why the difference in available cabins.....cruisetour vs cruise

When I search available cabins on a cruisetour to Alaska it shows me many cabins available in Aft of ship, if I search just for cruise, same ship and date, it shows me all AFT cabins "sold out"

what gives :confused:

delete--somehow I read the question as the opposite scenario

The cabins in question are balcony cabins and when searching cruisetours, there are many,many available in the aft section of ship, If I search a balcony cabin for cruise only, AFT section, it shows me Sold Out.

I might understand the other way around, eg. available for cruise but not cruisetour....

still scratching my head :confused:

Only thought I have is...Princess wants to encourage sale of cruisetours.

That's sorta it. Princess alots specific cabins to be sold for the cruisetour. The same grade of cabin for just the cruise is held within a different inventory list. For more discussion of how this happens (not just on cruisetours, but also when two 7 day cruises are ALSO sold as on earth 14 day cruise) see the thread below

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2415879

Bottom line, when occupancy on a specific sailing can be sold in more than one fashion (tour, b2b, etc) Princess assigns cabins to a specific inventory list. Sometimes you can get them to swap a specific room from one list to the other, but not always

Since they would prefer to sell a cabin as part of a cruise tour, instead of just a cruise you can expect some premium locations to be held for the cruise tour and not be available for just the cruise portion.