RCI cruise pricing based on country of residence?

[retird]

We are from Canada and currently on voyager cruising from sydney to perth Australia. The ship will will then reposition to Singapore (14 day cruise). Our friends onboard ,who are from Australia mentioned that they could continue on the reposition for $739 per person. I checked online and my cost showed as $2039 per person.

 

I checked with the next cruise desk and was advised that although both us and our ausie friends were booking the reposition cruise onboard i would have to pay the $2039 per person because I was a resident of Canada.

 

While i realize that prices are different based on the country where you are booking, i was not aware that the prices would be different while booking fron the same location (onboard)

 

It is also a substantial price difference. Obviously i did not book the cruise

[robandana]

WOW that makes no sense at all, the CAD/AUD is almost at par....so its not an exchange issue...

 

I can't understand why the price would be that different, would this not be a kind of discrimination? :mad:

[Hailzmick]

Yup. They're different prices. It sucks. Usually we have to pay way more in Australia. But not this time.

[Mjoellnir]

I can confirm this as well.. I get the same prices when I book from royalcaribbean.no (Norway) and royalcaribbean.com. And I do not get to enter campaigns like BOGO/BOGHO or any OBC unless it is a campaign going on in Norway even if I book on the US website. Also, the rules for booking are different here. We can't cancel for free nor is it possible to ride on price drops.

 

But that works both ways

Luckily, I booked our cruise next february before the US$ became much more expensive for us so our GS now cost 4000nok (US$600) more than what it did back in October 14. RCCL Norway have promised that they will honor the original price in NOK

[MicCanberra]

I suppose it is a change that the aussie fare is much lower. There must be some reason that makes it so much more expensive for you as a Canadian. Very interested to find out why. :confused:

[hallasm]

For the same reason I always check the price from different sources before I book a cruise- Royalcaribbean.dk (Norway office) as well as US site. I also check prices from selected travel agents both local and US.

In general I do find prices to be very similar, but from time to time I have found much lower offers - primarily local offers for repositioning cruises out of Copenhagen. But also differences in offerings for BOGO/BOGHO campaigns.

I have over the years booked cruises at RCCL DK and US RCCL web, as well as from local and US TA - depending on offerings.

And as Mjoellnir is mentioning. A bit fustrating with different rules depending on where you book your cruise.

[AussieVisi2r]

We are from Canada and currently on voyager cruising from sydney to perth Australia. The ship will will then reposition to Singapore (14 day cruise). Our friends onboard ,who are from Australia mentioned that they could continue on the reposition for $739 per person.

 

Are you travelling with Alan and Christine?

 

Raina

[JasonTehGreat]

US based travel agents are forbidden from booking guests who are not residents of US, Canada or Mexico. They shouldn't even be giving you pricing if you are not a resident of North America.

[hallasm]

US based travel agents are forbidden from booking guests who are not residents of US, Canada or Mexico. They shouldn't even be giving you pricing if you are not a resident of North America.

Is this a recent change? I did book a cruise from a US TA for March last year.

Anyway - I can still check prices

[Elizanessie]

US based travel agents are forbidden from booking guests who are not residents of US, Canada or Mexico. They shouldn't even be giving you pricing if you are not a resident of North America.

 

Sorry but you are incorrect. I like many many others from the UK have booked with US TAs for many years.

 

My reservations are currently with RCCL US and they know I live in the UK :D

[retird]

US based travel agents are forbidden from booking guests who are not residents of US, Canada or Mexico. They shouldn't even be giving you pricing if you are not a resident of North America.

 

 

????

The pricing is readily available for anyone to check online by going to RCI website for that country. So no need for a travel agent to tell me the pricing

[Ourusualbeach]

For each ship and each itinerary Royal estimates what % of passengers from each country will book cabins on that particular ship / itinerary. Based on this they will set prices by market according to what they think they can change on each market.

 

For a sailing put of Australia they may have determined that 80% of the ship would be sold to locals and 20% to foreigners and of that 20% maybe 1% is to Canadians. Knowing that they only have to sell a handful of cabins to Cdns they feel that they can keep that price higher but in order to sell the 80% of cabins to locals they must reduce that price. (All numbers hypothetical but in essence that is how pricing is determined)

[Miryam1234]

The Norway office told me that RCI has divided Europe into different market sectors, and hence pricing it differently. Finland is handled as part of Scandinavia from Norway. But Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland all have different currency. We in Finland have EUR.

