Booking Ryndam with HAL

[Newtoncruise]

Having done 3 RCI cruises on Voyager/Freedom class ships I am taking my mother on a Hal cruise with her brothers and sisters forvher 70th birthday

 

Do HAL offer discounts and OBC like Royal Caribean. Most of the group have booked in Canada so having read the threads I know that it will be more expensive booking from the UK.

 

I had hoped for some incentives to make the pill easier to swallow. I'm looking forward to a very different cruise though.

 

Any tips suggestions welcomed. Thanks!

[KirkNC]

We always compare HAL pricing to that from a online TA. The TA is always cheaper. Not sure how that works when booking from the UK. We met a lovely couple from Australia on our last cruse and they really get screwed on pricing versus US passengers.

 

Kirk

[Globaliser]

Do HAL offer discounts and OBC like Royal Caribean. Most of the group have booked in Canada so having read the threads I know that it will be more expensive booking from the UK.

 

I had hoped for some incentives to make the pill easier to swallow.

I've been looking at the whole question of booking HAL from the UK.

 

At the moment HAL website prices look like they're usually the same whether you book in the US or the UK. So the difference is really in the way that TAs discount the cruises, which HAL appears to allow on both sides of the Atlantic.

 

As you know, we're not allowed to discuss specific cruise travel agents here. But my experience was that by doing some online searching, it was easy to find a number of specialist online cruise travel agents in the UK who will offer moderate discounts on HAL cruises, perhaps in the region of 7-10%.

[Liquid Shiva]

I did book trough a US (online) travel agent several times.

Though being from the Netherlands, this was not a problem at all, and it did save me a lot of money.

The dollar is low, and sometimes Dutch travel agents do not react adequate to pricedrops.

This fall, prices where virtually the same when I looked for a last minute cruise.

Shopping around can save you a lot of money!

[SwissMyst]

Ryndam is a much smaller ship than the others you have priced. This means it will cost more. We were recently on her and she was wonderful - but keep in mind she only carries 1200 passengers compared to the others.

[Alberta Quilter]

When I was planning a family reunion cruise for my mother's birthday, I believe I found some information on the HAL website about group cruises (I wasn't able to find it later). At that time (in the last two - three years), one needed to book a minimum of ten cabins to get the discount and the ten cabins needed to be booked at the same time. Presumably one could add more cabins later, if available. There were some other perks but I can't remember them. Unfortunately for us, we didn't have the ten cabin minimum so that's why I don't know any more about it.

 

In your case, could you not contact the North American TA who booked the cruise for some of your other family members and see if they could book yours? I'm not sure if that would work or not but it may be worth a try. We did that when we did a river cruise in Europe, because my sister was living in Rotterdam at the time. We just paid her back. The cruise we went on was geared to Europeans and Brits; we were the only Canadians. But it was less expensive and a better itinerary(for us) than we could have gotten for North American clientele.

 

I hope it goes well for you! I can say that our family reunion cruise was one of best I've ever done (in spite of the organizational hassle of dealing with my family!!).