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Did You Realize Windstar Offers "Private Sales" Not Published on Their Web Site?


skitrips
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As stated in a companion post, this morning my wife and I booked another (we went on the same cruise last year) 8 Day/7 Night "Dreams of Tahiti" cruise at a price of $1,899/person. If you go to the W/S web site you will see that this cruise is advertised at a price of $4,599/person. Yes I understand the $4,599/person includes air from LAX, first night's lodging and a last day's "day room" (because the return flight leaves at or close to midnight). But we already have incredibly priced air transportation (the subject of a previous post), and it didn't cost us anywhere near $2,700/person. So how did we get the $1,899/person W/S fare?

 

Like many of you, we check with third party sites for "discounted" pricing. One of those sites is our travel agent's site. But never in the past have we seen a difference in pricing when comparing the TA's and W/S web site pricing. Typically, they're identical. That was until Saturday morning.

 

All of a sudden we saw a myriad of prices that were not being offered on the W/S web site. Now remember, we were only looking at 7 night W/S Tahiti cruises. And we were only looking for the inclusive time period of July - October, 2018 (actually, we were only looking for the cruise departing September 6, 2018, but we wanted to make sure we weren't looking at an anomaly or a "mistake"). But look what we found: July 12 - $1,799; July 19, July 26 as well as August 30 - $1,699; and, September 6, 13 and 20 - $1,899.

 

So I called my agent to find out if these prices were for real? I was told yes. So I tried to make a booking for our September 6 departure date. Although I was successful, and in the lowest price "B" category to boot, the price came out at $2,675/person. Why the difference? The agent said she would have to call W/S the following Monday (this) morning. Now I know about yield management pricing, but that doesn't explain what we found because we had already reserved a "B" category room.

 

So this morning we got the W/S agent on the line (a three party conversation) who said that for some reason the price wasn't coming up at $1,899/person which it should have. So after spending about 15 minutes with her manager, the W/S agent came back on the line and offered us the $1,899/person price if we booked and paid that price right then and there. So we did. And when the guest booking invoice came back, it evidenced the following price breakdown: $2,771.15 less $872.15 ("private sale tier 4) = $1,899 plus $101 in taxes = $2,000/person.

 

You can call the sale fare whatever you like. But at the end of the day it is and was a fare offered to the world through the travel agent's and possibly other web sites. And although some of the cruises I have identified are the subject of today's "flash sale" pricing, you will see that pricing isn't anywhere close to the prices I have shared above. And I never would have learned of this more favorable pricing had I not gone to the travel agent's web site Saturday morning.

 

So my questions. Have you ever seen differences in pricing such as these insofar as W/S cruises are concerned? What are "private sales?" What is "tier 4" (versus other tier) pricing? And if you have seen these types of sales and/or pricing before, how do you learn of them if you don't happen to go to a web site that for whatever reasons lists lower pricing? I have signed up for weekly e-mails from W/S so I can report that NONE of these prices has appeared on W/S's 7 on 7 and flash sale pricing sent to me for the last six or more weeks. So where do they come from?

 

And to those of you with the flexibility who are looking for a reduced W/S Tahiti cruise, now you know where and when to look. I have NEVER seen a $1,699/person cruise only price before. I have seen $1,799/person pricing but for whatever reasons, that price is only being offered for July 19, 26 and August 30, 2018 departures. Since my wife and I are locked into a September 6 departure, because we have already purchased our air transportation, we'll settle for the up charge.

 

In any event, I would like to learn more about "private sales" which are even more private than W/S' 7 on 7 and "flash" sales. And thanks for looking.

Edited by Host Walt
Remove name of travel agency
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People don't know where to look, because we aren't allowed to name specific cruise TAs.

Windstar often has discounted prices on a particular online TA, and I have seen, for example, $1699 prices for July 19, 2018 and July 26, 2018 departures on Wind Spirit. I assume these prices are minus taxes, so I don't know what final price would be.

I looked at Windstar's webpage for July 26 sailing. The lowest category available was Category B for $4099 plus $101 in taxes. This is advertised as a "Flash Sale" but the price seems crazy to me. In contrast, sailing of July 12, category AX cost $2599 plus $101 in taxes.

You just have to shop around, and often, despite advertised prices, there really are no cabins left at that price. This happens often on Windstar's own webpage, which really seems deceptive.

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I am one of those people. I would love to shop around, but I have no idea who is reputable. I'm not going to dish out many thousands of dollars for a vacation and just hope that agent/agency is on the up and up. Everyone here seems to know who the reputable agencies are, but if you're new here, like me, you're kind of left floundering around wondering where to shop for a reasonable price. I'm not interested in the cheapest price because there is usually a reason why something is too good to be true. I'm more interested in reasonable / not getting screwed.

 

If anyone can point in the direction to learn who the reputable agencies are, I'd be grateful. I realize you can't name names.......

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I am one of those people. I would love to shop around, but I have no idea who is reputable. I'm not going to dish out many thousands of dollars for a vacation and just hope that agent/agency is on the up and up. Everyone here seems to know who the reputable agencies are, but if you're new here, like me, you're kind of left floundering around wondering where to shop for a reasonable price. I'm not interested in the cheapest price because there is usually a reason why something is too good to be true. I'm more interested in reasonable / not getting screwed.

 

If anyone can point in the direction to learn who the reputable agencies are, I'd be grateful. I realize you can't name names.......

 

We just used the website where you put in your dates/ship etc and the agencies compete for your cruise. All the offers were about the same except one which was several thousand dollars (about 3k) cheaper. We looked at the reviews for the agency and booked it through them. They even threw in some in board credit.

 

A few minutes later we got the cruise line confirmation and everything looks fine. I think they had group rates.

 

I think we will use that website from now on.

 

Have a great cruise!

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This practice doesn't surprise me at all. You're in the WS revenue management department. It's getting closer to the sail date and you have a bunch of unsold cabins. By now you've made the income target for that cruise and you're left with a handful of unsold cabins you can squeeze some money out of by selling them cheap. They aren't primo since regular customers have already skimmed the inventory. You don't want to really announce deeply discounted fares widely since you'll either have a flood of people wanting to reprice (and losing reveue if you accommodate those requests) or you'll impose restrictions that people will be unhappy about and post their feelings on Cruise Critic. So, you quietly sell them off to a discount agency and they're the bad guys as they're the ones who will get to say "new booking only". It just makes sense when you have what is effectively a perishable product - they can price it just at the point where it covers fixed costs - like food - and have a a little profit left over. And, it doesn't compete with their own website or regular TA sales streams.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I have discovered that we are better off NOT booking early as incredible sales from TA's are available. I tried to post about 4 months ago, but it was taken down because I named the TA. Twice, Windstar did adjust my booking price when I called and showed them a better price (which they had said I should do upon my original booking), but I still feel we'd be better off booking late.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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