Celebrity Sale - book now or on board in Feb.?

[wishuponasea]

We will be cruising on Celebrity Reflection in Feb. We have our eyes on a cruise that we want to book for 2021. Should we grab the sale now or wait until we are on board? Not sure which would give us the better deal(s).

[NemoCrownie]

We have booked when we see a sale and then rebooked onboard if the price is the same or the onboard booking benefits are good enough. We then cancelled the initial booking when we get home. I have heard that Next Cruise can cancel and rebook but that seemed like too much time and effort.

Edited January 4, 2019 by NemoCrownie
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[jagoffee]

I would book it now and not wait.

[Gordoncruickshank]

We have always waited until we are on board. We usually book some sort of suite and the benefits of booking onboard with all the perks and the premium beverage package plus the obc for booking on board makes it an easy decision. We book 2 years in advance each February and have done that since 2013 and we have never had a situation where the price has come down.

I have thought seriously about this in previous years but this far out the price does not change a lot and we have always managed to get what we are looking for. What seems to go quickest is the S1 back corner suites for the Caribbean and we have seen us only having a couple to choose from but we would probably be happy with the S2s at the back on decks 11 and 12 which do not seem to go quickly. 

[Gordoncruickshank]

6 hours ago, NemoCrownie said:

We have booked when we see a sale and then rebooked onboard if the price is the same or the onboard booking benefits are good enough. We then cancelled the initial booking when we get home. I have heard that Next Cruise can cancel and rebook but that seemed like too much time and effort.

We lose our deposit if we do that.

[mickey89]

A recent change that may affect you is that Celebrity has now removed the option to take the bonus obc on the current cruise, you can only take the obc on the future cruise. That makes the onboard deal less attractive, now the deposit is truly lost if you cancel, for us Brits that is.....

Edited January 4, 2019 by mickey89

[Gordoncruickshank]

2 hours ago, mickey89 said:

A recent change that may affect you is that Celebrity has now removed the option to take the bonus obc on the current cruise, you can only take the obc on the future cruise. That makes the onboard deal less attractive, now the deposit is truly lost if you cancel, for us Brits that is.....

When we have done this in the past we never benefited from the reduced deposit if you took the credit on the current cruise. You had to pay them at least enough to cover the obc you were getting.

I don't see anything on the future cruise flyer about this. I will be onboard in February and will be booking 2021 cruises anyway to make sure that we get the other benefits. It won't make any long term difference to the overall position although I probably was counting on getting the OBC to cover what little onboard spend we actually have.

 

With no drinks, no internet to pay for and free gratuities it can be difficult to spend obc on things you actually want. I have been using some of it to cover extra tips for Luminae recently.

[jagoffee]

5 hours ago, Gordoncruickshank said:

We have always waited until we are on board. We usually book some sort of suite and the benefits of booking onboard with all the perks and the premium beverage package plus the obc for booking on board makes it an easy decision. We book 2 years in advance each February and have done that since 2013 and we have never had a situation where the price has come down.

I have thought seriously about this in previous years but this far out the price does not change a lot and we have always managed to get what we are looking for. What seems to go quickest is the S1 back corner suites for the Caribbean and we have seen us only having a couple to choose from but we would probably be happy with the S2s at the back on decks 11 and 12 which do not seem to go quickly. 

I do not know if it the same for UK bookings, but except for repositioning cruises the Best Package is almost always offered with a suites booking.

One thing that I have recently learned, is that  this may not be obvious when looking on line.  The last two cruises the I booked did not show the Best bundle for the Big price.  When I e mailed my TA, she assured me it was included.  She was correct.  Perhaps a website error or I was not reading the website correctly.

 

The S1 corner aft suites on deck 12 are our preference, so we always book ASAP and monitor the pricing.  Also usually the suite prices are the lowest at the initial release.  That is why I recommended not waiting, but being US based we do have the option to do a new booking and then cancel the old one later.  It gets a little tricky keeping the same cabin.  A flaw in the Celebrity process that allows one to have two bookings on the exact same cruise.

 

The bottom line is that I read all the time about the extra perks for booking on board.  But I am convinced that it is really just the extra OBC and lower deposit, since the other perks are available at the same price when booking off the ship.

The on board booking material can be very misleading.

[Gordoncruickshank]

21 minutes ago, jagoffee said:

I do not know if it the same for UK bookings, but except for repositioning cruises the Best Package is almost always offered with a suites booking.

