Oceania Shore Excursion Pricing: Are You Kidding Me!

[G&G]

I am currently cruising on another wonderful Oceania ship, the Riviera, 10 day Western Caribbean. We are Day 6 of our great adventure.

 

I decided to book two shore excursions while on board. a Beach Snorkel in Costa Maya for $104 and a snorkel in Belize for $149. In both places were other cruise ships.

 

The Costa Maya tour required a 45-50 minute drive one way to the beach to snorkel. The day before arriving the beach location was changed to only a 15 minute drive one way. The overall time of the tour did not change but the price was not reduced for less driving distance. I decided to cancel. When I went ashore I could have taken a taxi roundtrip to the revised beach location for $8 ! The exact same tour on a Carnival ship was $49.99.

 

The snorkel tour in Belize I also canceled was $149; on another cruise line was $104 !

 

And now I jusr saw a Mini Speed Boat Snorkel & Beach Adventure Tour in Cozumel priced at $209 on Oceania was $95.99 on Carnival; exact same tour accept Carnival's tour was 30 minutes longer.

 

Are you kidding Me !

[hypercafe]

I do not think it was ever a secret that the tours on Oceania are way over priced. I saw the same things when we took the Maya Mystery Trip. In fact most of the Oceania regulars say never take the ship tours.

[Flatbush Flyer]

I do not think it was ever a secret that the tours on Oceania are way over priced. I saw the same things when we took the Maya Mystery Trip. In fact most of the Oceania regulars say never take the ship tours.

 

 

Unless the particular O cruise has "O Life" which includes excursions (number depends on cruise length -e.g., 10 day gets 4) as well as internet and gratuities. All summer season 2016 O cruises include O Life at no additional cost if cruise is booked by 12/31/15.

[hondorner]

Discussed before; there are some reasons (not as many people on an Oceania ship to get bulk pricing, few people actually take excursions which makes it worse, some Oceania tours put fewer people on a bus, etc) but the reasons don't change the fact that Oceania charges more. We just finished an NCL cruise; the excursions were about 40% cheaper overall.

 

Private excursions are often the way to go, although in some areas the private excursions are the same as the ship excursions, often at the same price. Also, the private excursions involve smaller groups, usually 6 - 12 and sometimes to 20, and there are not enough guides to take everyone who wants to go. For that reason, even though we have signed up for 32 private excursions on the world cruise, we also have 34 ship excursions booked. The 25% "Your World" discount after a minimum number (changes with each cruise) makes it easier to take -- it's like a "buy one, get one at half price" sale.

 

I don't recommend the Unlimited Passport deal; the price rarely works out well. I did use Unlimited Passport on one cruise when they had a 2 for 1 deal -- the passport was 50% off. I;ve never seen that deal again (it was on the 10th anniversary cruise in Alaska in 2013).

 

I have not yet sailed on a cruise with O Life and haven't paid any attention to the details.

[LHT28]

If you have sailed on O before why is this a surprise to you ???

[Noxequifans]

No .... O isn't kidding. Hondorner gave a few reasons for the prices of O excursions. I also look at the whole O experience to make a judgement on pricing. For example, there is no charge to dine in the specialty restaurants.

 

Also O offered excursions are easy to book and cancel. O does monitor the quality of the excursions and seeks feedback on them.

 

The good thing about excursions is that you have a choice ..... book with O, seek private ones, or navigate oneself on shore.

[wripro]

It's great to have that choice. And the smartest choice is to avoid them completely.

[wristband]

Ditto - avoid O's ship tours. The insane pricing aside, jamming 30 people on a bus with a so-called "guide" (often high school grads with limited English skills, to reciting boring details about hectacres planted with soy with no commentary on religious, political cultural or social events taking place - even the guides sound bored of their mind)...not my cup of tea.

 

Plus, with private tours you have great flexibility to readjust on the fly if something special appears that day. You avoid the mandatory junk "souvenier" shop stop (read: t shirts). You engage with a local who loves their city/country and has interesting stories to share and you enjoy a personal connection, seeing the sites through his/her eyes, for the day.

 

Its painful waiting for 28 people to climb on and off the bus. Forget the ship tours and find someone locally who can provide a fun, fulfilling day.

[hondorner]

It's great to have that choice. And the smartest choice is to avoid them completely.

Not sure that's always the smartest choice. In Mombasa not too long ago, an Oceania tour was 6 hours late because the transportation was bogged down by weather. The ship waited for them. If they were on a private excursion on the same route, they'd have been stuck and had to find their own way to the next port.

