Port taxes and fees too high

[seaman11]

While trying to rebook , I am seeing very high port charges and fees. compared to other lines .  😪 Anyone else notice this?

[tallnthensome]

Depends on the ports. If it's a Panama Canal cruise then they are high for example . 

[seaman11]

2 minutes ago, tallnthensome said:

Depends on the ports. If it's a Panama Canal cruise then they are high for example . 

yeah i was looking at NY and even Florida and they seem pretty much higher than before. 

[chiefofsages]

I think they're high in general.  But when you invest tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in ports and dredging and all the other stuff that goes with it, they have to recoup their money somehow. 

[Middleager]

There were no cruises for so long.  With no income for so long, they want to re-coupe as much as possible by charging high tax/port-charges for the suckers that come, I mean the enthusiastic cruisers that come their way.

[lexxfield]

15 hours ago, seaman11 said:

While trying to rebook , I am seeing very high port charges and fees. compared to other lines .  😪 Anyone else notice this?

 

[lexxfield]

Yes.  I noticed the same thing.  When doing a comparison of Caribbean cruises from several lines, the port charges and fees were significantly higher on NCL.  In one case, NCL's fees were nearly double that of a competitor with almost identical ports. With this being the case,  I wondered why no one had started a thread on this issue.

[disneylover89]

48 minutes ago, lexxfield said:

Yes.  I noticed the same thing.  When doing a comparison of Caribbean cruises from several lines, the port charges and fees were significantly higher on NCL.  In one case, NCL's fees were nearly double that of a competitor with almost identical ports. With this being the case,  I wondered why no one had started a thread on this issue.

Why would one line have higher port fees than the other?  Do ports charge cruise lines different amounts or is NCL just inflating their fees?

[mking8288]

3 hours ago, disneylover89 said:

Why would one line have higher port fees than the other?  Do ports charge cruise lines different amounts or is NCL just inflating their fees?

 

Just an un-educated guess, perhaps, IMHO but I will look again "if and when" we are ready and decided to book a cruise in the near future ... quite possibly NCL is burying other misc. & administrative fees, indirect costs & overheads fees into that category of surcharges, i.e. Covid-19 recovery fees for all that extra PPE measures onboard, etc.  Afterall, disposable & consumable supplies for generalized infection controls measures carry a cost ... and, it is being passed along to someone.  

 

Slightly off-topic, we've dine in restaurants lately that chose to impose a Covid-19 surcharge here in the NY area, as permitted ... not to mention, the suggested tipping scale has been bumped up and rounded up, for one's convenience, at 18%, 20% and 25% plus a custom write-up amount.  I am sure FDR's team doesn't need to read this to get more ideas on imposing it.   Or, just chalk it off as the inflationary trend in general ... be prepared for shocking high dining menu prices, not at your local Red Lobster chains ... rather, it's the Applebees and alike, LOL.  

[seaman11]

I suspect ncl wants to inflate it so they can eat up that fcc. 👎

[RumRunner2021]

I think you folks are imagining things.  Actual data (all the same NCL itinerary, room type and cost category):

 

May 2018: $235.26 pp

May 2020 (cancelled): $281.51 pp

May 2021 (cancelled):  $295.52 pp

October 2021: $293.80 pp

 

Once again, perhaps NCL isn't as awful as many (in this NCL forum) claim they are.

 

 

[nhtravels]

I just looked at our January cruise (we booked on 9/30) and priced it again.

Port fees, etc. when we booked (for 2) were $484.88 and now are $493.26.  I personally don't think under $10 is a signifiant price increase.

 

And I'm on the  Bliss Panama Canal sailing in February (we booked last May) and those fees are exactly the same, now as we paid in May ($951.92).

 

[complawyer]

while i wont swear to this, in defense of ncl (something i rarely and am loathe to do),i dont think they have any control over port charges and/or fees. also, since fuel charges are rising, im sure they have to incorporate that into their overall charge. 

