discount on several cabins?

[njcruisingmom]

Does anyone know if there would be a discount if an extended family group booked four cabins, for example? It's not a big group, but it would be a nice chunk of business.

[canderson]

Does anyone know if there would be a discount if an extended family group booked four cabins, for example? It's not a big group, but it would be a nice chunk of business.

You need to check with a TA to hear the current rules, but I believe group space begins at 8 cabins.

[CruisingChick]

I was told it has to be 8 or more cabins to get a discount.

 

We booked 5 cabins total on our April cruise and did not get anything off.

 

Anne Maria

[Druke I]

I've been told that eight cabins, double occupancy (16 people) is the industry norm for group discounts.

[chessbriar]

Group booking is at 8 cabins. Check with your agent, their company may have other bookings on your sailing and may be able to put a group together

[TPKeller]

There is also no guarantee that a group booking is available for a particular sailing. I don't know if they change the number available from date to date, or if they just sell out, but the cruise I am currently planning did not have any group bookings available.

 

Theron

[chessbriar]

RCCL/X has made group booking a little more honest toward having a group. In the past there was not much of a time limit on how long you could keep rooms on hold for a group booking. That's changed, it's now I believe 90 days.

[montgomeryfamily]

Another possible way for your family to join a group and to get group pricing is to join one of the many Cruise Critic Group sailings. This way all four of your cabins could be booked at a group rate.

 

All of the current Cruise Critic group sailings are listed on the Board under the Member Cruises category. You may want to check to see if any of these cruises/dates would fit your family's requirements.

[cruiseorbust]

It is 8 cabins. After that, one passenger gets to go for free (cruise portion only, not port/tax). That one person would be based on which ever cabins, in their group of people, were occupied the most. In other words, if you have 4 inside cabins, l suite, and 3 outside cabins....one passenger from the inside cabin would have their cruise portion free.

 

Hope this helps

[ocngypz]

You need to have 16 passengers (1st and 2nd passengers only count) ... and the free berth, under the new rules must sail. Celebrity and RCCL will not credit the other berths in your group to reduce everyone's pricing. You would need to take care of that among the members of your group privately.

 

Not every sailing has group amenity points available.

 

Carnival still has the best group pricing whereby you can take your points and reduce everyone's rate (1st and 2nd passengers) across the board.

[trish22]

We took advantage of group rates for our upcoming Celebrity sailing -- and it was as described -- we got a discount for one person to sail free -- cruise only -- in the stateroom category we primarily reserved.

 

A couple of things -- we're booked on an Alaska cruisetour -- 7 day cruise with 5 day post land tour. Again, the discount only applied to the cruise portion of the trip.

 

We had a few kinks with the distribution of the discount -- I wanted everyone in my group to benefit from it.

 

So...

 

Our TA put our individual discounts on our final payment invoices and we all -- as a group -- ponyed up our final payments (each paying a discounted amount).

 

That meant that our TA had the group's final payment together and ready for Celebrity, which was minus the total discounted fare.

 

All Celebrity did on their end was give one person the free fare (mine!) and then accepted the lump sum payment for all of our staterooms.

 

That's how we divvied up our discount among members of the group.

 

Now -- a word of caution -- we negotiated this deal over a year ago and our sailing is still a month away. The rules changed over the past several months.

 

Celebrity wanted to change the rules -- mid-stream -- so that we didn't get our discount until *after* we sailed.

 

It took an argument -- and getting past a few Celebrity reps until we got to someone who could help us - to get grandfathered in.

 

We also qualified for the discount with 5 cabins, not 8. My understanding is that that has also now since changed.

 

Point is -- whatever you negotiate, get it in writing - especially if you're booking waaaay ahead of time. And don't be surprised is there's a bit of a bump in the road come time for final payment!

 

~ trish