Excursion Promotions Misinformation

[ToBe]

We booked on board a cruise for the end of March 2017 and we were offered some perks. One was a discount on excursions for the cruise. Our paperwork confirmed the discount as did the Future Cruise salesperson. There was no mention that the discount was for short period. We arrived home on March 1, 2016 and did not get around to looking at excursions until last week. We waited 10 months before the cruise, alas. Usually excursions are not totally available that early in Asia. We were supposed to book the excursions while we were on our cruise or immediately after we came home. HAL's answer to both me and my TA is "too bad."

I would suggest that get any promotion offers in print and then ask for fine print. Perhaps then you will know what the promotion really is. Our print offer just says discount for excursions.

[Alberta Quilter]

I'm sorry for your disappointment and that you didn't receive the full terms and conditions for the promotion when you booked your cruise. The FCC who sold you the promotion is more to blame, IMO, for not disclosing that the shorex had to be booked by Mar 15/16.

 

The terms and conditions were available on the website. I also booked under that promotion but chose not to book any shorex as I didn't want to book them THAT far in advance. If it makes you feel any better, the discounts were not that great. For example, on my recent Hawaii cruise, the only shorex that were discounted were in Victoria and Vancouver, the discounts were small and on uninteresting excursions. The same thing for my Feb/17 cruise. Some of the pricier excursions had more substantial discounts but I don't believe many got as high as 10%.

Edited May 19, 2016 by Alberta Quilter

[cabinluvn]

We booked under that promo. Cruise is not until January 2017 and no excursions were posted by the time the % off expired. It really would not have amounted to,that much off an excursion, so we were not too upset

 

 

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[Vict0riann]

We have just had the same thing happen - all of a sudden the discount disappeared! How annoying - it was only 10%, but still, a bit of an incentive to book the ship's shore excursions. Our PCC never mentioned that it would expire. I guess more reason to look into private tours. Their loss!:rolleyes:

[blizzardboy]

We booked on board a cruise for the end of March 2017 and we were offered some perks. One was a discount on excursions for the cruise. Our paperwork confirmed the discount as did the Future Cruise salesperson. There was no mention that the discount was for short period. We arrived home on March 1, 2016 and did not get around to looking at excursions until last week. We waited 10 months before the cruise, alas. Usually excursions are not totally available that early in Asia. We were supposed to book the excursions while we were on our cruise or immediately after we came home. HAL's answer to both me and my TA is "too bad."

I would suggest that get any promotion offers in print and then ask for fine print. Perhaps then you will know what the promotion really is. Our print offer just says discount for excursions.

 

Write a letter to HAL Guest Relations and include a copy of your printed promo. They can often work things out to your satisfaction. It has worked for me. Your explanation in your post is sincere and logical. It's sure worth a try.

[KenNMB]

Write a letter to HAL Guest Relations and include a copy of your printed promo. They can often work things out to your satisfaction. It has worked for me. Your explanation in your post is sincere and logical. It's sure worth a try.

 

 

 

Great suggestion. Also, there are likely enough of you that one super organized person could do the research, survey the Roll Call as to interest in one or more specific shorex's, publish the list of committed pax for each shorex under separate tabs, and set the meeting time and place on the ship for each shorex's pax to meet well before the pick-up time. We benefited from a number of these on a TA to Rome, and saved $$$. The excursions were top-notch, at each port.

Just sayin'.

Bon Voyage!

[Hlitner]

If you are still 10 months out...and are unhappy with the promo terms, just cancel the cruise! You do vote with your dollars.

 

Hank

[ski ww]

You'd think HAL would do more to get people to take ship excursions. The more experienced cruisers do private excursions because they are cheaper. After our last cruise on our survey they ask how many HAL excursions, how many private excursions and why. I replied that the HAL tours where too expensive. We did take a couple of HAL tours.

Allan

[utahtea]

We booked on board a cruise for the end of March 2017 and we were offered some perks. One was a discount on excursions for the cruise. Our paperwork confirmed the discount as did the Future Cruise salesperson. There was no mention that the discount was for short period. We arrived home on March 1, 2016 and did not get around to looking at excursions until last week. We waited 10 months before the cruise, alas. Usually excursions are not totally available that early in Asia. We were supposed to book the excursions while we were on our cruise or immediately after we came home. HAL's answer to both me and my TA is "too bad."

I would suggest that get any promotion offers in print and then ask for fine print. Perhaps then you will know what the promotion really is. Our print offer just says discount for excursions.

 

The discount on the excursions were "up to" 10% off. HAL originally had the discount expiring in mid March and extended it to mid-April. It was late December when I heard about this promotion for our Sept. 2016 cruise and none of our upcoming cruise excursions were even posted. They finally started showing up in time and we did take advantage of the discount. We booked 7 HAL excursions but only 6 had a discount and it was only 5% discount for our selected ones. There was one section of our cruise that didn't have excursion yet. I found out from HAL that they only have to post excursions 6 months out. For us the time framed would have worked after they extended the promotion to mid-April but when HAL finally posted those excursions, NONE of them had a discount. We weren't in any hurry to select those. All in all, all we only saved a total of $123.50.

 

Utahtea

[Krazy Kruizers]

That is really a disappointment for some of you.

I know that I would be made if we booked a cruise -- which we have done many months in advance -- and then found out that the discount for tours ended in a very short time. Especially if excursions haven't even been posted on HAL's site.

[DaveOKC]

We booked under this promotion and quite frankly I thought it was almost worthless. I saved about $20 on one excursion, but the rest either were not discounted or of no interest.

 

And yes, I read the fine print before booking.