 

For that reason, we have canceled our private tour to the same area and substituted a ship tour. There are other areas, in the po ports which we will visit, that are not recommended for DIY or private tours for various reasons. Many times a ship excursion, at any price, is a better option than staying aboard the ship and missing that port. We're only going to travel around the world once; we would rather pay more than miss anything.

[caviargal]

We prefer to book private tours and drivers so that we are not traveling in a group and have the flexibility a private tour provides.

 

We heard lots of complaints about the O excursions on our Med cruise. We booked private in every port and enjoyed every single one.

[Mura]

I agree, Don. I also think Wristband was a bit excessive in comments. I'm not a defender of ship's tours -- we also prefer smaller tours. But the level of guides we've encountered on ship's tours has usually been much higher than Wristband described. Sure, we've had an occasional lemon -- but the same has been true of a few private tours as well.

 

In fact, the worse experience we had with a guide who didn't speak much English was with a last minute replacement on a private tour to Rabat. When Libya was deleted from our itinerary (this was back in Nov '05) our day in Casablanca was changed which meant that the originally scheduled guide was not available so he sent a friend. In the end, when the new guide discovered I could act as translator, he just spoke to me in French and I translated for our group. We were lucky I could do so!

 

Maybe Wristband has just had worse luck than we have on tours. I won't say that Oceania is justified in its pricing (Don's comments are pertinent here, of course) or that its ship's tours are the greatest thing since sliced bread. But we've usually been pretty lucky with them.

 

Mura

[sail57]

I was on an Oceania excursion recently with passengers and Land Discoveries staff from Azamara.

Tha Azamara passengers paid $40 less.

[wristband]

Funny enough Mura, the last Oceania tour we took was to...Rabat! It was not worthwhile for the reasons noted in my earlier post, especially with our guide who had great difficulty communicating simple thoughts to those on the bus.

 

As in, "say, what's the big demonstration about?" Our bus was stopped on the street due to the throngs protesting something. He wouldn't answer, sat stone faced. "Say, what is important about this site we are visiting?" Answer: "Its a medina, you go shop, come back one hour." Seriously? No commentary about the history or cultural importance, so we wander aimlessly in a labrynith?

 

We took the O tour to save time and effort to get to Rabat. Much rather have had a private guide pick us up in the port and go to Fez or Rabat. We last visited Rabat ten years ago on Regent - which at the time offered "free" tours as O now does. You get what you pay for.

[harryw]

Last summer we tried to book a HOHO bus in Slovenia with O but it was sold out. I then found

a private one online at half the price. After exchanging my e-voucher at a kiosk shipside, I was led to a bus - with an O sign in the windshield! O shared the same tour but doubled the price for passengers booking through them!

 

Harry

[ronrick1943]

It's always better to do and plan it yourself..

[Dwtlion]

The answer of how to organize your shore excursions depends largely on where you are cruising. For example, Tahiti and the South Pacific have little infrastructure and tour operators. Consequently on many of the small, remote islands the ship, thru the tour godfather on the island, has lined up most if not all tour operators. In this case using private operators or doing a diy is not a viable option.

Conversely in Europe and St. Petersburg private tour operators are an excellent choice- it just takes time researching current and prior roll calls, trip advisor and other internet sites to get educated and book.

As always, it you are not a researcher or comfortable with Diy, then by all means use O, but recognize there is a cost for feeling comfortable.

[Tampaskier]

My husband and I are new to cruising and we have found several friends, whose advice we respect, have suggested private tours. How do you arrange the private tours in advance...through Trip Advisor? If so, in what way? Would appreciate suggestions on this.

[LHT28]

My husband and I are new to cruising and we have found several friends, whose advice we respect, have suggested private tours. How do you arrange the private tours in advance...through Trip Advisor? If so, in what way? Would appreciate suggestions on this.

research the ports

On CC there are forums PORTS OF CALL many people will give names of good tour guides in those ports

Trip advisor is another option

 

Go to the ROLL CALL for you sailing you may find some people have already organized private tours & willing to share (if you want to join )

Do your research then you will know if you can DIY or find a guide or use the ship's tours

Edited December 18, 2015 by LHT28

[Mura]

Lyn's suggestions are right on.

 

What I do first is research the ports. I look for guides on my own, and Trip Advisor is a good source for getting reports from former users.

 

Go to the roll call and see who is interested in sharing.

 

I've done about half joining someone else's group and about half setting them up on my own.

 

You just have to get started. Even if you don't want to start out by organizing a tour yourself, by doing the research you can have an idea about which tour someone else is setting up would be good. And you should feel free about asking questions of the person who is setting up a tour.

