Shops on Iona and Arvia

[Jazzytelly]

What sort of shops are on board Iona and Arvia. We have onboard credit to spend and wondered what there was to spend it on. We won’t be spending hardly anything on drinks so need other ideas.

[Britboys]

Expensive ones like the rest of thr fleet from what I've heard. Excursions? Duty free booze to take hime as pressies?

[devonuk]

Just remember that what ever you purchase above your UK allowance has to be declared and the VAT etc paid on the item(s). Yes the watches etc are Tax and Duty free but that doesn’t include what you have to pay on bringing it home. For instance I bought a $9000 watch recently and the UK fee was £1615 😳 Of course you can try and not declare it. But beware the items can be seized and you’ll still have to pay the fine, VAT and the custom fee. Also, with regard to insurance any loss adjuster would check the provenance of the watch and if it’s held ‘illegally’ the insurance company won’t pay 😬

Buyer beware 👍

[jeanlyon]

I've never had too much OBC, but I wouldn't be buying anything in the shops.  Awful.

[majortom10]

35 minutes ago, jeanlyon said:

I've never had too much OBC, but I wouldn't be buying anything in the shops.  Awful.

We didn't have much choice on our cruise on Cunard last November when we had $1850.

[terrierjohn]

35 minutes ago, jeanlyon said:

I've never had too much OBC, but I wouldn't be buying anything in the shops.  Awful.

The choice in the perfume, jewelry, watch, leather bags and electronic shops on Iona was far greater than on any of the other ships, including Britannia, and on the special sale days the prices can be quite attractive.

[amajaa]

1 hour ago, terrierjohn said:

The choice in the perfume, jewelry, watch, leather bags and electronic shops on Iona was far greater than on any of the other ships, including Britannia, and on the special sale days the prices can be quite attractive.

What sort of electronics did they have? 

[Jazzytelly]

2 hours ago, devonuk said:

Just remember that what ever you purchase above your UK allowance has to be declared and the VAT etc paid on the item(s). Yes the watches etc are Tax and Duty free but that doesn’t include what you have to pay on bringing it home. For instance I bought a $9000 watch recently and the UK fee was £1615 😳 Of course you can try and not declare it. But beware the items can be seized and you’ll still have to pay the fine, VAT and the custom fee. Also, with regard to insurance any loss adjuster would check the provenance of the watch and if it’s held ‘illegally’ the insurance company won’t pay 😬

Buyer beware 👍

I don’t think we will be buying any watch that is expensive enough to pay tax on. I just looked and you can bring in goods worth up to £390 so presumably two of us can bring in £780 worth in different items but don’t think we would buy watches for that sort of price anyway, I would never wear it if we did.
The mobile phone shop on Azura was all duty paid so it wouldn’t be relevant on there. Interested to see if similar items on Iona/Arvia are duty free. 

[terrierjohn]

1 hour ago, amajaa said:

What sort of electronics did they have? 

Sorry I did not really browse this store, but it looked to have lots of small gadgets, but no real idea what they were.

[Yorkypete]

15 minutes ago, terrierjohn said:

Sorry I did not really browse this store, but it looked to have lots of small gadgets, but no real idea what they were.

Lots of 'smart' watches, headphones etc all at vastly inflated prices, as are the 'duty free' drinks and cigarettes. They did have a lot of large Toblerone bars which were £7 each (compared with £4 on shore). Not worth touching anything really..

[Sheila127]

13 hours ago, Jazzytelly said:

What sort of shops are on board Iona and Arvia. We have onboard credit to spend and wondered what there was to spend it on. We won’t be spending hardly anything on drinks so need other ideas.

I have just come off Iona. The shops were expensive. Perfume, jewellery, clothes, alcohol,  electronics etc.   I had some OBC to use so bought a bag but nothing else really interested me. The shops were very busy though, I am thinking that many people were desperately trying to spend their OBC. You could certainly book excursions with it.

[Yorkypete]

55 minutes ago, Sheila127 said:

I have just come off Iona. The shops were expensive. Perfume, jewellery, clothes, alcohol,  electronics etc.   I had some OBC to use so bought a bag but nothing else really interested me. The shops were very busy though, I am thinking that many people were desperately trying to spend their OBC. You could certainly book excursions with it.

Yes but you can only book them once on board. We found that by that time the best(and cheapest) had sold out!

