Q: final payment date has just passed, why did prices go up?

[Machta]

Hi friends. We are booked on the Veendam for a Caribbean cruise in December. The date for final payment has just passed. I'm sort of obsessive about looking at how many cabins remain unsold, and for the Vista Suites there are at least 34 cabins unassigned. For Neptunes there are at least 8 unassigned.

 

Two questions:

Why did the price actually increase just before the final payment date? I would have thought that HAL would want to lower prices and start to sell more of the unassigned premium cabins.

 

I read on another thread that when looking at the unassigned cabins shown on any particular view in a dummy booking you will never see more than 10 total. I certainly have never seen more than 10, and often they are grouped in blocks at one end of the deck on both sides. That looks very artificial to me, so I have wondered if there are more unassigned cabins than are being shown. Any thoughts?

 

Bonus question:

Knowing that there are rather a lot of cabins unassigned, when would you expect that the upsell offers would begin? And would you expect that they would follow HAL's typical pattern of starting high and having several rounds of upsell offers?

 

Okay, so that's four questions. Or five. Or something. Thanks for your thoughts!

[Scrapnana]

I was given two upsell offers for my last cruise. The first one came two months before the cruise. I declined and received another one a few weeks later. The second one was for more money than the first!

 

If they lowered the price before the final payment everyone who was paying attention (or their TAs) would ask for the new price or OBC or something. Have the prices gone down any since final payment? Some of those empty cabins may be going to guarantees.

[boulders]

The price may have increased to discourage people from cancelling before final payment and rebooking at a lower price after final payment date. There may have been a promotion added, like Explore4.

 

I would expect upsell offers around 2-4 weeks before sailing.

 

There are some travel agencies which will show all the available cabins.

[caribill]

Holland America has a quite extensive data base from the past which can be used to predict how many cabins will be sold when.

 

 

 

It appears that the software determined that the remaining cabins can be sold without lowering the price. And due to expected demand, the price can actually be increased and the cabins will still sell.

[SetAnOpenCourse]

The price you saw may soon change! My upcoming cruise hit its lowest price (so far) a couple of weeks after final payment.

[CruiserBruce]

You need to understand the difference between "unassigned" and "unsold".

 

You can't see how many guarantee bookings there are. It may look like there are 34 unassigned, but with guarantee booking, that could mean that 33 are sold, but not yet assigned. You could book and select one of those 34, and that category will show as sold out, because with the 33 unassigned, there are technically none left.

 

Prices might have gone up because there is actually high demand for this sailing. Again, you are possibly coming to conclusions without all the info.

[Gail & Marty sailing away]

Now starts the up grade game

 

Sent from my SM-G930T using Forums mobile app

[fishin' musician]

There will likely be periodic price drops in order to sell remaining inventory, but there is no predicting when or for how long. It seems like they offer a few (teaser) bounces before the prices stay lowered.

[iancal]

We typically book inside the final payment window. There is really no way to predict. We have seen prices go up and down inside the final payment window and just before.

 

When we are shopping in this window for an itinerary we typically follow pricing on two or more ships/cruise lines. We have a target balcony price. When it hits we buy it immediately. We do not expect to get the lowest price, though we sometimes do. We simply want to get the cruise at our target price.

[DaveOKC]

You need to understand the difference between "unassigned" and "unsold".

 

You can't see how many guarantee bookings there are. It may look like there are 34 unassigned, but with guarantee booking, that could mean that 33 are sold, but not yet assigned. You could book and select one of those 34, and that category will show as sold out, because with the 33 unassigned, there are technically none left.

 

Prices might have gone up because there is actually high demand for this sailing. Again, you are possibly coming to conclusions without all the info.

 

Exactly! On my upcoming cruise there was over 20 Neptunes showing as open and then a week later they were "sold out" and have remained so for over a month. Due to guarantees, there is no way to really tell (from the website) how many cabins are open. I call my HAL PCC and she is able to tell me how many are unsold int total (in a given category) and this has been very accurate in my experience.

[Nashna]

Christmas cruises almost always sell out as it gets closer to the holiday. I have noticed on our January cruise that HAL almost always places the guarantee staterooms above the assigned staterooms.