Prebook excursions vs booking on board

[Malemew]

Hi,

 

Does anybody know if prebooking excursions is cheaper than booking on board?

 

We have found that pre paying service charges saves a lot of money when you pay in GBP up front compared to paying in USD on board.

 

Just wondered if this is the same for excursions.

 

Thanks on advance.

[Dcoy]

Normally I've seen prices the same either booking before or during the cruise. Not sure about NCL, but on other lines I've seen prices on the ship up to 10% higher.

 

If it's a popular excursion, it could be sold out before the cruise.

 

Don

[BirdTravels]

Hi, Does anybody know if prebooking excursions is cheaper than booking on board? We have found that pre paying service charges saves a lot of money when you pay in GBP up front compared to paying in USD on board. Just wondered if this is the same for excursions. Thanks on advance.

 

There is no difference in price.

 

Advantages of prebooking:

 

1) locking in prices. Prices of excursions goes up over time. On a recent cruise, tour costs jumped $10 pp on the average between the time we first looked and the time we booked

 

2) sell out. Popular tours will sell out before the cruise. Tours with limited seats sell out before the cruise. On a recent cruise, we prebooked about 2 months before the cruise and 4 of the 6 tours we wanted were sold out.

 

3) paying in your currency vs incuring foreign transaction fees to pay in US dollars on the ship.

Edited December 28, 2016 by BirdTravels

[esm54687]

Normally I've seen prices the same either booking before or during the cruise. Not sure about NCL, but on other lines I've seen prices on the ship up to 10% higher.

 

If it's a popular excursion, it could be sold out before the cruise.

 

Don

 

So which one is it?

 

"I've seen prices the same" or "I've seen prices on the ship up to 10% higher"

 

In other words.... no idea

 

:D:D

Edited December 28, 2016 by esm54687

[BostonGal35]

prices may sometimes be higher on board.

80% of the time we book independents anyway.

we are booking one for our next cruise thru the line, but we have $200 OBC to use so we want to book with that. we wont use it otherwise (booze adn gratuities were free with the pick 2 promo).

[TrumpyNor]

So which one is it?

 

"I've seen prices the same" or "I've seen prices on the ship up to 10% higher"

 

In other words.... no idea

 

:D:D

 

I have experienced both, believe it or not.... ;)

 

I have occasionally seen (and purchased) some NCL excursions with "Book now, save 10%", but I actually think that it is at least a couple of years since last time I saw it offered. If it doesn't say anything on the excursions site online, then the price for the excursion will be the same(in USD) if you pre-book or if you wait until on board the ship to book it (if the excursion is not sold out...).

 

But I guess that the OP's question is in regards to the exchange rate between GBP and USD, and if the excursion prices for the British market or for the American market (=same as on board), are more or less the same. Usually the cruise prices are lower when listed in USD than when listed in GBP or EUR (probably because the European market is willing to pay more for a cruise?), but I have no idea if that is the case also when it comes to excursion prices.

[mnventure]

On my cruise in 2015, I printed the list of excursions so our group could read them and decide what we wanted to do. We read the list while waiting to board (after checking in). We then booked the excursions while on the ship. We booked excursions at two ports and in each case, they were $0.99 more per person than what I had printed from the website two days earlier. (Since I had the printout it was very easy to see the difference...but it wasn't much.)

[Dei3Nascar8]

If there is something that you want to do and don't want to risk it being sold out then I would pre-book. My wife and I always prebook what we want to do since on our first cruise we had to worry about not getting an excursion that we wanted. However, we were in a group of 8. Since then we have been mainly in groups of 2 or 4 so it hasn't been a problem. Sometimes if we don't know what to do we book on the ship and our choices are limited. Makes it easier to figure out what to do based on limited options.