Booking River Cruise - Travel Agent or Online?

[azshamrock]

Thinking of taking a river cruise in 2008 - looking at Avalon. Do you get a better price through a travel agent or is the brochure price the exact price? Shipboard credits, etc? Thanks for your help.

[paul929207]

The two river boat companies we have sailed with (Unworld & Grand Circle) do not pay commissions to TA's. Therefore, no TA is interested in handling your booking, unless you are such a good customer they do it as a favor. I am sure they would not discount the price or give any ceedits.

[Coral]

The two river boat companies we have sailed with (Unworld & Grand Circle) do not pay commissions to TA's. Therefore, no TA is interested in handling your booking, unless you are such a good customer they do it as a favor. I am sure they would not discount the price or give any ceedits.

 

I think Uniworld does pay commissions. It is Vantage and GCT that travel agents don't deal with and people book directly with them.

 

There are agents who will discount Avalon. Other agents will sell Avalon at the same price as Avalon themselves.

[tiggypooo]

Uniworld definitely pays tarvel agents commission, as I received some from them this year. The price is the same, whether you book with or without an agent.

The advantage of having an agent, is knowing that they are organizing everything for you and if there are any questions or problems, you have somewhere to turn.

[letsgo39]

We did the Avalon Budapest to Amsterdam cruise this summer and got a very nice discount using the online TA affordabletours dot com

[Benita]

I used Affordabletours.com for a land trip to Sicily with Gate1. They gave a nice discount. Just before the trip, I had an accident and was in a cast and had to cancel. They were very helpful in getting the paperwork I needed for the cancellation insurance company and I booked again with them the next year.

[marycang]

Go to http://www.*************.com/ and sign up for cruise quotes. Describe your cruise and you will receive quotes back. Compare them with the quote you get from Avalon. We just booked a cruise from a TA on Cruise Compete and it was a lot less than booking with the cruiseline.

[retiredslug]

We too used cruise compete to hook up with a reliable TA specializing in cruises. He has provided OBCs, discounts, prepaid gratuities and outstanding service. We simply try to get the best offer available from all sources and then give him a chance to beat the offers. So far he's 4 for 4 before giving us the best discount on next years Avalon cruise (even beating "affordable tours.")

[marycang]

OOps. Looks like my post was edited. I hope you can see *************. in

the deleted parts of the post. Good Luck. Just to calm your fears using *************, when you sign on you give them an alias and no one knows who you are. You can selest your own e-mail or a hotmail.com etc. e-mail. So you are always safe.

[marycang]

*************. Cruise compete. Just checing to see what gets censored.

[marycang]

How strange. What is the big deal. delete cruise compete but not Creuise Compete

[herb]

It's good to know that cruise compete deals with european river cruises too!

[nbevins]

We too used cruise compete to hook up with a reliable TA specializing in cruises. He has provided OBCs, discounts, prepaid gratuities and outstanding service. We simply try to get the best offer available from all sources and then give him a chance to beat the offers. So far he's 4 for 4 before giving us the best discount on next years Avalon cruise (even beating "affordable tours.")

 

 

rbevins1@yahoo.com

[retiredslug]

Check your email.

[fred111]

We just used cruise compete to find the best prices on a Christmas Market cruise for 2008 on Uniworld. We got 5 bids. 3 were pretty good. 1 was great so we went with CruiseValue. Good people to work with.