 

sometimes even ncl needs to be cut some slack. we're booked into a 2 bedroom haven (before i get yelled at) im not bragging,  i just needed the xtra space on the getaway this nov, the 2 bedroom haven on the epic next january, and a 2 bedroom suite on the star nov 2022. i dont know about anyone else, but i found these prices reasonable, especially since 2 are haven and the star has no haven complex. 

[chengkp75]

11 hours ago, mking8288 said:

Just an un-educated guess, perhaps, IMHO but I will look again "if and when" we are ready and decided to book a cruise in the near future ... quite possibly NCL is burying other misc. & administrative fees, indirect costs & overheads fees into that category of surcharges, i.e. Covid-19 recovery fees for all that extra PPE measures onboard, etc.  Afterall, disposable & consumable supplies for generalized infection controls measures carry a cost ... and, it is being passed along to someone.  

After a class action law suit about 20 years ago, cruise lines are very strictly limited as to what they can include in "port taxes and fees", and basically none of what you list above can legally be included.

[MorganClark]

3 hours ago, complawyer said:

we're booked into a 2 bedroom haven (before i get yelled at) im not bragging,  i just needed the xtra space on the getaway this nov

 

Steerage has all kinds of extra space. (*poke*)

 

@RumRunner2021

[complawyer]

"OUCH" quit poking already.

[disneylover89]

13 hours ago, RumRunner2021 said:

I think you folks are imagining things.  Actual data (all the same NCL itinerary, room type and cost category):

 

May 2018: $235.26 pp

May 2020 (cancelled): $281.51 pp

May 2021 (cancelled):  $295.52 pp

October 2021: $293.80 pp

 

Once again, perhaps NCL isn't as awful as many (in this NCL forum) claim they are.

 

 

Your lucky, my Alaska cruise which was booked and cancelled in 2020 has doubled for 2022.  In 2020 I applied for many price reductions and saved a lot of money from the existing booking and I'm hoping the same happens for the 2022 cruise but I'm not counting on it.

[CruiseMH]

It doesn`t make sense for NCL to keep the port fees and taxesartificially high cause in case of cancellation these fees and taxes have to be refunded anyway(as they only occur if the passenger is on board) So if they keep them high then the refunds are also high as well.

 

[RumRunner2021]

5 hours ago, disneylover89 said:

Your lucky, my Alaska cruise which was booked and cancelled in 2020 has doubled for 2022.  In 2020 I applied for many price reductions and saved a lot of money from the existing booking and I'm hoping the same happens for the 2022 cruise but I'm not counting on it.

Your port taxes and fees doubled?!

[Guest ldtr]

On 7/31/2021 at 4:35 AM, lexxfield said:

Yes.  I noticed the same thing.  When doing a comparison of Caribbean cruises from several lines, the port charges and fees were significantly higher on NCL.  In one case, NCL's fees were nearly double that of a competitor with almost identical ports. With this being the case,  I wondered why no one had started a thread on this issue.

Keep in mind that the costs might vary by a number of factors including size of vessel number of passengers services required (docking vs tendering), etc.  Ports set fees in different ways some are strictly by the size of ship, others might have a few of tax by the number of passengers, etc.  Different docks might have different fees even in the same harbor. Fees also may be impacted by the amount of time in port.  So if you have two ships of the same size and one has twice as many passengers the fees could be significantly higher per passenger on the ship with fewer passengers because those charges have to be split by fewer passengers.

 

To know for sure one would have to look up how the charges are done by each port and then apply them to the specific ship being considered. A rather tedious task.

Edited January 1, 2023 by ldtr

[Guest ldtr]

On 12/31/2022 at 1:26 PM, ednotmilkman said:

I agree with the original post also. I just compared port fees and taxes- NCL with Princess on a partial Panama Canal coming up this next month, Jan 2023.

Princess charges $383pp for 10 night cruise, 5 ports of call on Caribbean Princess. 

NCL charges $552pp for 11 night cruise with 6 ports of call on NCL Sky.

But the NCL has a cheaper base rate so there is not that much difference when you check it all out. The problem is if you only look at VTG base rates you would miss out on going for about the same cost on a much newer, nicer Princess ship!

