Silversea hotels

[Marstan79]

3 hours ago, alexandria said:

 

Perhaps Silversea terms and conditions or consumer protection laws are different for AUS based passengers but for US passengers, Silversea's terms and conditions specifically allows them to change hotels even if the new hotel is inferior to the one expected.  In that case, the consumer has no recourse if outside the cancellation period.

 

I always book air and hotels independently.  It allows me to have control over the process, select the exact airline, flights and seats I want (or the exact hotel and room), make changes as I desire, and I nearly always find better airfare and hotel prices myself than what the cruise line will charge.  While I know some report that on occasion they have found cruise line pricing on airfares or hotels to be lower than booking independently, I personally have never found that to be the case.

 

Here's a data point:  On a sailing embarking Seward and disembarking Tokyo, with flights out of Atlanta Silversea charges about $2k for economy air and $11k for business class.  I found business class fares on Delta to Anchorage (1 stop) and from Tokyo (non-stop Delta One suite) for a total of just over $8k.  So I saved $3k and booked the most direct flights possible on a quality carrier.  If I had booked through Silversea, they could have (and likely would have) routed me on flights with more stops on an inferior carrier with less desirable seat locations.

 

As far as transfers, except in limited cases, I also handle those arrangements myself.  For most major cities, the convenience and price of an Uber or taxi is much better than paying cruise line pricing to ride a transfer bus with dozens of other passengers.  If you've ever disembarked and then sat on a cruise line transfer bus for an hour or more waiting for it to "fill up" before it leaves for the airport, you'll understand what I'm talking about.  For me the exception is when the cruise line provides a transfer to/from the airport or hotel to/from cruise terminal where independent arrangements are much more difficult or costly. 

 

For example, Silversea provides complimentary motorcoach transfers from Anchorage to Seward for cruises leaving out of Seward.  Because Seward is 125 miles or so from Anchorage, the primary transfer options are motorcoach (included) or train ($150-$200pp).   Other options are very costly unless you have three or more sharing a transfer (one-way car rental is $650+ and taxi/Uber is $500+).  So in that case, I'll stick with the included Silversea transfer.

 

Hope that is helpful!

Very helpful! Thank you.

[ak1004]

5 hours ago, sea bright said:

One reason to book all through Silversea is if you think there is a chance that the cruise might be canceled or the embarkation port changed. We have had cruise cancellations both when we booked through Silversea and when we booked independently. The former was much easier -full refund from Silversea within weeks.

In the latter case we got the refund for the cruise from Silversea in weeks, but had to go through insurance for non-refundable flights, hotels, tours. We eventually got our money back, but it was very aggravating and took months.

 

Well, hotels can be booked with refundable fares which are typically 5-10% higher but still significantly lower than SS fares. Tours are typically fully refundable. Flights can be more complicated, but most flights typically have only few hundred dollars fine if cancelled, and you can recover them from the insurance. Still doesn't justify paying thousands more for the "convenience".

[ak1004]

3 hours ago, Marstan79 said:

I see you’ve traveled on various of the smaller ship cruise lines. Do you have a preference between SS, Oceania, Seabourn? We’d like to stick with ships that are smaller 500 -800 or so.

 

We are doing our first SB cruise in September, so cannot comment on SB.

 

As for O vs SS - I posted a comparison post 

 

 

To me the main differences are: SS is more inclusive, have better cabins and butler in each cabin. If those things are important, SS has an edge. For people like us who don't drink and prefer booking private tours, O is a better value, but we will gladly sail on both given the right itinerary and price. O newer ships are ~1,200 guests, but never feel crowded. Service is excellent on both in my opinion, food slightly better on O (again, my opinion only).

[Marstan79]

43 minutes ago, ak1004 said:

 

We are doing our first SB cruise in September, so cannot comment on SB.

 

As for O vs SS - I posted a comparison post 

 

 

To me the main differences are: SS is more inclusive, have better cabins and butler in each cabin. If those things are important, SS has an edge. For people like us who don't drink and prefer booking private tours, O is a better value, but we will gladly sail on both given the right itinerary and price. O newer ships are ~1,200 guests, but never feel crowded. Service is excellent on both in my opinion, food slightly better on O (again, my opinion only).

