Cruise air & transfers inbound/ outbound - Venice or Trieste?

[muffydawg]

The Island Princess October 2024 has sailings departing or returning to Trieste (Venice). Do "folks in the know" think passengers booking Princess EZ Air cruise air (and transfers) will have the option of flying into/ out of Trieste OR Venice?

[klfrodo]

I'm going with highly unlikely.

Cruise line air travel is consolidator. They negotiate tickets and routes a year or 2 in advance. They negotiate these in bulk purchases.

What they do not say is, "hey, customer ABC is holding on the line, we need to get them from Tampa to Trieste".

They look in their bulk buy stack and say, "Okay, we have 24 tickets available that we can route to Marco Polo starting in Tampa". 

Providing a transfer service to Trieste would be much cheaper than providing individual tickets to Trieste.

 

The sticky above this post called Cruise Air Travel and Deviation has a great explanation on how cruise air works.

 

Then again,,,, I may be incorrect.

[FlyerTalker]

Let's start with the basics and work backwards.

 

TRS only has a few carriers serving the airport.  Ryanair and Wizz are ultra-low cost carriers, and unlikely to have cruise contracts. Plus, they don't interline with other carriers, so you won't get them as a choice from North America.  That pretty much leaves just a pair of Air Dolomiti (LH partner) flights from FRA and three ITA flights from Rome each day.  All with smaller aircraft.

 

You just don't have lift in/out of TRS -- far easier for cruiselines to route guests to VCE and bus transfer them.

 

 

[muffydawg]

Thanks @FlyerTalker air into/ out of VCE with bus transfer does seem most plausible.

[Zach1213]

The interesting thing is that Ljubljana, in Slovenia, is actually the same distance by road as Venice. By train is different, and there are better bus connections from Venice to Trieste than from Ljubljana to Trieste...BUT, if someone is hiring a car or arranging a car service, Ljubljana is worth at least a glance if Trieste is the destination (and is a lovely city on its own to visit, and a lovely country).

 

(I know you plan to take a transfer, but for others who plan on making their own way...don't ignore Ljubljana, which has good connections from global hubs like Paris, Frankfurt, Munich, London, Zurich, and Istanbul).