Using a TA vs an Oceania "Personal Consultant"

[BajaBarry]

We're still newbies. On our second cruise last month (first mid-2019), we booked our second 2022 cruise, which will be our fourth O cruise. Subsequently I got a call from an Oceania Personal Consultant. While chatting she confirmed that we can get onboard booking benefits by calling her 45 days before embarkation and our TA will get credit too.

 

We're thinking about booking for 2023 before the end of this year, and I'm wondering if I should call the Personal Consultant rather than our TA. We asked some questions last week and she has replied that she's still waiting for the company to respond. Any advice/thoughts from veterans appreciated.

[HiFi43]

While the Oceania Personal Consultants are generally great, I highly recommend you use an experienced cruise TA (Travel Agent) as your representative. It cost you nothing extra and if they have a long term association with Oceania they usually have both the experience and leverage be helpful both in advice and getting “extra’s”. We’ve used ours since Oceania was formed and have had nothing but great experiences and advice. She is recognized as an Oceania Cruises’ Cruise Connoisseur Club Elite Member (Top 20 Partner in North America) for good reason and is very proactive on our part.

[Hawaiidan]

Travel agent.... using a personal consultant ( sales person) is just adding one more  room for a problem in the chain 

 Your agent  will or should have a good relation with his O representative, who will be on a level above that of the O Personal consultant!.    Plus if the agent is a top producer or his agency is O may enable him  to  get additional , non listed perks.      Not to mention, many top producer agents offer " rebates"  to their clients.     In this case, my opinion is the less the number of people you involve in a reservation the  greater its results.     Merry christmas.

[Lundboat]

Our O Personal Consultant has been nothing short of outstanding!

We always book our own air (using miles) and prefer to use O Hotels and transfers.  Yes, it does cost a bit more.  However, everything is perfectly set up well in advance with no issues.  We enjoy having it all under one roof so to speak, as we will not get left behind (unless the airline has significant delays).  We solve that issue by arriving a day or so early, which also gives us time to chill after traveling and therefore fresh for the cruise.  

 

We even use the O tours.  That way there is never any worry about getting back on time... (we have watched people run for the ship, but just a little late to make it on board).

 

All in all, we have a very relaxing time without any stress.  Our O Personal Consultant is fantastic!

 

[Host Jazzbeau]

5 hours ago, Lundboat said:

We even use the O tours.  That way there is never any worry about getting back on time... (we have watched people run for the ship, but just a little late to make it on board).

I doubt that the people you see running for the ship were on private tours.  More likely at Margaritaville...

[BajaBarry]

On 12/23/2021 at 5:58 AM, HiFi43 said:

While the Oceania Personal Consultants are generally great, I highly recommend you use an experienced cruise TA (Travel Agent) as your representative. It cost you nothing extra and if they have a long term association with Oceania they usually have both the experience and leverage be helpful both in advice and getting “extra’s”. We’ve used ours since Oceania was formed and have had nothing but great experiences and advice. She is recognized as an Oceania Cruises’ Cruise Connoisseur Club Elite Member (Top 20 Partner in North America) for good reason and is very proactive on our part.

Our TA recently retired. We used the firm twenty years ago and then for a 2019 cruise and booking several others that either got canceled or have yet to sail. Our TA praised her replacement who also acts as the receptionist. It turns out that the firm is down to her, 2 managers, and the owner. We are a bit concerned about response time.

[BajaBarry]

On 12/23/2021 at 9:37 AM, Lundboat said:

Our O Personal Consultant has been nothing short of outstanding!

We always book our own air (using miles) and prefer to use O Hotels and transfers.  Yes, it does cost a bit more.  However, everything is perfectly set up well in advance with no issues.  We enjoy having it all under one roof so to speak, as we will not get left behind (unless the airline has significant delays).  We solve that issue by arriving a day or so early, which also gives us time to chill after traveling and therefore fresh for the cruise.  

 

We even use the O tours.  That way there is never any worry about getting back on time... (we have watched people run for the ship, but just a little late to make it on board).

 

All in all, we have a very relaxing time without any stress.  Our O Personal Consultant is fantastic!

 

We also prefer booking our own air, although our last experience was very annoying, but somewhat understandable due to covid. I used Orbitz, which I had been using without issues for the last few years, to book San Francisco to Rome roundtrip with United. The first leg was on United to Frankfurt and then on to Rome with Lufthansa. The return was originally Lufthansa from Rome to Munich, then back to SFO. Sometime before the trip Lufthansa changed the return flight to the previous day, while we'd still be on the ship. I contacted Orbitz and initially was told I had to contact United as it issued the tickets. I contacted United and was told I had to contact Lufthansa, and of course they said I had to talk to United. Fortunately I subsequently got a message from Orbitz, contacted them and got rebooked on AirCanada with close to the original schedule. 

 

I've just booked our flights for our Barcelona to Miami trip in November. We going to do our own pre in England and got a United SFO-LHR, a BA LHR to Barcelona and a nonstop AA MIA to SFO. The only one with an agent is the AA flight because I used CC points. 

 

How do you arrange to use O hotels and transfers? I assume your PC does that for you. I wonder if our TA can? I like that idea. We arrive the day before in Barcelona. I haven't looked for the hotel yet.

 

We mostly use O excursions - had too on last month's Med cruise but our reservations got revised several times due to the current environment. Our first one in 2019 we used a mix of O and others. We had a 2020 Alaska booking and had just made our excursion reservations when it got canceled. Got our money back from O and the one outside vendor.

 

 

[BajaBarry]

On 12/23/2021 at 9:21 AM, Hawaiidan said:

Travel agent.... using a personal consultant ( sales person) is just adding one more  room for a problem in the chain 

 Your agent  will or should have a good relation with his O representative, who will be on a level above that of the O Personal consultant!.    Plus if the agent is a top producer or his agency is O may enable him  to  get additional , non listed perks.      Not to mention, many top producer agents offer " rebates"  to their clients.     In this case, my opinion is the less the number of people you involve in a reservation the  greater its results.     Merry christmas.

What are non listed perks? We do get refundable shipboard credit from our TA. 

[ORV]

15 hours ago, BajaBarry said:

Our TA recently retired. We used the firm twenty years ago and then for a 2019 cruise and booking several others that either got canceled or have yet to sail. Our TA praised her replacement who also acts as the receptionist. It turns out that the firm is down to her, 2 managers, and the owner. We are a bit concerned about response time.

I wouldn't be too concerned about the size of the agency. Some of the best Oceania agents are with 2 or 3 agent operations. Apparently it was the large agencies that seemed to drop the ball in the current environment of the last couple of years. 

 

Per your question in the other post about hotels. Yes, your hotels can be booked by your agent through Oceania. Before you do that you should read up on the pros and cons of it. Bear in mind that price quoted is per person. It is much more economical to do it yourself, but some folks do like having everything taken care of for them and not having to deal with the details. I, personally am one of those people that hates to spend money that I don't need. I hate paying someone to do some I can easily do,  that's why I still mow my own yard. Fortunately it's small. 

 

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all. I gotta get ready for festivities.