Thank you. What a great review! Very helpful.

[taxatty]

6 hours ago, Marstan79 said:

 

Did you contact the hotel directly ahead of time or ask the cruise line to do this?

 

The hotel directly.

[alexandria]

2 hours ago, ak1004 said:

 

Well, hotels can be booked with refundable fares which are typically 5-10% higher but still significantly lower than SS fares. Tours are typically fully refundable. Flights can be more complicated, but most flights typically have only few hundred dollars fine if cancelled, and you can recover them from the insurance. Still doesn't justify paying thousands more for the "convenience".

 

Even most flights can be booked with fully refundable fares.  If I had chosen fully refundable fares (just to avoid the inconvenience of dealing with travel insurance in the event of a cancelled cruise), instead of paying $8k for the business class fares on Delta ($4kpp), making them fully refundable would have added a total of $500 or so for all of the flights for a total of $8,500.  Still $2,500 less than Silversea's rate on their choice of airline, routing and seat and I'd even end up with a better cancellation policy than Silversea.

 

If fully refundable airfare and hotel is important to a passenger, they can check those fully refundable rates and compare them with what Silversea offers.  I suspect that in most, if not all, cases the independently booked flights and hotel will still be less costly.

 

But I agree with what FlyerTalker observed.  Some just don't want to handle their own arrangements, for whatever reason.  While I enjoy travel planning, researching hotels and airfares, comparison shopping and setting up price alerts for flights I am considering in order to get the best "value" for my travel dollar, that process does take time, effort and interest.  Some may have little to no interest or time to put in that effort and would rather just pay others, like Silversea, to do it for them.  Unfortunately, many travel agents also don't want to expend the time involved in getting a client exactly what they want for the best possible price.  For them, time is money.  And since airlines and hotels pay little to no commission, the incentive to put in that time just isn't there unless your TA really, really, really values your business.

[sea bright]

3 hours ago, ak1004 said:

 

Well, hotels can be booked with refundable fares which are typically 5-10% higher but still significantly lower than SS fares. Tours are typically fully refundable. Flights can be more complicated, but most flights typically have only few hundred dollars fine if cancelled, and you can recover them from the insurance. Still doesn't justify paying thousands more for the "convenience".

Not true if you've booked a land tour - e.g. to Macchu Pichu- where all must be paid in advance and is non-refundable. Or if you've booked internal flights in, for example, Asia or South America on local airlines for which a credit is essentially useless. My point was that recovering from travel  insurance is not trivial. It was an arduous, frustrating and protracted process. While I prefer making my own arrangements, for certain cruises and in certain parts of the world booking DtD with Silversea makes sense. For other cruises, such as the Caribbean it makes no sense (unless you are booking a Silver Suite, etc and have no other option).

[ak1004]

1 hour ago, sea bright said:

Not true if you've booked a land tour - e.g. to Macchu Pichu- where all must be paid in advance and is non-refundable. Or if you've booked internal flights in, for example, Asia or South America on local airlines for which a credit is essentially useless. My point was that recovering from travel  insurance is not trivial. It was an arduous, frustrating and protracted process. While I prefer making my own arrangements, for certain cruises and in certain parts of the world booking DtD with Silversea makes sense. For other cruises, such as the Caribbean it makes no sense (unless you are booking a Silver Suite, etc and have no other option).

 

Well, this might be true in some cases. However, how often cruises get cancelled? Are you really willing to overpay tens of thousands of dollars over the years for a slim chance that one of your cruises gets cancelled and you will have to go through "an arduous, frustrating and protracted process", but at the end you will most likely get your money back.

[sea bright]

I suspect that the people booked on the many cruises that are now being canceled so ships can round Africa instead of pass through the Suez canal  (Suez transit, Mideast and the adjacent cruises) would disagree with your premise that cruises are not often canceled! 