[Ljdoc]

There was a day each week on Iona where perfumes and aftershave were buy one get one half price or something like that and was very good value and roughly 25% cheaper than on land. I was on a back to back and they had the same deal both weeks. It was busy that day and we would have bought more only we were restricted with the weights of our bags for flights. 
 

Although we didn’t buy any alcohol, they did have some really good deals and it was busy. 
 

They had some decent costume jewellery which was reasonably priced and was a bit different to the high street. 
 

In the tech shop it was very similar to an airport tech shop, lots of expensive cables, speakers, headphones, etc. it was good to browse but I never bought anything. 
 

There is the normal P&O branded shop and expensive boutique clothes and handbags which are similar to what you can buy on land. 
 

All in all I found them better than the average to browse and bought a few things and passed an hour. 

[Son of Anarchy]

When we were on board Iona in November it was £25 for two bottles of Gordons (selection of flavours).  Duty free shop in Gibraltar was £15 per bottle, and more on Main St.  Didn't go to Morrisons.

 

I didn't look at the watch prices, but just before the pandemic I bought a watch on Ventura.  Shop price was 20% lower than UK high st.  10% Peninsula discount as we had spent our OBC.  What sealed the deal, got a flyer from the shop offering 10% on various brands, including the one I was after.  Total reduction worked out about 36% of UK high st price.

[Fionboard]

On Iona there were handbags which cost more  than I paid for my cruise!

[Harryjacobs]

I bought a limited edition Iona Citizens watch on Iona for £499.  Nice watch but what made me buy it was the display case it came with.  Quite a nice momento of a special trip.

[Megabear2]

24 minutes ago, Fionboard said:

On Iona there were handbags which cost more  than I paid for my cruise!

As the big OBC has currently bitten the dust for most cruises and the thousand pound gap between select and saver fares is back , I wonder who they think will be buying these highly priced items on a ship that is clearly far from high class cruising at present.

[amajaa]

5 minutes ago, Megabear2 said:

As the big OBC has currently bitten the dust for most cruises and the thousand pound gap between select and saver fares is back , I wonder who they think will be buying these highly priced items on a ship that is clearly far from high class cruising at present.

 
I always think that about the expensive pieces of art they sell on cruises.

[Britboys]

20 minutes ago, Megabear2 said:

As the big OBC has currently bitten the dust for most cruises and the thousand pound gap between select and saver fares is back , I wonder who they think will be buying these highly priced items on a ship that is clearly far from high class cruising at present.

If they get the passenger demographic they seem to be aiming for, they might sell quite a lot of them...

[Camberley]

A lot of overpriced tat mostly. But I did like my diamond encrusted inflatable Paul Ludlow replica: reduced from £11k to £10.8k - a bargain.

[devonuk]

3 hours ago, Harryjacobs said:

I bought a limited edition Iona Citizens watch on Iona for £499.  Nice watch but what made me buy it was the display case it came with.  Quite a nice momento of a special trip.

If you had brought it into the UK and ‘declared’ the tax and custom fee would have made the watch cost approx £610 😳 

[Megabear2]

4 hours ago, amajaa said:

 
I always think that about the expensive pieces of art they sell on cruises.

I was in town this afternoon and walked past an art display that looked very familiar.  My sister in law stopped too and we realised why it was familiar as it was identical to stuff we'd seen on our recent cruises.  Considering we sailed on different ships it would seem there's quite a lot of this stuff in Whitewall Galleries ashore so I'm not sure why you'd buy it onboard particularly as Devonuk points out tax would need to be paid to "import" it.

Edited January 20, 2023 by Megabear2

[happy v]

I have always thought the galleries wasted valuable space. As they keep installing them on all their ships I presumed I was in the minority 

[Gettingwarmer]

26 minutes ago, Megabear2 said:

I was in town this afternoon and walked past an art display that looked very familiar.  My sister in law stopped too and we realised why it was familiar as it was identical to stuff we'd seen on our recent cruises.  Considering we sailed on different ships it would seem there's quite a lot of this stuff in Whitewall Galleries ashore so I'm not sure why you'd buy it onboard particularly as Devonuk points out tax would need to be paid to "import" it.

You don’t import it. It is delivered to your home address. 

[Megabear2]

11 minutes ago, Gettingwarmer said:

You don’t import it. It is delivered to your home address. 

If it's bought onboard does it not still incurs the tax liability or do the gallery cover this.  I thought if you bought something on the ship of value over your allowance it was taxable. If a watch at £1,000 is liable wouldn't a picture of the same value be regardless of how it gets to you?