 

This is something I learned last year when accidentally booking our TA through French RCI site: EU rules protect us from unfair market pricing. If we find an offer valid for another EU country, we can utilize that regardles of RCI market rules, since EU claims that we are entitled to make a purchase within EU regardles of our country of origin: The price has to apply to everybody the same way. There are special conditions we have to accept - like different cancellation rules or due dates, since those might occur based on local legistlation, not EU laws.

 

That meant that I was able to utilize French weekend sale pricing for our Transatlantic, and got the same cabin for 500 EUR less than what Norway office offered to me. I had to pay according to French due date (70 days before departure versus Finnish 30 days) and my deposit was French (seriously more than what Finns pay). But nevertheless I saved much in total by accepting those conditions.

 

This is something you might want to consider, especially if you are from an EUR using country - like Germany, France, Italy, Finland, Spain etc.

[monctonguy]

Us Canadians usually pay more for everything when it comes to travel. Between our high taxes and airline prices, it makes travel very expensive.

 

But I can't see why it would be 3x the price that they are charging you compared to the "local" rate. I would defn be asking them why.

 

Not that it will change anything but, good to get an explaination and also for others to be aware based on your experience!

[DirtyDawg]

If I understand you correctly you are currently on the ship and the re-positioning cruise is right afterwards, i.e. to make this a B2B for you. There have been some good posts about why the price discrimination is occurring, you can't do anything about that - yet. Can you wait longer to book? Are there lots of cabins still available on the re-positioning cruise? If you wait long enough the cruise line will want to sell off any empty cabins to get some revenue from them vs. letting them sail empty.

[dasi11]

I had an issue like this for a Baltic cruise with friends. They live in Israel and their prices were showing much different then what my cruise prices were. I called RCCL with my friend on the phone in a 3 way call. I made the reservation for her and her husband but used my address. Then at final payment we changed the address to Israel.

I also had her put in the reservation that I could make any changes necessary to the reservation. So I got her 2 price drops and 2 upgrades by the time of the cruise. Maybe try this? Have your friend make the booking from their home phone and use their address to make the reservation and then call and change the address once the reservation is confirmed..... This is a way around an unfair policy.

Edited March 24, 2015 by dasi11

[cdwh1902]

US based travel agents are forbidden from booking guests who are not residents of US, Canada or Mexico. They shouldn't even be giving you pricing if you are not a resident of North America.

 

We have used a popular agency in the US for years - no worries, and they know that we live in Australia. Unfortunately, we do not get price drops - it just means that we have paid extra in tips!! ;)

[MicCanberra]

US based travel agents are forbidden from booking guests who are not residents of US, Canada or Mexico. They shouldn't even be giving you pricing if you are not a resident of North America.

 

There are lots of TAs breaking the law then.;)

[MicCanberra]

I had an issue like this for a Baltic cruise with friends. They live in Israel and their prices were showing much different then what my cruise prices were. I called RCCL with my friend on the phone in a 3 way call. I made the reservation for her and her husband but used my address. Then at final payment we changed the address to Israel.

I also had her put in the reservation that I could make any changes necessary to the reservation. So I got her 2 price drops and 2 upgrades by the time of the cruise. Maybe try this? Have your friend make the booking from their home phone and use their address to make the reservation and then call and change the address once the reservation is confirmed..... This is a way around an unfair policy.

 

Good plan, the OP can get the Aussies to book both cabins and then pay them the money or gift them OBC. Win win.:cool:

[JasonTehGreat]

There are lots of TAs breaking the law then.;)

It's not a law, just Royal Caribbean will ban that TA of they find out.

 

We tried to book a friend from London and the TA sent us a copy of the policy. It was very clear.

[Ourusualbeach]

Easiest way around this is to have your friends book 2 cabins. One with his name and your DH as the second person and one with her name and you as he second person. Once on board get extra keys and switch rooms.