Excursion discount?

[Redtravel]

Looked at the possible shore excursions for an upcoming cruise.   It said that you can save money by prebooking.  Are the excursions more expensive if you buy them on the ship? Some cruise lines have discount sales before you sail.  Does Azamara do that?

[uktog]

A friend has just told me if you are onboard you can prebook excursions for a future cruise using OBC from your current cruise AND get a discount.  I’d never heard of that, is this new? 

[tiggertom]

When we were on Journey last February in Australia, we were offered 10% discount off future cruise excursions if we bought three or more trips. We enquired but they had no information on excursion for our next cruise, which is Rio to Lisbon in March. We left our contact details and last month, a really nice person from Miami emailed the full excursion list and we chose 4 excursions and we got 10% discount and used our OBC to pay for them. Very easy. 

[Trend]

We were told if you book three tours or more while on a cruise for a future cruise tours you get a 10% discount.

This is different from a future cruise being booked and OBC.

[Ithikan]

1 hour ago, Trend said:

We were told if you book three tours or more while on a cruise for a future cruise tours you get a 10% discount.

This is different from a future cruise being booked and OBC.

How interesting!  We booked 2 future cruises for 2019 while onboard February, 2018, and were not told about this discount.  Do you happen to know if the offer is for 3, one-person excursion reservations?  A couple might secure this discount by going together on 2 excursions, paying full price for the 4th tour?

Thanks for your time on this,

Teri

[BBMacLaird]

Yes! Guests who book a future cruise onboard can book their shore excursions for that future cruise with the onboard Shorex Excursions team and get the below discounts:

• Book 2 tours, get 5% discount on tours.
• Book 3 or more tours, get 10% discount.

Please find flyer attached. 

Future Shorex Flyer_PR-NEW.pdf

[Trend]

We asked if booking as a couple did that count as two we were told no.

[uktog]

14 minutes ago, BBMacLaird said:

Yes! Guests who book a future cruise onboard can book their shore excursions for that future cruise with the onboard Shorex Excursions team and get the below discounts:

• Book 2 tours, get 5% discount on tours.
• Book 3 or more tours, get 10% discount.

Please find flyer attached. 

Future Shorex Flyer_PR-NEW.pdf

Gosh, this needs to be better promoted, we have really missed out on this one!

 

Can I ask, if we are on cruise A and book tours for cruise B, can we pay using OBC we have on cruise A

Edited February 27, 2019 by uktog

[BBMacLaird]

6 minutes ago, uktog said:

Gosh, this needs to be better promoted, we have really missed out on this one!

 

Can I ask, if we are on cruise A and book tours for cruise B, can we pay using OBC we have on cruise A

 

I've asked for you. I've also asked when this program was launched, and whether it launched fleet-wide or was rolled out ship-by-ship. 

It slipped under my radar as well as yours so you are correct...the promotion's launch must have been *minimal*. Though the flyer is obviously designed to be put in the staterooms/suites. 

[BBMacLaird]

I've learned that guests cannot use the OBC from a current cruise to book shore excursions on a future cruise. 

I'm still investigating the launch and promotion of this discount program...

[uktog]

Thanks, to be honest if we cannot use up OBC its got much less appeal but we will bear it in mind

[Whitby100]

It is cheaper fo us to prebook without discounts as we pay in Canadian dollars and there is no foreign transaction fee.  On board payment is in US dollars which isn’t a favourable exchange for us.

[tiggertom]

We paid from home in sterling and used OBC and got 10% discount. You don’t need to pay for them on board. 

 

[uktog]

35 minutes ago, tiggertom said:

We paid from home in sterling and used OBC and got 10% discount. You don’t need to pay for them on board. 

 

Really, we have certainly booked three from home and not had a discount.  But as we did not know about this we weren't watching as closely was we will do in the future

[CYNSport]

On 2/26/2019 at 11:14 PM, Redtravel said:

Looked at the possible shore excursions for an upcoming cruise.   It said that you can save money by prebooking.  Are the excursions more expensive if you buy them on the ship? Some cruise lines have discount sales before you sail.  Does Azamara do that?

We booked several Azamara excursions that were lower priced than the price they charged once on board, but there wasn’t any way to know this prior to booking them, we just lucked out (as we booked them far ahead of our cruise, the prebooking prices increased as time went by). Also, this was before guests could use OBC prior to the cruise. I don’t know if that makes a difference in how the excursions are priced. 

[Baynanno1]

There actually seems to be not much rhyme or reason behind varying pricing of Shore Excursions.

Some are less if pre-booked.

Some (surprisingly) have been less when booked on board than had they been booked prior to boarding.

Also, during the past year or so, many excursions have more than doubled in price before the start of the cruise from their first listed price. (as an example, one I had intended to do jumped from US$85 to US$209)

[MissyMom]

We thought we could only book discounted excursions during the cruise when we booked the new cruise. Not sure how we decided that but it isn't true. And, some of our 10 pre booked cruises were so far in the future, there weren't any or many excursions available - so we couldn't even hope for discounts.

 

On our last cruise, friends booked excursions on a cruise they had booked on a prior cruise and received a 10% discount when booking 3 excursions or more. The excursion folks printed out lists of excursions for a couple of cruises a day to help us book excursions on our 10 pre-booked cruises.

 

It kept us busy between viewing Antarctica ice bergs. We used up all our on board credit and charged the rest on our registered credit card. It was fun to review our next 10 cruises again and anticipate the excursions while saving 10%.

[uktog]

Hi

Thanks MissyMom - can I just check, the OBC credit you used, was it OBC for your Antarctica cruise or OBC for the future cruise.

i know Bonnie said you couldn’t use OBC on the current cruise, but a guest onboard one ship recently  has also told me they’ve just done exactly that.  It makes a big difference for plans for our Autumn cruises as we have OBC we’ve no use for on an earlier cruise.  I’m wondering if this is something there’s a bit of confusion on, Ive looked online and can’t see how booking excursions that way is getting any discount though others seem now to say it is.

Hopefully Bonnie once you get up to speed with this new development that’s caught a few of us out, you can help. Thanks  

[Baynanno1]

Seems things may have changed quite a bit since I first came across a very limited future excursions booking "deal" last year.

 

Hopefully, from what I have read here, I may be able to use OBC on an upcoming cruise to book an expensive excursion on a later cruise on which we have much less OBC. Time will tell.

 

[MissyMom]

12 hours ago, uktog said:

Hi

Thanks MissyMom - can I just check, the OBC credit you used, was it OBC for your Antarctica cruise or OBC for the future cruise.

i know Bonnie said you couldn’t use OBC on the current cruise.

We used only the OBC corresponding to each future cruise. The Antarctica cruise OBC was for the Antarctica cruise only, as Bonnie said.

Most of our 10 future cruises were booked soon after being announced. Realizing Azamara needs time to add excursions, especially for new ports, we booked the 3 needed for the 10% discount when we booked each on board. We also added a few more at home, via the Azamara web site, again using cruise specific OBC.

Being able to add more excursions to any cruise while on board any of the 3 Azamara ships makes the process very helpful. And time saving -- while extremely busy" searching for Antarctica penquins and whales or cruising by a 20 mile long x 8 mile wide iceberg.

[uktog]

Thanks. It looks much more unlikely it will work for many but it’s good to know the discounts exist