HAL not being honest with loyal customers

[RDC1]

There is one reason why HAL and some other cruise lines try to stop customers from booking on out of country sites.

 

It is because they practice variable pricing. Fortunately there are ways around this, just as there is with manufactured goods in the 'grey market'.

 

Compare this to the hospitality industry. We book with Accor hotels,on their site, and we pay the same rate in local currency whether it is France, Thailand, or Canada. Does not matter what country we book in or book from.

 

There are a number of reasons why cruise lines charge different rates and have different booking conditions in different countries:

 

1. Regulation risk

2. Currency risk

3. Competitive factors (including competitive cost to land based vacations)

 

Take for example the UK market. There are protections in place that increases the risk for potential refunds, compared to the US. As such a pricing model would need to account for those risks. Also the UK laws require delivery of what was booked. One of the areas where people from the UK face different booking conditions is in the ability to make changes after the booking is made. One potential reason for that is that if a change is made from the original booking the cruise line would need to maintain a paper trail showing that the customer had approved the change (in a manner that would be legally acceptable under the requirements of the Package Travel Regulations). There systems do not provide such a paper trail. That leaves the cruise with two options 1. create such a system to document customer acceptance of all changes (substantial change or cost) or 2. Do not allow changes. You can tell which one most of the major lines have chosen.

Edited March 24, 2017 by RDC1

[RDC1]

By definition, a charter is the entire ship. There is no such thing as a "partial charter".

 

DON

 

Other cruise lines use the term "partial charter" HAL uses the term "Incentive Group"

[iancal]

Your comments about in country booking may be so.

 

But we have not had any issue booking cruises in the UK and in other countries with a number of cruise lines. The issue appears to be with Carnival Corp lines.

 

And typically, it is with these Carnival cruise line subs that we see the large price variances between booking countries. The notion of telling me that I cannot book a cruise in Europe and board in Europe is as silly as claiming that I will be denied boarding if my passport and residence is in NA. What other travel organization tried to do this? None that we are aware of other than in country discounts for citizens of that country on some regional airlines.

 

We have saved a considerable amount of money by booking outside our country. Apart from UK booking, we saved a considerable amount of money by finding, and working with, a TA in South Africa for travel and a safari trip.

 

The very first thing we do when booking travel is to determine if there are savings to be enjoyed by booking directly inside our destination country or on some other international site.

We travel twice a year, for 60-90 days at a time. The savings can really add up.

 

One of the reasons we do this is that we view a cruise, hotel stay etc. as a commodity product. Same no matter where we buy it. Only the service of the booking agent varies and we can deal with that.

[RDC1]

Your comments about in country booking may be so.

 

But we have not had any issue booking cruises in the UK and in other countries with a number of cruise lines. The issue appears to be with Carnival Corp lines.

 

And typically, it is with these Carnival cruise line subs that we see the large price variances between booking countries. The notion of telling me that I cannot book a cruise in Europe and board in Europe is as silly as claiming that I will be denied boarding if my passport and residence is in NA. What other travel organization tried to do this? None that we are aware of other than in country discounts for citizens of that country on some regional airlines.

 

We have saved a considerable amount of money by booking outside our country. Apart from UK booking, we saved a considerable amount of money by finding, and working with, a TA in South Africa for travel and a safari trip.

 

The very first thing we do when booking travel is to determine if there are savings to be enjoyed by booking directly inside our destination country or on some other international site.

We travel twice a year, for 60-90 days at a time. The savings can really add up.

 

One of the reasons we do this is that we view a cruise, hotel stay etc. as a commodity product. Same no matter where we buy it. Only the service of the booking agent varies and we can deal with that.

 

Depends upon which cruise lines you are talking about. CCL (the parent company) has corporate subsidiaries in the UK and Australia due to the purchase of Cunard and P&O. That places additional regulatory pressure on them compared to other companies that provide bookings via an agent, but does not have a corporate entity there.

 

Also there are differences between the different components of the travel industry. Hotels are first and foremost local. They don't move they don't cross national boundaries. In general the rates charged are the local rate, with some changes based upon the booking agent, but pretty much anyone from anywhere can connect directly to the hotel and book.

 

Land tours have some national changes and subject to regulations depending upon the location that sells them.

 

Airlines are often more like cruise lines in that they often have different fares depending upon the country in which they are booked. Also some airlines do prevent people from outside of the country from booking at a given rate inside of the country. They also manage it by setting the fare based upon the originating leg. For example a round trip starting and returning to New Zealand, might have a totally different fare than one starting and ending in the US, even though the same distance and the same flights are flown (just in reverse order).

Edited March 24, 2017 by RDC1

[iancal]

Don't know. But we have certainly booked overseas with RCI companies twice-once with Celebrity, once with RCI. On both occasions it was not a web booking. We booked by calling in to the office, identifying ourselves and ensuring that our Diamond/Elite status would be honoured. Absolutely no issue with either-most especially with the Australian RCI agents who welcomed us and kept giving us discounts that we were not even aware of.

 

Not a fluke, my sister did exactly the same with a UK TA-and she was a repeat Celebrity customer with a Canadian address on file.

 

I strongly suspect that you could not do this on HAL or Princess. Well, I know for a fact that HAL would try to stop this.

 

From our experience the difference in airlines is disappearing quickly on international routes. Domestic is another kettle of fish as we found out in Argentina.

 

We use zenmate to get around some issues. We have also found that calling direct to the country is the easiest approach. Our recent call to Buenos Aires cost us fifty cents of our calling card balance. It took 10 minutes. We saved $200 USD on air fares. We have enjoyed similar and greater savings in a comparable amount of time simply by thinking out of the box as it were.

