Booking "Sales" or Booking onboard

[clojacks]

We are taking our first NCL cruise in a long time in January, and we are curious if there is an advantage to booking under current, or upcoming "sales" offers or is there a benefit to having something in mind and booking on board? It feels like the "sales" are starting to become like your current furniture stores, "best Sale of the Year" type promo, that doesn't end up being anymore of a sale than last weeks, "wont ever see prices lower than this" sale. Lower deposits don't matter to us, as that is often part of a Sales on the line we usually sail. We usually have a cruise in mind to book onboard when we sale Celebrity, as it usually means about $300 or more in OBC, which often gets matched or beaten by our TA. Any experiences are appreciated.

[KeithJenner]

The saving for booking future cruises comes from buying CruiseNext vouchers onboard. This effectively gives you a discount (the actual amount depends on how many you buy and how many you can apply to your booking, which varies depending on cabin type and any special offers).

 

You don’t need to use these onboard, just buy the vouchers. They can be applied when you do book.

 

The main advantage of actually booking onboard is that they can usually give you a small upgrade. This is just to the next cabin subcategory, so the saving is not huge, but should save you a bit.

 

Just ignore the sale prices. They aren’t starting to become like furniture store sales, they have been well established as such for years. The sale changes but the price remains the same.

[julig22]

Sometimes, in addition to the upgrade, they might have other incentives. But they change and aren't always advertised - some CN staff are just more proactive than others. So it pays to go to the CN desk and ask.  I got a 10% discount a few months ago and people have mentioned getting obc at times.