 

Obviously, we don't really know until we've used a guide but I've been lucky. I haven't had any disasters even if one or two weren't quite what we'd have liked.

 

Mura

[hondorner]

It's always better to do and plan it yourself..

Yes, it's almost always better, but it's not always possible...and in some cases, not advisable. The trick is to recognize the difference and make the best of what's available.

 

A good example is the upcoming world cruise. Some of us have been booked for nearly 2-1/2 years. Many of us had private excursions arranged last year, and after the cancellation, maintain contact with these guides. In many cases, they were the only -- or at least the best -- private guides available. Almost every one of these excursions was limited to 6 to 12 people.

 

Fast forward to this year as folks booked segments on the voyage -- and searched and begged for private excursions. They were pretty much gone, some folks located others, but no one was able to find a private excursion in every port, even those of us who started 2-1/2 years ago.

 

Insisting that private excursions are always the answer raises false hope.

[SeagoingMom]

My experience on four different cruise lines has been that basically, the cost of excursions pretty much corresponds to the cost of the cruise, or at least the "image" of the cruise line. Isn't this what is going on here, too?

 

I would imagine the cruise lines assume that if the clientele choose a more expensive cruise, they are willing to pay for (and perhaps even expect) more expensive excursions.

[StanandJim]

My experience on four different cruise lines has been that basically, the cost of excursions pretty much corresponds to the cost of the cruise, or at least the "image" of the cruise line. Isn't this what is going on here, too?

 

I would imagine the cruise lines assume that if the clientele choose a more expensive cruise, they are willing to pay for (and perhaps even expect) more expensive excursions.

 

There is something to what you are saying, but it is also true that until very recently, Oceania (and latterly, Regent) have been lone wolves with ships that rarely called at a given port more than five or six times in a Season (Miami does not count, as they don't offer Shore trips there!).

 

With so few calls per year AND the far smaller passenger capacities of their ships, Oceania was being squeezed to pay top dollar in order to engage the Guides who couldn't, or worse wouldn't, take the steady job with the big boys.

 

In other words, Tour Guides have always been far more likely to give the Carnival Corporation, which, we mustn't forget, now includes HAL, Princess, Cunard, Costa, and Carnival, a reduced price (volume discount?) for bringing 15000 people to a Caribbean Island each and every week, than they ever would to an intermittent visitor.

 

I have been hoping that the Norwegian connection will improve Oceania's pull with the Guides as it already has with the Entertainment!, but outside of the Americas and Europe, Norwegian doesn't seem to have any existing infrastructure at all.

[ChatKat in Ca.]

On our last Oceania cruise, we did our own, and we also booked via Shore Trips. Almost every excursion was by the same operator as Oceania was using. One, Oceania charged about $150pp. We paid $49. Markup unreasonable. Two years ago all we did were private tours. 6-8 in a private van at less than 60-80 pp for all day excursions. All were beyond fantastic

[hypercafe]

There is something to what you are saying, but it is also true that until very recently, Oceania (and latterly, Regent) have been lone wolves with ships that rarely called at a given port more than five or six times in a Season (Miami does not count, as they don't offer Shore trips there!).

 

With so few calls per year AND the far smaller passenger capacities of their ships, Oceania was being squeezed to pay top dollar in order to engage the Guides who couldn't, or worse wouldn't, take the steady job with the big boys.

 

In other words, Tour Guides have always been far more likely to give the Carnival Corporation, which, we mustn't forget, now includes HAL, Princess, Cunard, Costa, and Carnival, a reduced price (volume discount?) for bringing 15000 people to a Caribbean Island each and every week, than they ever would to an intermittent visitor.

 

I have been hoping that the Norwegian connection will improve Oceania's pull with the Guides as it already has with the Entertainment!, but outside of the Americas and Europe, Norwegian doesn't seem to have any existing infrastructure at all.

 

This is the reason I have seen for this question for years. It could be true however I find it strange that if this is the case why can a private person find a private tour for 1/3 to 1/2 the price?

[TERRIER1]

Discussed before; there are some reasons (not as many people on an Oceania ship to get bulk pricing, few people actually take excursions which makes it worse, some Oceania tours put fewer people on a bus, etc) but the reasons don't change the fact that Oceania charges more. We just finished an NCL cruise; the excursions were about 40% cheaper overall.

 

I agree with the rationale. However, we cruised Azamara and the excursions were much cheaper then Oceania and they have only the two R ships. Azamara may leverage their connection with Celebrity to lower costs but shouldn't O leverage theirs with NCL to lower the costs?