Does NCL hold back cabins?

[shark with a laser]

I posted this on my roll call but thought I'd post it here to get a wider group of people, as I'm honestly curious. There's more to it than just the 2 cabins mentioned, I've seen several come available and go away since final payment.

 

So we're 17 days from sailing, in the 75% cancellation penalty period. I keep an eye on our cruise on a particular website that shows pricing and availability for any given cruise. It showed an OV guarantee come available a few days ago (still there today) and a balcony guarantee became available today. Are people really canceling at 75% penalty? Or does NCL hold back cabins in various categories and then release them after everything else has sold out? A few days ago only insides were showing as available.

[WaldosPepper]

There are a number of factors which can contribute to this, and it actually happens on most sailings. The first thing is, while NCL completes the process of assigning GTY category reservations, they sometimes close the window on several categories for a few hours (or sometimes a day or two) until all the assignments are made. Also, because the upsell fairy might be at work, and some mid-range staterooms become available, people take the opportunity to move up into those. Lastly, there are always people who have to cancel for one reason or another, which also creates openings in the last few days before sailing.

 

Hope that helps. :)

[bonvoyagie]

Another factor is some large travel agencies block large groups of rooms with the hope they can sell them either to groups or individuals. They are allowed to hold these rooms for up to 6 months. Then they can simply turn them back.

 

I suspect this happens more often than not - on our last cruise we booked our suite well in advance, I also watched both NCL and the other website and saw the number of these suites go from 10 to 6 to 2 meanwhile the prices went up and up. Then within 60 days of sailing there were 8 suites available and the price shot down even below the EBF.

 

And yes, what was mentioned about closing bookings for certain time periods as they start placing the GTY bookings is also true. Filling the ship to the proper level for both safety and profit is quite an art. :D

[shark with a laser]

Thank you both for responding. My first thought was upsell fairy, but there's nothing to upsell to. All but one of the suites have been booked since February. One came on and off the market a few times, even after final payment, but I think the situation after final payment for a few days was just 24 hour holds. It's been booked for close to a month now. Balconies have also been booked for several weeks until this one came up today. The travel agent situation never crossed my mind, although I did know they book blocks of rooms. I never knew, though, that they closed blocks of rooms to assign guaranties.