How do you book your cruise?

[iancal]

We have yet to hear a good argument for dealing with the cruise line.

 

This nonsense about having  more so called ‘control’ over the booking seems to us to be more emotional than anything else.  

 

We we want to deal with an objective, independent agent who is not under the employment control of a cruise line and whose agency can provide us with n OBC rebate on the fare.

[LuckyStar]

On 1/26/2019 at 7:30 PM, Dana'sDaughters said:

Do you book online yourself, contact the cruise line on the phone, or go through a travel agent? Can you get better deals with a travel agent?

 

Most often now, I go directly to the cruise line.  No cancellations fees whereas online or TAs, often charge cancellation fees.

[capriccio]

18 minutes ago, LuckyStar said:

 

 No cancellations fees whereas online or TAs, often charge cancellation fees.

I don't know about 'often'.  I've only canceled one cruise and my TA/agency doesn't charge a fee.  I knew that because it was a question asked before using a new TA.  Do you have statistics on how many do charge cancellation fees?

[Flatbush Flyer]

8 minutes ago, capriccio said:

I don't know about 'often'.  I've only canceled one cruise and my TA/agency doesn't charge a fee.  I knew that because it was a question asked before using a new TA.  Do you have statistics on how many do charge cancellation fees?

Plus 1. 

I've never used a TA with fees. In fact, I've never even found one.

[Hlitner]

Lets talk about cancelation fees.  Personally I have little interest since we very rarely (twice in over 100 bookings) cancel.  When I started using high volume cruise agencies over thirty years ago, most did not charge any cancelation fees.  But over the years more and more consumers started playing "games" by booking multiple cruises (sometimes for the same day) with the intent of cancelling most of the bookings and keeping only one.  This caused issues for the cruise lines (it is why some have been experimenting with different booking rules such as non-refundable deposits) and was also a big issue for the cruise agencies who would lose money on all those cancelled bookings.  So most (not all) of the better agencies has now implemented some kind of cancellation fee (which is sometimes waived for their better customers).

 

But lets do a little math.  We will normally save 7-10% (sometimes more) by using a cruise agency.  These savings amount to thousands of dollars a year (we cruise quite often).  We recently had to cancel a booking (due to a family issue) which cost me $200 in an agency cancellation fee.  The following week I booked another cruise with that same agency where they gave me $900 of OBC that would not be available if we booked directly with the cruise line.  My point is that losing an occasional few dollars for a cancelation is miniscule compared to what we gain by using cruise agencies :).

 

One other interesting tidbit.  One of our favorite cruise agencies will often have multiple options for booking the same cruise.  For example, they might offer a $1000 OBC for a certain booking price....or have a much lower price (say$1200 less) with no OBC.  My agent once told me that even she was amazed at how many folks would choose to pay more for the cruise (and take the OBC) even when she told them they were losing money!  Go figure.

 

A good cruise agency can also help with the complex math involved in lengthy cruises where it could be booked as a single cruise (with a single booking number) or multiple cruises (with several booking numbers).  Sometimes it makes sense to do multiple bookings (for several shorter segments) and other times it pays to book as a single booking.  With various promotions tied to each segment it can be very complicated to consider the options....and a decent cruise agent can often be very helpful.  The savings can be hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

 

Hank

[NantahalaCruiser]

Good points Hank; thanks for all the great advice.

 

But sometimes you book a cruise over a year in advance hoping to be able to use it, but only being 80% sure. Case in point, we booked a cruise two years in advance to take our grandson on during his spring break - having a good guess when it would be but not knowing for sure which week would actually be his break. We will not know until about nine months before the cruise. (I could have bracketed the dates with two additional reservations, but don't believe in doing so and would not have wanted to tie up another $1500 in deposits.)

 

So for this kind of reservation, I want to be sure to use a TA without a cancellation fee.

Edited January 31, 2019 by NantahalaCruiser

[iancal]

We will only deal with TA’s who do not charge an agency fee for cancellations, re-fares, or cabin changes.

 

Not certain why someone would deal with a TA that charged for this when, in our experience, most do not.  Or at least not one of the on line agencies that we have dealt with did.  We always check when making a booking.   It is a not a big issue since most of our cruises are now booked inside the final payment window.

 

We price our cruises net net, ie we deduct any obc’s or prepaid, and deduct the value TO US of other non monetary incentives to get down to a price that we can use for comparison.  We zero out the fluff...bottles of water, mariner lunches, priority boarding, etc. as meaningless.  We keep our TA relationship on a strictly business level.  We are looking for the best overall offer, not a new best friend.

Edited January 31, 2019 by iancal