Advice: Cunard Direct vs TA

[bluemarble]

22 hours ago, tlc1972 said:

I can only select guaranteed staterooms online, so thinking either a TA or Cunard direct might be able to assist.

 

30 minutes ago, D&N said:

I keep forgetting to ask. @bluemarble carried out an exercise in this post: 

He mentioned "picked the same cabin" for UK and US sites. If he can do that in the US why can't you?

 

I was thinking of jumping in on this one earlier. Since you brought it up @D&N I'll jump in now.

 

@tlc1972 might be looking at the "Our Lowest Fare" on the Cunard US website known elsewhere as their "Value Fare". That's similar to a Saver Fare on the Cunard UK website where you can't select a specific cabin. It's one of the conditions of that fare that it's guarantee only. In order to be able to select a specific cabin in the US, you need to pick a fare such as the current "Explore with More" promotion or the "Cunard Fare".

 

Now if @tlc1972 is picking a fare that normally allows selecting a cabin but is running into the situation where Cunard is showing guarantee-only for the category they are looking at, then that's probably a case of low availability for that category on that particular sailing. Or sometimes on specific segments of world voyages, I've seen Cunard make that entire segment guarantee-only at least initially regardless of which fare you select.

[alc13]

19 hours ago, Zeg said:

Some interesting and informative replies. Thank you. 
 

Still curious to learn what a ‘TA’ s good relationship’ with a cruise line actually means in practice. Are we talking about a preferred service? If so isn’t that discriminatory?  Or maybe some backscratching? Complimentary jollies, freebies? 

 

Perhaps cruise lines answer the phone or respond to emails quicker with TA’s?  Maybe you get a better cabin? I don’t know. 

 

What I do know is (in the U.K.) at least, many TA’s require larger deposits and earlier balance payments than booking direct. And cancellation T&C’s require careful scrutiny too because the booking contract is with the TA, not the cruise line. 

 

Doesn’t the ‘service’, we all receive (or otherwise) come from the cruise line itself? Surely the Agent is merely acting as a go between and in doing so taking a cut, which incidentally is fair enough. 

 

I’d be surprised if any cruise line would jeopardise its reputation by providing a two tier service, but I’ve been surprised before. 
 

I’ve an open mind, just curious. I’d book with a TA every time if I could uncover some real and personal tangible benefits. 

 

 

 

I've puzzled over this, too.  I enjoy making travel arrangements and will probably always rather book flights and hotels myself.  As for cruises, I used to think TAs could offer better OBC, but I don't know if that's true.  Our most recent Cunard booking has a healthy amount of OBC and we booked direct.  On the other hand, we just came off a Seabourn cruise, and there I used a TA because the OBC offering was (or seemed to be) better.  

 

We haven't encountered a problem yet that would benefit from having a TA to sort it out, but being impatient by nature I expect I might prefer tackling it myself.  All that said, I liked our recent TA experience and will probably call her again the next time we book a cruise.

[exlondoner]

3 minutes ago, alc13 said:

I've puzzled over this, too.  I enjoy making travel arrangements and will probably always rather book flights and hotels myself.  As for cruises, I used to think TAs could offer better OBC, but I don't know if that's true.  Our most recent Cunard booking has a healthy amount of OBC and we booked direct.  On the other hand, we just came off a Seabourn cruise, and there I used a TA because the OBC offering was (or seemed to be) better.  

 

We haven't encountered a problem yet that would benefit from having a TA to sort it out, but being impatient by nature I expect I might prefer tackling it myself.  All that said, I liked our recent TA experience and will probably call her again the next time we book a cruise.

Now that really is something I can’t get my head round: enjoying making travel arrangements. The very thought makes my stomach churn. I think I would rather visit the dentist. But if you do enjoy it, then that greatly lessens the benefits of TAs.

[alc13]

Love it, actually.  Reconciling comfort, convenience, and price - very fun for me.  It might be a kind of armchair travel activity, now that I think about it.

[Zeg]

19 minutes ago, alc13 said:

being impatient by nature I expect I might prefer tackling it myself.

