Perks to booking rooms together?

[DustinandStacy2015]

So far I have my guests just booking a room and not really mentioning the fact that we are a wedding group. Should I be telling them to mention us? Is there any perks or discounts in doing so? Carnival knows it's our wedding and one room has mentioned us to be connected but should they all be doing that?!

[Carnival_Brides]

Unless you're going through groups to do a group booking there aren't any perks, per se. If you want your guests to dine with you and be seated at your table, they should mention that when they book, so your bookings can be linked. We asked our guests to book with our PVP, so that he could take care of that for them. He was happy to do it since he got credit for the bookings towards his sales goals.

[mrstriceasnice]

Like Carnival Brides, we are having our guests book through our PVP so that they can dine with us. Beyond that I haven't booked a block of rooms or anything of that sort.

[DustinandStacy2015]

I called to check up on that and apparently he was confused as to why we weren't asked to book as a group to begin with.... (reason number 23949494 I hate Carnival right now) so I have to go back and get all the info from my 10 rooms already booked to put them together as a group then we "earn" amenities by having a group like champagne, gift bags etc.

[Carnival_Brides]

I called to check up on that and apparently he was confused as to why we weren't asked to book as a group to begin with.... (reason number 23949494 I hate Carnival right now) so I have to go back and get all the info from my 10 rooms already booked to put them together as a group then we "earn" amenities by having a group like champagne, gift bags etc.

 

You earn amenities and "free person" (still pay taxes and fees) for every x number of cabins you book. The free person is based on the the most popular cabin type booked (suite, balc, ov, inside) and some ships have limits on which category can be booked. I think on the Pride the group booking didn't work for balconies.

 

Warning (these are the reasons we booked separate):

1) The free berth doesn't/shouldn't qualify for VIFP points, so that person would have to be willing to forgo the loyalty points--we had past guests who weren't willing to do that.

2) If you manage to get your group booking at an ES rate, there are limits and rules for the price matching because of the amenity points. We found that the group rate was substantially higher than booking on our own (someone's gotta pay for the berth and amenities).

[dancinman66]

Yes the group booking thing is important to keep in mind good savings are available

 

 

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[NL2134]

Like others, we had our guests book individually through our PVP so they could at least be linked for dining. Our PVP put in a dining reservation up front for 50 people You can also call the dining number and set the reservation yourself and link everyone through them directly.

 

We found that everyone got better pricing booking individually than they would have through group booking. And most of the perks aren't that impressive. Even if we got discount off our room, I didn't think it justified making all our guests pay more to get it. Plus, the group booking didn't qualify for the same price guarantees. We managed to book early enough that everyone could book under early saver pricing, which offered much better rates and price guarantee than what group booking did. Probably the biggest factor in our decision was the price guarantee. I had been watching rates for same cruise a year before ours and right before the cruise, the rates dropped nearly to half what we were paying for our cruise. So, we were hopeful that our rates would go cheaper and wanted the price guarantee to take advantage of it.

 

Even our PVP said the group plan wasn't good if you book that far in advance. And letting everyone book individually just made things so much easier. I had enough on my plate with planning a wedding and I really didn't want to have to play travel agent and coordinate group bookings for everyone's trip too.

 

So, definitely look into all the factors before you decide to go with a group booking. It's not always the best option and can create some restrictions, which may not be desirable.