Back to Back Cruises for Australians

[bangles]

Does anyone know anything about Back to Back Cruising. I have heard stories that if you book 2 or more cruises with the same line, at the same time for consecutive cruises, even if it means changing ships at end of cruise sector, the cruise line will offer you some generous savings. I thought this was one of those urban myths, but I found a U.S. travel site that explain just how it works, unfortunately it only applied to U.S. travellers. Has anyone heard about this? or if it was available for Australian travellers?

[Shmoo here]

Does anyone know anything about Back to Back Cruising. I have heard stories that if you book 2 or more cruises with the same line, at the same time for consecutive cruises, even if it means changing ships at end of cruise sector, the cruise line will offer you some generous savings. I thought this was one of those urban myths, but I found a U.S. travel site that explain just how it works, unfortunately it only applied to U.S. travellers. Has anyone heard about this? or if it was available for Australian travellers?

 

I've never read of B2B cruisers getting any savings by doing so.

 

And, if you change ships, it's not really a B2B.

[sail7seas]

We've done a great many b-to-b cruises as well as what HAL calls Collectors Cruises. (Those are two consecutive cruises which HAL joins as one and though there are guests boarding and leaving at the end of the first, a great many guests remain for another segment.) We have gotten some small discounts for doing consecutive cruises but not anything very significant.

 

We love the b-to-b but they are not a 'bargain'.

 

(We are from U.S.)

Edited November 28, 2013 by sail7seas

[CruiserBruce]

I agree if you change ships, I don't think any cruise line will consider it a B2B for any discounts.

 

We, on the other hand, have experienced benefits (in terms of price discounts) on 2 of our three B2Bs. In these two cases, we had initially booked them as separate cruises. Holland America (HAL) has figured out the B2B concept, and frequently sets up their routes to not repeat week after week, thus encouraging people to stay on for a B2B. When they do this, they frequently call them Collector's Cruises. When the two cruises we booked were combined to be a Collectors Cruise, we received discounts of 16% and 23% by combining the bookings into a Collector's Cruise.

[Colorado Kat]

On Carnival you do not get any discounts for B2B cruises. But they are very nice to do!

[LHT28]

Depends on the cruise line

if you stay on the same ship some will give a discount for B2B

Oceania does this

[Keith1010]

Like most things in life the answer is that it depends.

 

Some cruise lines will give you savings for taking back to back cruises on the same ship and in some cases the savings are substantial whereas other cruise lines will give you very little savings and even some won't give you anything. Most lines do not give anything when switching ships but a few do.

 

Your best bet is to find some back to back cruises that you might consider and then seeing what the pricing would be.

 

For the most generous savings you'll find them on the luxury lines but the starting point of the cruises will be more expensive then other categories of lines.

 

Again, you won't get a conclusive answer by asking a general question because the answer varies by cruise line.

 

Keith

[SadieN]

Just got back from a B2B on the Carnival Conquest.

We received no moneys off for booking the B2B but we only had to pay for one airfare. We did receive a fruit basket and a bottle of Sparkling Wine the first day of our second cruise.