 

At the end of the day it is about price fixing by geography. I hardly think that there was much difference in overheads or Government regulations between our UK, Australian, and NA cruise experiences. If our friends in the UK and Australia need our address in order to save 15-30 percent on a cruise they are most welcome to use it.

 

At the end of the day it is a small world with ever increasing communication abilities. Those vendors who practice price fixing based on geography will eventually disappear or be forced by competition to move to a universal pricing model.

Edited March 24, 2017 by iancal

[RDC1]

Don't know. But we have certainly booked overseas with RCI companies twice-once with Celebrity, once with RCI. On both occasions it was not a web booking. We booked by calling in to the office, identifying ourselves and ensuring that our Diamond/Elite status would be honoured. Absolutely no issue with either-most especially with the Australian RCI agents who welcomed us and kept giving us discounts that we were not even aware of.

 

Not a fluke, my sister did exactly the same with a UK TA-and she was a repeat Celebrity customer with a Canadian address on file.

 

I strongly suspect that you could not do this on HAL or Princess. Well, I know for a fact that HAL would try to stop this.

 

From our experience the difference in airlines is disappearing quickly on international routes. Domestic is another kettle of fish as we found out in Argentina.

 

We use zenmate to get around some issues. We have also found that calling direct to the country is the easiest approach. Our recent call to Buenos Aires cost us fifty cents of our calling card balance. It took 10 minutes. We saved $200 USD on air fares. We have enjoyed similar and greater savings in a comparable amount of time simply by thinking out of the box as it were.

 

At the end of the day it is about price fixing by geography. I hardly think that there was much difference in overheads or Government regulations between our UK, Australian, and NA experiences.

 

At the end of the day it is a small world with ever increasing communication abilities. Those vendors who practice price fixing based on geography will eventually disappear or be forced by competition to move to a universal pricing model.

 

RCI uses an agent and does not have a corporate entity in the UK or Australia. HAL and Princess are part of the CCL corporate structure and do. I suspect that has an impact on HAL, Princess and P&O walking a much tighter line on compliance in both Australia and the UK (and by extension the EU though we will see if that changes after Brexit). RCI only has to comply with those regulations that a foreign entity selling through a booking agent has to deal with. CCL lines have to comply with regulations applicable to corporations located inside the countries.

[iancal]

I do not know if the RCI person I spoke to in Australia was an RCI ee or really just an agent. It was most definately the RCI office number that I got right from their web site. If it was an agent he certainly had access to our RCI file etc because he subtracted our Diamond club balcony discount from the fare without our asking.

 

But the bottom line was this. Why would we pay $4K per person for a cruise when booking in North America when we can pay $2700? Same cruise, same date, same cabin class. Same everything. So, it was a $2600 savings for two of. Yes, a fluke in terms of pricing but RCI was more than happy to to process the transaction. Absolutely no questions asked, no objections whatsoever.

 

It was a kind person on the OZ board of CC who gave us the idea.

Edited March 25, 2017 by iancal

[Globaliser]

Depends upon which cruise lines you are talking about. CCL (the parent company) has corporate subsidiaries in the UK and Australia due to the purchase of Cunard and P&O. That places additional regulatory pressure on them compared to other companies that provide bookings via an agent, but does not have a corporate entity there.

The Carnival group corporate structure doesn't quite work like that. But even so, there is one feature of the group that shows that this is entirely a commercial decision made by each cruise line for reasons other than a fear of regulation: Carnival Cruise Line will take bookings from UK customers via its standard US channels, even though other Carnival group brands (eg HAL or Princess) refuse to.

 

There is a further feature of many of these cruise lines' policies that shows that this practice is not driven by a fear of being subject to costly UK/EU regulation that has not been priced into the US market price: Many of these cruise lines reserve their US channels to US residents or to US citizens living anywhere in the world. That means that they are prepared to take a booking from a UK-resident US citizen. If it were the case that UK/EU regulation applies to a booking taken from a UK-resident customer, that regulation would apply regardless of the nationality of the customer. In other words, there is the same regulatory risk whether the customer is a UK-resident US citizen or a UK-resident UK citizen. If the cruise line does not fear a regulatory risk for the former, why should it fear a regulatory risk for the latter?

 

They also manage it by setting the fare based upon the originating leg. For example a round trip starting and returning to New Zealand, might have a totally different fare than one starting and ending in the US, even though the same distance and the same flights are flown (just in reverse order).

This is a completely different phenomenon. The NZ-US-NZ trip may well be a very different price from the US-NZ-US trip. But generally speaking, the NZ-US-NZ trip will be the same price whether you buy that ticket in NZ or in the US, and the US-NZ-US trip will be the same price whether you buy that ticket in NZ or in the US. There are times when this isn't the case, but even then it is very rare to find an airline imposing a restriction that prevents (say) a US resident booking in (say) NZ if the fare when booked in NZ is cheaper than the lowest fare which can be booked in the US.

[iancal]

This is generally our experience, ie airfares on most international routes are similar whether you purchase the ticket at the originating or the destination country.

 

We travel internationally twice a year-sometimes more. We do a variety of return, open jaws, and one ways. We sometimes find a difference on the one ways, especially with flag carriers or the majors. Not so on return and we check and price a number of ways.

 

We came back on a one way from Australia two years ago. It was far less costly to buy a ticket on discount airline Jetstar (and the flight was a codeshare with Qantas) and then a one way home from HNL than it was to buy a one way on Qantas.

[sail7seas]

FOR those who have followed, understood and will be using these money saving methods, Congratulations. My hat is off to you. I read with interest until I got a pounding headache. from it all. :) Good, tips, I think. :)