One thing that I have recently learned, is that  this may not be obvious when looking on line.  The last two cruises the I booked did not show the Best bundle for the Big price.  When I e mailed my TA, she assured me it was included.  She was correct.  Perhaps a website error or I was not reading the website correctly.

 

The S1 corner aft suites on deck 12 are our preference, so we always book ASAP and monitor the pricing.  Also usually the suite prices are the lowest at the initial release.  That is why I recommended not waiting, but being US based we do have the option to do a new booking and then cancel the old one later.  It gets a little tricky keeping the same cabin.  A flaw in the Celebrity process that allows one to have two bookings on the exact same cruise. 

 

The bottom line is that I read all the time about the extra perks for booking on board.  But I am convinced that it is really just the extra OBC and lower deposit, since the other perks are available at the same price when booking off the ship.

The on board booking material can be very misleading.

The current offers here have half price 2nd guest plus drinks package. No premium drinks, no gratuities no OBC and no internet and they usually up the price before they do the half price thing. That is why we are always better booking on board. I always check with TA before we go to get their best offer but it is never close to booking on board. The whole "best" thing has never translated across the Atlantic. The only way is to book via an online US TA or book on board.

 

At the end of the day all the extras are just lumped into the cost. When we started with Celebrity 7 years ago for 14 nights it was around £4k for an AQ, £6k for a SS, £7.5k for a CS and £10k for a RS. they have added around £3k of extras at todays exchange rate but hiked the price up to £10k for a SS, £12k+ for a CS and £15k+++ for a RS. Some of the extra cost is down to the change in the exchange rate which is 15% to 20%. I would have ordered the premium drinks anyway, paid the Grats and at least one internet so I am not spending the amount I did on the ship so at SS level I can rationalise the prices but probably no longer for a CS and a RS (unless there are some really good buys which do not happen very often). 

Edited January 4, 2019 by Gordoncruickshank

[jody75]

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Edited January 4, 2019 by jody75

[jagoffee]

2 hours ago, Gordoncruickshank said:

The current offers here have half price 2nd guest plus drinks package. No premium drinks, no gratuities no OBC and no internet and they usually up the price before they do the half price thing. That is why we are always better booking on board. I always check with TA before we go to get their best offer but it is never close to booking on board. The whole "best" thing has never translated across the Atlantic. The only way is to book via an online US TA or book on board.

 

At the end of the day all the extras are just lumped into the cost. When we started with Celebrity 7 years ago for 14 nights it was around £4k for an AQ, £6k for a SS, £7.5k for a CS and £10k for a RS. they have added around £3k of extras at todays exchange rate but hiked the price up to £10k for a SS, £12k+ for a CS and £15k+++ for a RS. Some of the extra cost is down to the change in the exchange rate which is 15% to 20%. I would have ordered the premium drinks anyway, paid the Grats and at least one internet so I am not spending the amount I did on the ship so at SS level I can rationalise the prices but probably no longer for a CS and a RS (unless there are some really good buys which do not happen very often). 

Very interesting.  Thank you for taking the time to explain how it works across the pond. Very good incentive to book on board.

 

So when you book on board and get the Best bundle, do you keep the booking with Celebrity?  Or do you transfer/designate the booking for your UK based TA?

[Gordoncruickshank]

1 minute ago, jagoffee said:

Very interesting.  Thank you for taking the time to explain how it works across the pond. Very good incentive to book on board.

 

So when you book on board and get the Best bundle, do you keep the booking with Celebrity?  Or do you transfer/designate the booking for your UK based TA?

The booking gets transferred there and then to our UK TA who then gives us around 5% discount (I also get 1% cash back by paying the balance of the cruise to my TA on a particular debit card which I know they do not take into account in the discounting process). Celebrity ask when I book which TA I want the booking to go to and they have details of who I use and it gets transferred over while we are on board. I usually get emails from the UK TA while I am on the cruise sending me their paperwork.

I did a further check on the cruises we are looking at and there seem to be no deals available but they have all the S1 cabins available on both cruises. I always keep an eye on what cabin's are left over the next seven weeks.

[jagoffee]

5 minutes ago, Gordoncruickshank said:

The booking gets transferred there and then to our UK TA who then gives us around 5% discount (I also get 1% cash back by paying the balance of the cruise to my TA on a particular debit card which I know they do not take into account in the discounting process). Celebrity ask when I book which TA I want the booking to go to and they have details of who I use and it gets transferred over while we are on board. I usually get emails from the UK TA while I am on the cruise sending me their paperwork.

