Guaranteed room rates available via travel agent but not Royal

[Cruizin for a Bruizin]

Is that normally a thing?  I booked a non-refundable rate, bad on me.  But there is a nice room upgrade available via my travel agent, however, when the travel agent calls Royal, they aren’t offering a guaranteed room rate for the upgrade category, although the rate is clearly available for new bookings. 

 

I could cancel and rebook but that is cost prohibitive due to the non-refundable deposit. 

 

I checked myself and Royal is not offering guaranteed room rates for this particular cruise.  (although they were recently)

 

What’s the deal?  Does Royal sometimes only offer the guaranteed room rates via 3rd party? 

 

All I want to do is upgrade my room but am stuck being unable to do so without stupid cancel fees. 

[not-enough-cruising]

It is not uncommon for some rates to be available to new bookings only.

[twangster]

It's also possible the TA site has old cached data.  One TA I used to use would often advertise rates but if you tried to book them it would fail.  The one cabin at that rate was grabbed by someone else.  

[silentbob007]

For my upcoming cruise I booked a GTY rate for an ocean view balcony that I couldn’t see on Royal’s website which only had a balcony GTY that included neighborhoods (allure). I don’t know if the oceanview one world have been available if I had called instead of just using the website. 

[Ourusualbeach]

10 hours ago, Cruizin for a Bruizin said:

What’s the deal?  Does Royal sometimes only offer the guaranteed room rates via 3rd party?

What happens quite often is that the TA is holding group space.  Cabins in the category the TA is holding space in are sold out but the TA is still allowed to book any remaining inventory that they have blocked (TA's only hold space, not specific cabins) at that group rate as a GTY cabin.  They could be assigned anything in that category or above.