It’s beginning to emerge that TA’s (if you’re fortunate to find an effective one) come into their own for the patient and time rich ones amongst us. 
 

But boil it all down booking a cruise online direct is not a hard, difficult or lengthy process and literally takes minutes. 

 

 

Edited December 30, 2023 by Zeg

[Pushpit]

14 minutes ago, exlondoner said:

Now that really is something I can’t get my head round: enjoying making travel arrangements. The very thought makes my stomach churn. I think I would rather visit the dentist. But if you do enjoy it, then that greatly lessens the benefits of TAs.

Oh it's absolutely part of the fun for me, not least if I can find some great bargain or do something a bit different. I went business class from JFK to Heathrow after that recent QM2 Crossing, and paid just over £300 for that, with a bit of gamble that they would have to upgrade passengers on the Friday before Christmas (indeed 87 upgrades on one flight). Then thinking about how to use the time between Red Hook and JFK - I took the NYC ferry to Rockaway ($4) and had a splendid meal in the Rockaway Hotel ($18), before walking along the beach admiring some very hardy surfers in the cold winter sunshine. So 12 miles from Wall Street there's a surf beach. Certainly beats the Cunard transfer bus, which costs $60.

[exlondoner]

10 minutes ago, Zeg said:

It’s beginning to emerge that TA’s (if you’re fortunate to find an effective one) come into their own for the patient and time rich ones amongst us. 
 

But boil it all down booking a cruise online direct is not a hard, difficult or lengthy process and literally takes minutes. 

 

 

Try booking a particular cabin on the first day they go on sale. People often complain it takes a while even to get on the Cunard site. I would have thought TAs, providing one trusted them, were much more useful for the time poor among us. 

[exlondoner]

1 minute ago, Pushpit said:

Oh it's absolutely part of the fun for me, not least if I can find some great bargain or do something a bit different. I went business class from JFK to Heathrow after that recent QM2 Crossing, and paid just over £300 for that, with a bit of gamble that they would have to upgrade passengers on the Friday before Christmas (indeed 87 upgrades on one flight). Then thinking about how to use the time between Red Hook and JFK - I took the NYC ferry to Rockaway ($4) and had a splendid meal in the Rockaway Hotel ($18), before walking along the beach admiring some very hardy surfers in the cold winter sunshine. So 12 miles from Wall Street there's a surf beach. Certainly beats the Cunard transfer bus, which costs $60.

I agree that research can be great fun, but not the actual admin.

[exlondoner]

22 minutes ago, Zeg said:

It’s beginning to emerge that TA’s (if you’re fortunate to find an effective one) come into their own for the patient and time rich ones amongst us. 
 

But boil it all down booking a cruise online direct is not a hard, difficult or lengthy process and literally takes minutes. 

 

 

One other thing. If booking on line is not hard or lengthy, this must be one of the few bits of Cunard IT that actually works effectively. I have never done it with Cunard, but regularly book railway journeys on line, which always takes ages, and again is something I have to grit my teeth to do. So a minor triumph for Cunard.

[D&N]

As a retired professional who was involved in setup and development of some of the UK datasets and data exchange standards utilised in transport planning, I do enjoy planning trips.  I don't like wasting money if I can avoid it. But we're not that hard up or stingy that we look to save the last penny. I get the impression there are contributors here that are much better off than us. I book our flights between Nice and Heathrow, our hotel in Southampton and transfers both ways between Heathrow and Southampton hotel/port myself. I trust our agent with the Cunard booking. It doesn't cost me anything, it wouldn't save me anything, and I know I have them as back up if something goes wrong.

 

I book hotels on deals that can be cancelled/changed/refunded at last minute. We're lucky being within 4 miles of Nice Airport that we have at least 10 flights a day to the London area all year round. And if all else fails we'll take a taxi from an airport rank to Southampton.

 

I used to make split ticket train reservations for my business travel long before split ticket search engines appeared online. I sometimes travelled from one end of the country to another in the same first class seat for less than the cost of a standard fare. The general key is book the seat in the last section first. That blocks the seat from the through trip, leaving it free for the segments you want to book.