 

https://www.*****.com/ticker.cfm?r=14&d=1324,160&sm=20231&td=28&tm=20231&md=5&xd=11&ap=1000&occ=1&cu=y&pdm=1

The Sky runs about 2000 passengers, whereas the Caribbean Princess is 3140. So if the Panama Canal had a fixed charge the difference is about what you would expect with the different passenger count.  

 

As a simplified example if all of the fares were fixed and the same for both ships the total amount paid for the Sky at $552 per passenger would be $1,104,000 which if it was split over the passenger count of the Caribbean would come out at  $351 per passenger.  Clearly some of the fares are not fixed for the ship, the port differences, and they are somewhat different size ship if the fares are by tonnage, but it does show how the size of the ship can impact the fees per passenger.

[petert328]

This thread has been around a while.  I booked a club balcony suite  on Encore for an Alaska cruise in June through a TA this past November (Black Friday Sale).  Fare was $1,730 each and Taxes, Fees, Port Expenses and Port Charges were $1,392.   There is a separate line item for gratuities which cover's all of NCL's "Free at Sea" perks.  I looked at the same cruise and suite today and the fare is $2,869 each, with the same perks, BUT Taxes, Fees, Port Expenses and Port Charges drop to $652 - $740 less! Any thoughts about what is going on here?  Something doesn't smell right.

[chengkp75]

39 minutes ago, petert328 said:

This thread has been around a while.  I booked a club balcony suite  on Encore for an Alaska cruise in June through a TA this past November (Black Friday Sale).  Fare was $1,730 each and Taxes, Fees, Port Expenses and Port Charges were $1,392.   There is a separate line item for gratuities which cover's all of NCL's "Free at Sea" perks.  I looked at the same cruise and suite today and the fare is $2,869 each, with the same perks, BUT Taxes, Fees, Port Expenses and Port Charges drop to $652 - $740 less! Any thoughts about what is going on here?  Something doesn't smell right.

Was the first cruise booked through a travel agent, and the second look booked directly?  If that is the case, the travel agent took the "non-commissionable fare" portion out of the advertised fare, and included it in "port taxes, fees, expenses".  They are allowed to do this, it allows them to advertise a much lower fare up front, but the bottom end looks pretty much the same.

[The Traveling Man]

On 1/2/2023 at 9:52 PM, ldtr said:

The Sky runs about 2000 passengers, whereas the Caribbean Princess is 3140. So if the Panama Canal had a fixed charge the difference is about what you would expect with the different passenger count.  

 

The rate charged by the Panama Canal for transit by cruise ships is based upon the number of staterooms / beds.  It's currently somewhere near $1000 per bed, so about $1Million for a small ship like the Sky, close to $2Million for the larger NCL ships, and almost $3Million for the largest cruise ships such as the ones in the RCL fleet.

[chengkp75]

11 minutes ago, The Traveling Man said:

The rate charged by the Panama Canal for transit by cruise ships is based upon the number of staterooms / beds.  It's currently somewhere near $1000 per bed, so about $1Million for a small ship like the Sky, close to $2Million for the larger NCL ships, and almost $3Million for the largest cruise ships such as the ones in the RCL fleet.

Actually, this has changed.  It now depends on what the ratio of PC/UMS (Panama Canal/Universal Measurement System tonnage (usually close to Net Tonnage) divided by the passenger capacity is.  Small ships pay by the passenger capacity, but ships of the 150,000 GT and above, pay by the PC/UMS tonnage.  And, the last time I looked at the tariff per passenger berth, it was more like $140-$160.  Now, there are also ancillary costs like tugs, inspections, line handlers, etc, but I think the Sky would be closer to the $500k range, under the new rules (which are higher for smaller vessels than before, while the larger ships pay less than before).

 

But, any  Panama Canal cruise will have far higher taxes and fees than any other cruise anywhere in the world.  That $500k I mentioned for the Sky would be just the taxes and fees for the Canal, other ports would add other taxes and fees.