Mike Moore - Booking Excursions for Back-to-Back Cruises

[Eno-Bob]

Mike,

 

   A quick observation about booking excursions for back-to-back cruises.

 

   We are booked for back-to-back cruises, Hong Kong to Bangkok and Bangkok to Bali embarking on November 8, 2024.  Yesterday evening our excursion window opened but we were only able to book excursions for the first segment, Hong Kong to Bangkok.  When trying to book an excursion for the second segment the website shows: “Unfortunately this excursion time is currently sold out. Some tours have multiple start times, so please check the listing of available tours for additional opportunities or contact the Destination Services Desk once onboard.”

 

   We sincerely hope that not every excursion for the Bangkok to Bali segment is sold out – none of the excursions for the first segment were sold out.  We’re assuming that what the website is really trying to tell us is that the excursions for the Bangkok to Bali segment are not available for booking yet.  It would certainly be helpful if the website could state that as the reason the excursions are not available for booking at this time.

 

   Our back-to-back cruises are under one booking number which shows a cruise from Hong Kong to Bali.  There is only one “Reserve Shore Excursions” date in “My To-Do List”, which is November 9, 2024 and it now shows “Shore Excursions Booked”.  We can probably guess correctly that the second segment excursions will open on November 21st or 22nd.  However, the “To-Do List” does not indicate that.

 

   These two segments are also part of the “Grand Asia Exploration” cruise that will embark on October 18, 2024.  We assume that the Grand Cruise passengers were able to book excursions for the entire itinerary at the one year out point.  That would indicate that the excursions for all segments have been finalized and should be available to book for a back-to-back cruise falling within that itinerary. 

 

   Would appreciate your thoughts on this issue and any fixes that could be made to make it easier for us passengers to understand what’s going on when booking excursions.

 

Thanks --

[Mike Moore]

Hi Eno-Bob - thank you for reaching out. The functionality vaires on a couple of different factors, but you are correct in most of your assumptions. There are two different "back-to-back" cruises as far as our reservations systems is concerned. Those that are published (such as the Grand Asia Exploration) and those that are created by individual guests, combining two (or more) regular voyages into a custom, longer sailing - such as you have done. 

 

For the latter, unfortunately the message that the reservatins system relays to the website is that there simply is no availability on the latter cruises' tours, which the website interprets as them being sold out. Each cruise has its own block of inventory for the tours, so I can assure you that it is not that the latter cruise's tours are all sold out, they simply aren't available yet to anyone on anything other than the Grand Asia Exploration. 

 

I certainly agree that the message is confusing and not accurate, and as we look to redesign this portion of the website next year, we'll do our best to come up with a way to isolate this scenario and provide a custom message.