 

So I still do all the planning. 2026 is more or less planned based on what bluemarble has found! But I'm happy to involve another transport professional because I respect that they have knowledge and connections that I don't. Besides I quite like to see what they and they're family are up to on Facebook.

[Jim_Iain]

On 12/29/2023 at 2:37 PM, Underwatr said:

As a US resident* I've found a low-cost travel agent (not really an agent I'd go to for advice about a line) who discounts a Cunard fare via a rebate of a portion of their commission. On my most recent booking his fare was several hundred dollars below the list fare (about 9% of the all-in fare with fees and taxes).
I may be a little unique in that, particularly for Cunard I don't need much help from a TA (although he's also helped out greatly when things have gone wrong) so the savings has been worth it.

 

I'm in the same camp as you.   

 

I recently did my own research and then contacted an Agent I have worked with for the past couple years that provides either an upfront discount or OBC to do the booking.    I already knew the date of the cruise and the room I wanted.    After I booked I had him change the room 2x until I had the room I wanted.  

 

In the U.S. there are many agents that offer a 5-10% credit for bookings.   For that I'm willing to do the footwork.  

[space oddity]

21 hours ago, Zeg said:

 

But boil it all down booking a cruise online direct is not a hard, difficult or lengthy process and literally takes minutes. 

 

 

 

One thing to keep in mind is that there's a huge variation of itineraries booked by people here, some of which are much trickier than others. We all also value our time differently. I personally book direct, but I could easily imagine someone with similar travel needs choosing to book via a TA; I probably would, too, if I were booking many equivalent trips per year (rather than one or two), or if I didn't sort-of-enjoy the logistical challenges of it.

 

To take a concrete example, we like to book a family trip involving a flight over to the US, a few weeks visiting family there, and the QM2 back.  There are children in our group, and we need multiple connecting rooms. None of these things are handled gracefully (if at all) by the Cunard website, at least in the UK: you can only book one room at a time, and the website won't tell you how many available slots there are in each child age-bracket.  (Cunard tightly controls the number of kids they have on board in each age group.)  If you try to book a room and the kid-slots are sold out, you get a really unhelpful error message about "this room not being able to accommodate" the guests involved, or something equivalent.  You can't make one booking contingent on another, meaning that if you try to book one room with a 6-year-old and can't book the next because (say) someone else has grabbed the last "child slot," or grabbed the connecting room you were hoping to snag next, you're in a bit of trouble.  (Something like this scenario has happened to us.)  Etc, etc.  On the flights, Cunard's airfares are usually quite good (for us in the UK), but again you can't book (or even request) anything complicated online.  We personally are very flexible about which East-coast city we fly into; we are obliged to drive around a bunch anyway, so there are a half-dozen places that would be basically equivalent for us, so we're generally happy to fly to whichever one is cheaper or more convenient; we are similarly flexible (plus or minus a few days) on our departure day.

 

The upshot of all this is that to book this kind of trip direct I absolutely have to call, and I'm usually on the phone with Cunard for well over an hour.  If I had a really good travel agent and/or hated doing this, I would be happy to pay them some nominal fee to deal with it all for me.

 

As a totally separate issue, I agree in principle that agents -- or some level of support above and beyond that provided via the standard telephone line or website -- can be especially helpful when things go wrong.  I'm reminded of the times when I used to fly a lot: the very _best_ service I ever got was probably when I was uber-elite on various airlines, who then tended to be proactive about re-scheduling me (or "protecting" me on a backup flight) when things started to go wrong.  But if you didn't have access to that level of support, heaven help you during a snowstorm in Chicago, when your flight's been cancelled, there are suddenly 200 people wanting to go on the same full flight later that night, and the line at customer service is a mile long.  Agents fill that niche a little bit: nowadays, on the rarer occasions when I travel for work, I have to book through a TA, but they then tend to be a good "single point of contact" when  anything goes wrong (without my having to spend an hour on hold -- they'll just call me back when it's sorted).  

 

I don't think that motivation for using a TA comes up quite so often for cruises just because a) very few people get on a ship as often as the most frequent fliers get on a plane (e.g., every week)  b) the number of "problems" is usually pretty small (compare the number of cruise cancellations in a typical year to the number of flight cancellations), and c) the Cunard phone agents are still way, way better (imho) than the equivalent at a non-elite airline phone desk.  

