Need Advice

[iancal]

We book doubles but the only port we live near is Vancouver or Seattle. We have found that air prices, especially transatlantic and transpacific are often as good 30 days out as they are 90-120 days out. One of the best transpacific fares we have ever had was booked 10 days out. And we had a choice of two airlines at the fare. Hotels only seem an issue if there is a big event in town. We have never really had a challenge to get competitively prices hotels when we have done late bookings. Quite the opposite in some instance when we use Priceline bidding or Hotwire.

 

The trick is to have a back up vacation plan. Much more challenging if you work and do not have flexibility with your vacation dates.

[MaxThrusters]

My very first HAL cruise dropped significantly in price after the final payment date. We had the protection plan, and considered cancelling it as even with 80% back and rebooking at the lower price it was still a big savings.

 

So, I called HAL and explained myself to them, being sure to say I realized it was after final payment & I knew they didn't 'have' to do anything, but I didn't feel good about this yadda yadda yadda. They gave us an additional $200OBC so we kept the booking! Granted we could have saved more by rebooking but we would have lost explore 4 which at the time we though was a good deal.

[iancal]

Our experience in dealing with vendors is that it a) it never hurts to call and ask and b) set an expectation with the vendor by outlining exactly what you want or how you think they should resolve your issue.

 

There is no downside and all kinds of upside to doing this. Doing nothing, feeling bad, or complaining to others won't make it happen. You may not get complete satisfaction but chances are you will be better off than you were prior to making the call.

[sail7seas]

I agree. call and ask. :)

[LadyVol1]

Two cruise lines actually allow us to get cruise air pricing on line without a booking and gives us multiple options-one way, open jaw, return, etc. Our last Med cruise was booked this way.

 

 

iancal - What two cruise lines allow online air pricing without a booking? Thanks in advance.

[clueless2]

iancal - What two cruise lines allow online air pricing without a booking? Thanks in advance.

Princess does.

 

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[msmayor]

I assume those of you who play "chicken" ;) with prices are able to drive to the port and don't have to concern yourself with flights and hotels. Before I book anything I look at flight availability and airfare, as well as hotel availability and price. As a solo cruiser, another thing I've run into is not being able to book at the bargain rates. They're often only offered to those booking doubles.

 

Roz

 

Actually, for our Westerdam cruise we booked airfare weeks before the cruise was chosen.

 

We knew which week we were definitely going on vacation, and I booked a 6am Saturday morning flight to FLL and a Sunday afternoon return on Southwest...because making flight changes would be easier and not involve change fees.

 

Once I had my flights, I ran a list of every 7-night cruise leaving either FLL or Miami on Saturday OR Sunday to know my choices...and then watched pricing. We didn't care what ports, only that we wanted to cruise. Westerdam came through with the best pricing and then we booked about 6 weeks out.

 

Had we not seen a cruise that we were happy with the price, we would have still flown into FLL, rented a car and bummed around Florida for a week.

[doublebzz]

iancal - What two cruise lines allow online air pricing without a booking? Thanks in advance.

Also RCL and their subsidiaries.

[ski ww]

The other side of this coin is price increase. We booked a future cruise and I keep checking it for price drops & for our same cabin it went up about $1900, so booking early pays.

Allan

[iancal]

Both RCI and Celebrity web sites allow you to get pricing on their cruise air program iwthout a booking. You need to do two things.

 

The first question asked is this a firm booking or are you shopping. If it is a firm booking they want the booking number.

 

If you are shopping, they want the name of the ship and the date of departure. Obviously very easy to do this. Once you have it you get into their cruise air program. It is extremely flexible in terms on one way, return, open jaw etc. You can also ask for specific airlines/programs/class etc.

 

Once you enter this data you will get a list of flights-different prices, different airlines, different routings.

 

We use this even if we are booking on HAL, Princess, whatever. Good way to see the going rates for consolidator air fares, etc. I like it because it is on the screen and gives me time to compare various routings, layover times, etc. Cannot imagine doing it on the phone with an agent. Which is why we always do air, cruise or otherwise, on the web. To give you an idea of the flexibility we arranged one way cruise air on Celebrity from FLL to Costa Rica. The departure date was two weeks after disembarking from a TA on FLL. Costa Rica is not our home, it was just a stop on an extended land vacation. We booked the cruise through our on line TA. A few days later we went to the Celebrity website and booked the air on line.

Edited September 5, 2017 by iancal