resident discounts. Maybe by having this thread people will be able to check their cruises and save some money.

[Rysyonok]

I see that Delaware discount issue isn't new. I just ran into the same thing myself. A cruise I'm looking into is discounted for PA, NJ, MD, VA... No DE.

[DrKoob]

Here is what I truly believe is the reason that some states get discounts on some cruises and not on others.

 

Recently we were the recipient of one of these wonderful state discounts. We are from Washington State. Our best buddies who are also on the cruise are from Florida and it was not one of the states chosen for a discount. We got refunded (after final payment) $1500---each on a 14 day $4500 cruise.

 

Now, if I am Azamara and I need to fill up the ship (lots of cabins left at final payment date) I would drop prices to the states where if the state discounts are discovered by those who are already booked, I have to give back the least amount of money.

 

So, when AZ looked at our cruise, there were two cruisers from Washington but probably quite a few more from Florida. The thought here is, if they give a discount for Florida, they have to give out a BUNCH more money to cruisers already booked.

 

To sum up, the state discounts are based on how many people are already booked (at a higher price) from a particular state that they would need to give money back to.

[BGSS]

Where do you find out about these discounts? Are they listed on Azamara's web site?

[makai 7]

The only real way to see them is to price a cruise directly on the AZ web site and enter in your state of residence. If there is a resident discount, it will show two sets of prices for the staterooms - the "standard" and the resident rate.

I've seen where only certain categories have the discount, not all cabins.

We saved quite a bit of $$ with the MA discount.

[JJPacer]

I hope you are right about not having many from a state already booked, so there are fewer refunds to give out. We live in Indiana. If your theory is correct, then we can hope for a resident discount. We have never seen a resident discount for Indiana. I assumed it's because we're a smaller state with less people booking cruises. The discounts seem to go to the larger states, with a much larger population. PA, NJ, Md, Va, Wa, IL are all bigger than Indiana or Delaware.

 

Are the resident discounts about the same as a senior discount? We received a senior discount on our upcoming Journey cruise which made our final payment approx 60% of the brochure price (before late Nov. when they started moving the price up and down). If my math is correct, DrKoob paid approx 67% of his brochure cruise price and received a resident rate. These are different itineraries so it's not exactly apples to apples.

 

I understand this is a marketing tool to fill a ship. It would be nice if the cruise lines spread it around to other states, or as Crzrr pointed out to all the states in a certain region. It does make you wonder how they decide.

[Millerhm01]

Here is what I truly believe is the reason that some states get discounts on some cruises and not on others.

 

Recently we were the recipient of one of these wonderful state discounts. We are from Washington State. Our best buddies who are also on the cruise are from Florida and it was not one of the states chosen for a discount. We got refunded (after final payment) $1500---each on a 14 day $4500 cruise.

 

Now, if I am Azamara and I need to fill up the ship (lots of cabins left at final payment date) I would drop prices to the states where if the state discounts are discovered by those who are already booked, I have to give back the least amount of money.

 

So, when AZ looked at our cruise, there were two cruisers from Washington but probably quite a few more from Florida. The thought here is, if they give a discount for Florida, they have to give out a BUNCH more money to cruisers already booked.

 

To sum up, the state discounts are based on how many people are already booked (at a higher price) from a particular state that they would need to give money back to.

This all quite interesting to me ... a quick call to Azamara customer relations pretty much confirmed that the discounts are purely discretionary by the cruise line. For instance, on the particualr sailing we are taking, there are virtually no senior or state resident discounts being offered whatsoever (much to my disappointment).

[crzrr]

I'll jump in again at this point. When I started this thread I had sent a few emails to Azamara customer service and had not received a reply. I finally wrote up a letter and sent it snail mail to the president of Azamara (even put it in an Azamara envelope from our previous cruise). I received a call from a woman in his office. She asked for more information and then said that she would call me back. She did call back after she had spoken to the marketing department. Once again, the response was that Delaware was too small and they target states where they want more customers. I explained once again that the discount was being offered in Rhode Island, which is smaller than Delaware. To her credit, she asked if she could call me back. She did call within an hour and said that she had gone to personally speak with a manager in marketing who told her that they just pick different regions, different states and different demographics. So, basically, there is no rhyme or reason for the way the states are chosen. I'm guessing darts and a map of the US are involved ;)!

[What A Market]

Perhaps it's a red state/blue state thing. Ha!

[tommui987]

HEY ANDY - Azarama is missing a good bet - discount for the people of Hawaii.

 

Lot of people here travel - we love this rock but there is also "rock fever". Maybe Azarama should give us a discount to introduce themselves and probably will be the first company to extend such a discount - many in the lower 48 keep forgetting we are a state!

[crzrr]

Good to hear from you Tom! Hope that all is going well. Your trip is coming up!