Cruise fare Price Guarantee

The following has been posted on the cruise consultant's door on Navigator, and flyers have been provided in all suites. As worded, I assume this benefit is only available for reservations made onboard. Time will tell...

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BEST PRICE GUARANTEE

Booking onboard always comes with our Best Price Guarantee from the day you book up until the day of sailing.

Should there be another applicable public promotion offering a better value through a combination of lower price and amenities on the cruise and category you have selected, you will be able to take advantage of this new promotion plus the added benefit of the applicable Onboard Savings. Simply have your travel agent call Regent Seven Seas to have the new promotion added to your reservation (subject to availability).

Should there be a price reduction after final payment has been paid, the difference will be given to you in the form of a Shipboard Credit, suite upgrade, or a Future Cruise Credit at our discretion.

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Thanks for posting this very interesting new benefit! This will encourage passengers to book while onboard rather than waiting until they get home. Since your TA gets credit for the booking, there is really no downside to doing an onboard booking!

This is a nice offer.

Interesting, thanks for sharing!

That is a very positive move. I am glad to see Regent do that.

I hope that they extend this promotion to cruises booked directly with travel agents - I know of a number of people are are "waiting" to see what happens, esp after the final payment due date - many are betting that the fares may drop even more and are taking their chances. If this promotion was available, I believe people would not be so hesitant to book early on in the process.

gnomie :)

I'm not sure but I think the whole idea is to get people to book onboard which ultimately gives customers on a Regent cruise a better "deal". We were not willing to wait to book until we got on our last cruise as our choice of suites would have been reduced. So, we booked it a couple of months before the cruise and rebooked while onboard. Had prices gone up, we would have been out of luck but since prices typically go up quarterly, we thought the risk was worth it.

Since we are currently only looking at Explorer cruises, I expect the cruises to run full - without the need for lowering the price. It seems that the cruises that Regent has the most difficulty with are Mediterranean and Middle East itineraries (which makes a lot of sense given the terrorist threats in the area). Since it appears (at least this year) that the Explorer and Navigator will be in the Med in the summer and fall, the only hesitation I would have is booking the Navigator -- these seem to be the itineraries that are being discounted in the U.K. As long as the 25% sale draws a lot of passengers, there may be no need to discount the cruises further (at least I hope not!)

Maybe some posters will chime in and let us know if they are hesitant to book a cruise in case the price goes down after final payment. It would be interesting to learn first hand.

I'm done booking early. We booked a cruise on the Mariner Med cruise last year. We were told by the Regent agent that we booked it just in time to beat the price increase and disappearance of business air upgrade deal. I fact, this did not happen; the price remained the same and everybody got 2 category upgrade and business fare upgrade did not change. We called our TA and managed to get an upgrade to a Penthouse B room. About a year ago we scheduled a Miami to Miami in April 2016 cruise with early booking discount. This discount remained into affect until after our final payment when the price dropped $1000 pp. Again I notified our TA and we were offered a one category upgrade and $700 OBC or$2000 off a future cruise. Since we have a Explorer cruise later this year we opted for the $2000 off that cruise.

I am looking at an Asian cruise for next Spring and have no intention of booking early. I may look at booking a cruise while on board my future cruises but no longer see much advantage to booking early. Frankly it's a hassle to keep checking the web sight to see if the price drops.

Regent pricing schemes are too complicated for me. The new onboard booking guarantee sounds good, but I'd like to see the fine print. As we all know, the devil is in the details and if it sounds too good to be true it usually is. The endless paper and electronic messages I get is wasteful. if Regent spent less money on advertising/promo and invested more in retaining and rewarding past guests with incentives and additional benefits then I think it would be more profitable and successful. We all know it's harder and more costly to attract new business, then to delight, reward and focus on existing customers.

It sounds as if posters are only looking at price decreases and not the whole picture. We have booked several cruises early (for some reason we tend to book popular ones), that have increased in price several times before the sail date. Whether the increase happens when we have only a deposit or after final payment, it does not affect us. IMO, there are far more price increases on Regent cruises than discounts. However, for those of you that are comfortable waiting until the last minute and taking whatever suites are still available, I don't see a problem with it.

The following has been posted on the cruise consultant's door on Navigator, and flyers have been provided in all suites. As worded, I assume this benefit is only available for reservations made onboard. Time will tell...