I did a further check on the cruises we are looking at and there seem to be no deals available but they have all the S1 cabins available on both cruises. I always keep an eye on what cabin's are left over the next seven weeks.

With our US TA the price reduction is in the form of a refundable OBC.

If I could not take advantage of the Best bundle at the Big price, I would never book off the ship.  I hope that at least the price is lower if you do not get that package when booking from home.

 

The cruise I have booked for 1/2020 is sold out in the suite category.  The 1/2021 cruise still has cabins available and I was able to get a $400 reduction in price yesterday.  The first time that has every happened to me since Celebrity increased the benefits for suites.

 

Thanks and good luck.

[Gordoncruickshank]

Well done. 

I think we just need to play our respective systems as well as we can. The cost is certainly increasing but some of that is down to us leaving the EU and the mess around that just now although that is slightly tempered by what is happening politically in the US.

 

things will settle down.

 

[Fogfog]

Will UK TAs work with folks in the US? I have seen MUCH better pricing with perks at UK websites... In fact I called X and my big box TA asking them to match a  price/perks that a UK TA was offering and they said they don't "match". 

Didn't want to lose the stateroom so I kept the initial booking.

Not sure if I can move it from the Big box TA to an UK TA or if one move is all thats allowed

[Gordoncruickshank]

19 minutes ago, Fogfog said:

Will UK TAs work with folks in the US? I have seen MUCH better pricing with perks at UK websites... In fact I called X and my big box TA asking them to match a  price/perks that a UK TA was offering and they said they don't "match". 

Didn't want to lose the stateroom so I kept the initial booking.

Not sure if I can move it from the Big box TA to an UK TA or if one move is all thats allowed

I really don’t know. I have never found a situation where US prices are more than Uk prices. I have booked via US TAs in the past and I can see no reason why you shouldn’t be able to do it but I really do not know. You need to remember that the UK/ US exchange rates are very volatile at the moment and that will be likely to be the case until the end of March. It is a big risk if it goes wrong

Edited January 4, 2019 by Gordoncruickshank

[Gordoncruickshank]

On ‎1‎/‎4‎/‎2019 at 5:57 PM, jagoffee said:

With our US TA the price reduction is in the form of a refundable OBC.

If I could not take advantage of the Best bundle at the Big price, I would never book off the ship.  I hope that at least the price is lower if you do not get that package when booking from home.

 

The cruise I have booked for 1/2020 is sold out in the suite category.  The 1/2021 cruise still has cabins available and I was able to get a $400 reduction in price yesterday.  The first time that has every happened to me since Celebrity increased the benefits for suites.

 

Thanks and good luck.

I am afraid that the price at home is generally the same as on the ship. The difference is that you get the Best deal on the ship. Even our TA tells us to book when on the ship.

Regards

Gordon

[ipeeinthepool]

On ‎1‎/‎4‎/‎2019 at 4:07 PM, Gordoncruickshank said:

Well done. 

I think we just need to play our respective systems as well as we can. The cost is certainly increasing but some of that is down to us leaving the EU and the mess around that just now although that is slightly tempered by what is happening politically in the US.

 

things will settle down.

 

 

Don't worry about political things in the US.  If you can focus on getting a Brexit deal completed, we'll take care of Making America Great Again.  

 

As they say in the Caribbean, don't worry, be happy.

[Gordoncruickshank]

1 minute ago, ipeeinthepool said:

 

Don't worry about political things in the US.  If you can focus on getting a Brexit deal completed, we'll take care of Making America Great Again.  

 

As they say in the Caribbean, don't worry, be happy.

I suspect that neither of us will have any influence on either matter.

[Alushar]

I like booking on board but have an issue that they won't apply the discount we hold, which is 10%, so have been booking direct with Celebrity as that's been the only way to get it

[cruising princess 1964]

I just booked online this week end     Received 3 perks and 400 off   We are also cruising this February

Had such a bad experience with the on board booking people in November that I waited for a good sale online and booked   Much better service and help online    Even called captains club just to make sure I  received all the perks that I could get and he upgraded us to concierge from veranda for no extra

The consultants on board in February acted bored and like we were inconveniencing then by asking questions   Also they were only offering one perk  at the time 

Hope this helps you make your decision

   

[ezemoney]

just read my cruise contract from when I booked onboard in august. you get a $200. reduced refundable deposit(sky suites and lower) if you choose with OBC for your next cruise.  if you want instant OBC the deposit is higher and not refundable