Where / How do you book your cruises?

[janetz]

I book by phone with a travel agency that gives free insurance and also loyalty points that can be saved and used toward future cruises.

 

 

Yes..;)

[clackey]

We just booked our 17th cruise and have booked cruises for 7 other couples all online with several different online TA's. Only had one minor glitch and it was my fault. Every company that I had used before automatically charged final payment to my credit card or gave me notification that it was due. That site didn't.

 

I would like to check with a Brick and Mortar TA to see if they have any perks, but so far, we have been happy DIY.

[Jschloss84]

Mcf

 

 

? ?? ??

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

[paul929207]

Travel Agent

[iancal]

We view cruises as a commodity item. No different than buying gas. We don't need or ask for any additional services other than booking the cruise or re-pricing it as the case may be. Nor do we want to be best friends with our TA-this is a business transaction/relationship.

 

We get the balcony cabin whether we pay top dollar at the cruise line or whether we book with our on line TA who provides great OBC's. We don't loose any so called control on our booking. Our TA is very responsive and the agency keeps extended hours.

 

We do prefer to book with a TA vs a cruise line agent, someone who is not in the employ and under the direction of the cruise line.

 

Where do we book? We live in Canada. We typically book with a US on line TA however we have also booked cruises in other countries because the pricing, adjusted for currency, on our selected cruise was more attractive.. In the case of the last one booked like that, an Austalia/NZ late booking cruise, booking in Australia represented a 30 percent plus saving to us. We have encountered the same with other travel products.

 

This happens infrequently but when it does the savings can be substantial. Easy enough to check local sites. In the last instance, it was the folks on the Austrralian NewZealand page who were kind enough to give us the heads up to check the local pricing. One phone call and it was done and dusted so to speak.

[crystalspin]

Have tried local TA specializing in cruises (no real perks) and a flyer we get in the mail, that wound up costing us more because the guarantee they promised might have left us in an undesirable location, I stuck with booking myself on-line... until I tried to cancel a HAL cruise on the last day, only to find that HAL was observing an extra day off (not a federal holiday!) for Christmas! I had saved email notifications from a Personal Cruise Consultant assigned to me by HAL, although I had never used her. I desperately left phone and email messages to her expressing my need to cancel TWO bookings. The day after Xmas she was still on vacation, but her manager could see the email date stamp and approved refunding our deposits.

 

This saved me $2400. I now use my PCC for HAL cruises (most of our cruises). She and her co-worker that fills in when she is not available HAVE saved me money (additional to the twenty-four hundred!) and also stopped me from inadvertently re-faring when it would have made down-payments non-refundable and unalterable.