 

Bottom line: to each their own!  🙂 

[Zeg]

Very well said.

 

Can’t disagree with any of that. So to summarise - if it’s a difficult personal  itinerary, a little out of the ordinary, requires a package of flights, hotels and cruises then entrust it to a TA make them responsible for getting it right and get them to do all the legwork and earn their commission. 
 

If it’s straightforward, (like a standard cruise only from A to B) and uncomplicated, then DIY. 
 

Every day is a school day!  
 

 

[MylesS]

On 12/30/2023 at 9:29 AM, Victoria2 said:

Oh I completely trust my own capabilities but I have no desire to hang around waiting whilst trying to speak to anyone up the chain of responsibility who can actually help any issues I might have. I also completely trust my agent to suss out who immediately to speak to in order to help their client.

As the old saying goes, time is money. Whilst we were onboard QM2 during the summer, because of my late booking it was looking like we were going to miss two weeks onboard, so I spent much time at the future voyage sales trying to get those two weeks onboard, or something onboard another Cunard ship. I had also spent time finding what else we could have done during those two weeks, we considered another cruise line, flying to see QE2 in Dubai, etc. It all took time, time away from our holiday.

It would have been so much easier to have contacted a good TA and explain the situation, and have them find something or sort something out for us, and hence I've now been trying to find someone to do that. I hope that I am able to find someone half as good as the TA you've described.

[TouchstoneFeste]

19 hours ago, space oddity said:

If you try to book a room and the kid-slots are sold out, you get a really unhelpful error message about "this room not being able to accommodate" the guests involved, or something equivalent.

I was idly checking a voyage and got this message for most of the Queens Grill staterooms - "can't accommodate 2 passengers". I tried it for 1, 2, 3, and 4 people with the same result. I've seen "sold out" previously and, in fact, this morning it now shows all the QG classes as available. Anyone know what this means?

[Pushpit]

16 minutes ago, TouchstoneFeste said:

I was idly checking a voyage and got this message for most of the Queens Grill staterooms - "can't accommodate 2 passengers". I tried it for 1, 2, 3, and 4 people with the same result. I've seen "sold out" previously and, in fact, this morning it now shows all the QG classes as available. Anyone know what this means?

I've seen this in the last few days too, and yes it is new and confusing. I've also seen it for those QM2 deck 2 and 3 Oceanview staterooms, which were deemed unable to accommodate single passengers, which of course is the only booking they can accommodate. So I think this this is an error that just means "Sold out". If you look on the Spanish Cunard site, it simply says "Vendido" which makes it easier to understand than the English version. If you look at QM2 M402, departing 3 January 2024 there are just a few balcony staterooms left so I think we can be pretty sure it's a new IT glitch.

[Solent Richard]

On 12/31/2023 at 8:49 PM, MylesS said:

As the old saying goes, time is money. Whilst we were onboard QM2 during the summer, because of my late booking it was looking like we were going to miss two weeks onboard, so I spent much time at the future voyage sales trying to get those two weeks onboard, or something onboard another Cunard ship. I had also spent time finding what else we could have done during those two weeks, we considered another cruise line, flying to see QE2 in Dubai, etc. It all took time, time away from our holiday.

It would have been so much easier to have contacted a good TA and explain the situation, and have them find something or sort something out for us, and hence I've now been trying to find someone to do that. I hope that I am able to find someone half as good as the TA you've described.

 

😂 Time certainly is money and that can work both ways.

 

I've obviously been 'barking up the wrong tree' these past twenty odd years - along with thousands of other fellow cruisers. I'd always thought shopping around was an secondary  national cruising sport which certainly occupied many a conversation at dinner tables across cruise lines: even at Grills level.

 

I mean to say, surely we wouldn't accept a new insurance policy or utility quote without first checking the market?

 

Meanwhile it's good to have noted earlier that the scourge of  inflation has also had an effect on covid cruise cancellation figures. 😉

[D&N]

34 minutes ago, Solent Richard said:

 

😂 Time certainly is money and that can work both ways.