 

-----------------------------

BEST PRICE GUARANTEE

 

Booking onboard always comes with our Best Price Guarantee from the day you book up until the day of sailing.

 

Should there be another applicable public promotion offering a better value through a combination of lower price and amenities on the cruise and category you have selected, you will be able to take advantage of this new promotion plus the added benefit of the applicable Onboard Savings. Simply have your travel agent call Regent Seven Seas to have the new promotion added to your reservation (subject to availability).

 

Should there be a price reduction after final payment has been paid, the difference will be given to you in the form of a Shipboard Credit, suite upgrade, or a Future Cruise Credit at our discretion.

 

 

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Thanks for posting this useful information

The latest on-board flyer appears to be a more detailed version of a 'guarantee' that was previously on offer

This statement was in a copy of Passages from Voyager, May 2015: 'When you book early onboard you are guaranteed the lowest fares'

We kept this 'guarantee' just in case as we booked a future cruise way in advance whilst on-board and always worry that Regent might reduce the price before sailing (this has happened to us twice previously).

As previously mentioned on other threads, booking on-board has other significant advantages for those of us from the UK - a significantly lower deposit plus booking flexibility prior to final payment

This new policy looks good. Previously, we were able to get price reductions if a better deal came along before final payment was made, but not after. This will definitely encourage me to book onboard.

While this is a step in the right direction I don't share everyone's enthusiasm.

So, if there is a price reduction after final payment you get a future cruise credit which you mAy or may not use depending on your circumstances.

Or you get on onboard credit which puts your savings back into the Regent revenue stream. Thanks

Or they bump you to an empty suite which costs Regent nothing.

Here is a simple idea, Regent should do what Crystal does, simply refund the amount directly to the customer. Simple, fair, happy customer. I was on a Crystal cruise in 2014 where the rates dropped after final payment and they refunded the difference weeks before departure.

We are really annoyed with the pricing, lowering of cruise fares after final payment,

early booking and now onboard booking guarantee. Getting very complicated and it shouldn't be. We are taking the Dubai to Barcelona cruise on May 2. New lowered fares and FREE Business airline tickets in all suite categories. The fares on this cruise started out at $13,999 per person…now that fare is $9,999 per person. The Business class airline

ticket that was $999 each way is now FREE. How do you think people feel who paid the

original fares feel about this? Really…it's bad business.

I completely agree with the dislike of the fare manipulations. In my mind it cheapens the Regent product. Crystal has always had our admiration in the way they handled price reductions by simply refunding the difference in cash as it was paid.

If Regent wants to remain (or be) a classy act they need to do something similar. We don't need more shipboard credit or a reduction on a future cruise we may or may not want to take with them.

I completely agree with the dislike of the fare manipulations. In my mind it cheapens the Regent product. Crystal has always had our admiration in the way they handled price reductions by simply refunding the difference in cash as it was paid.

 

If Regent wants to remain (or be) a classy act they need to do something similar. We don't need more shipboard credit or a reduction on a future cruise we may or may not want to take with them.

I'm thinking that in the "old days", before everyone had instant access to pricing via the internet, we would check out brochures, speak to our agent and get a price,,,,take it or leave it. I can't recall there being all of these OBC offers from the company I really don't want any more OBC than our agent provides. Now that we get to be in the know we are getting to know more than we wanted to. Its not good to feel as though you might have been sort of ripped off.

I'm in agreement with Grey Eagle regarding booking far in advance of the sailing date for all of the reasons he sites. In addition, I find the cancellation penalties a bit excessive. On the popular cruises, Regent will pocket the cancellation penalty and resell the cabin. (Hey, if they can get away with it, more power to them.) But I think I'll wait until 60 days or so from my intended sailing, and see what's available. If there is nothing interesting on Regent, I'll check out Seabourn. I've found that to be a good alternative. And if there's nothing worthwhile there, I'll wait a month and look again.

I have no intention of booking a future cruise during my April cruise on the Mariner and may consider booking the Hongkong to Beijing Voyager cruise while on the Explorer in Nov, depending on the price. However, given the recent Asian Voyager reviews, terrorist threat in Europe and Zika threat in South America, we are seriously looking at Tauck Tours in the USA.