 

I've obviously been 'barking up the wrong tree' these past twenty odd years - along with thousands of other fellow cruisers. I'd always thought shopping around was an secondary  national cruising sport which certainly occupied many a conversation at dinner tables across cruise lines: even at Grills level.

 

I mean to say, surely we wouldn't accept a new insurance policy or utility quote without first checking the market?

 

Meanwhile it's good to have noted earlier that the scourge of  inflation has also had an effect on covid cruise cancellation figures. 😉

And have you actually found much variation in Cunard prices between different agents and comparing agents against direct bookings? Not asking for specifics for obvious reasons!

 

Re insurance and utilities, I used to do that more in Scotland. However latterly I was more interested in standard of service rather than rock bottom price having discovered a couple of really awful suppliers. I've carried that over to France where there are other considerations like; if they offer an English speaking service (I might not need it but I use it to help ensure it's not withdrawn as a cost cutting measure), off peak time bands (oddly they vary between suppliers), and having a record of us signing up on the date we arrived (could help prove residency status at some time in future).

[Thetis22]

I know CruiseCritic doesn't allow the naming of TAs, but can anyone advise how to go about finding a really good one for Cunard? I'm in the UK. 

[Host Hattie]

There are some articles on Cruise Critic which may help,  this is one -

 

Best UK Cruise Travel Agents

[Thetis22]

6 minutes ago, Host Hattie said:

There are some articles on Cruise Critic which may help,  this is one -

 

Best UK Cruise Travel Agents

Thanks very much

[ExArkie]

2 hours ago, D&N said:

And have you actually found much variation in Cunard prices between different agents and comparing agents against direct bookings?

Twice. That is out of 10 Cunard trips. One was not a huge difference, but enough to take it instead of booking direct. The other was pretty significant, PG for the same price Cunard was selling ocean view. I spent about 20 minutes with the travel agent just to verify that one.

 

I have also booked a couple of trips directly with Cunard, then transferred the booking to my credit card affiliated travel agent. They did not offer a lower price, but added some OBC for the same price as Cunard offered on the cabin. 

[tacticalbanjo]

I now tend to use a TA for much the same reasons @space oddity mentioned. I'm travelling with a child and we've started doing multi-generational cruises. It's ok booking online if it's just the one room I want but we've booked several trips where we want two or three cabins next to each other, with one or two needing to be three berth depending on which family members join us. We use the website for planning and trying to work out which cabins are available although the website does suck because it only shows a selection of rooms at a time. Our travel agent is great at getting us what we want with a small discount over booking with Cunard direct at the cost of earlier final repayment dates.

[Victoria2]

2 hours ago, Thetis22 said:

I know CruiseCritic doesn't allow the naming of TAs, but can anyone advise how to go about finding a really good one for Cunard? I'm in the UK. 

Unfortunately, the only way REALLY good agents can be recommended [and ours does not feature on the CC list] is through personal recommendations from folk you trust know what they're talking about.

 

If cost is the bottom line, then shopping around yourselves is a good idea,

 

If service is an issue and unusual/very personal booking requests such as mentioned by tacticalbanjo and space oddity,  and ourselves who have specific cabins in mind when there are only a couple available, then that is where an agent, a really great agent, is worth their weight in gold. There are many great agents but only experience will sort out the really great ones.

 

Good luck and if we're ever on the same itinerary, I'll give you the name of ours. 🙂

[Thetis22]

1 hour ago, Victoria2 said:

Unfortunately, the only way REALLY good agents can be recommended [and ours does not feature on the CC list] is through personal recommendations from folk you trust know what they're talking about.

 

If cost is the bottom line, then shopping around yourselves is a good idea,

 

If service is an issue and unusual/very personal booking requests such as mentioned by tacticalbanjo and space oddity,  and ourselves who have specific cabins in mind when there are only a couple available, then that is where an agent, a really great agent, is worth their weight in gold. There are many great agents but only experience will sort out the really great ones.

 

Good luck and if we're ever on the same itinerary, I'll give you the name of ours. 🙂

Thank you!