[drron29]

2 hours ago, sea bright said:

Not true if you've booked a land tour - e.g. to Macchu Pichu- where all must be paid in advance and is non-refundable. Or if you've booked internal flights in, for example, Asia or South America on local airlines for which a credit is essentially useless. My point was that recovering from travel  insurance is not trivial. It was an arduous, frustrating and protracted process. While I prefer making my own arrangements, for certain cruises and in certain parts of the world booking DtD with Silversea makes sense. For other cruises, such as the Caribbean it makes no sense (unless you are booking a Silver Suite, etc and have no other option).

When we cruised on the Explorer from Ushuaia to Capetown we travelled to the Sacred Valley for 5 days with a full day in Machu Pichu. We also visited Cusco, Iguazu Falls, 3 days in BA and 3 days in Ushuaia. All booked ourselves. most refundable if we had to cancel. And only just a little more than the SS pre cruise package with Machu Pichu. And all in very good hotels.

[ak1004]

43 minutes ago, sea bright said:

I suspect that the people booked on the many cruises that are now being canceled so ships can round Africa instead of pass through the Suez canal  (Suez transit, Mideast and the adjacent cruises) would disagree with your premise that cruises are not often canceled! 

 

I think we can all agree that the current situation is not very common. And even with all cruises cancelled now, it is still a very small percentage of the total number of cruises. 

 

But sure, if you want to overpay tens of thousands just for the piece of mind that one of the cruises might be cancelled and you will have a hassle of filing an insurance claim, go ahead. The reason cruise lines charge those prices is exactly because people are willing to pay them..

Edited February 12 by ak1004

[bohaiboy]

We are on the Yokohama - Tokyo-Seward on April 16.  SS offered those who took SS Air a free night, presumably at the Conrad, and as quoted if you wanted to book the Conrad separately it was around $1000 per night per room.   We are now two months out and no one has been notified of the hotel.  Keep in mind that the SS hotels include airport transfers and hotel-to-ship transfers.  We are flying independently so we had to book our own hotels.  That led us to fly to Haneda vs Narita and book a brand new Hilton in Yokohama for less than $150/night.

That being said, we are using SS Air to Copenhagen in September.  And using SS Hotel.  It was around USD 500/night, but if we wanted to arrive a day early (have spent a lot of time in CPH so no need to see the city again), we would have had to pay an air deviation fee of $300, provided our own transport from AP and Hotel to ship, and would have spent another $200-300 on hotel, so sometimes iit works out better.  Good luck.

[Marstan79]

1 hour ago, bohaiboy said:

We are on the Yokohama - Tokyo-Seward on April 16.  SS offered those who took SS Air a free night, presumably at the Conrad, and as quoted if you wanted to book the Conrad separately it was around $1000 per night per room.   We are now two months out and no one has been notified of the hotel.  Keep in mind that the SS hotels include airport transfers and hotel-to-ship transfers.  We are flying independently so we had to book our own hotels.  That led us to fly to Haneda vs Narita and book a brand new Hilton in Yokohama for less than $150/night.

That being said, we are using SS Air to Copenhagen in September.  And using SS Hotel.  It was around USD 500/night, but if we wanted to arrive a day early (have spent a lot of time in CPH so no need to see the city again), we would have had to pay an air deviation fee of $300, provided our own transport from AP and Hotel to ship, and would have spent another $200-300 on hotel, so sometimes iit works out better.  Good luck.

SS has agreed to return the money we paid for the extra night Tokyo hotel, which was significant at $1000 plus. We will book our own hotel and it will be in Tokyo, not Yokohama. We will lose out on the SS transfers but the alternative was not good for us. We have learned a lesson from this: book our own hotel so we have control of where we stay.

[Gourmet Gal]

This just happened to us.  On a Rome to Barcelona cruise the SS hotel in both cities was adequate and in good locations so we kept the D2D booking so be able to use the SS transfers in both cities.  Significant in Rome, not so much in Barcelona.  They changed the Barcelona hotel to a convention hotel at the port that was totally unacceptable so they refunded those nights and we booked our own in a lovely boutique hotel.  We normally book our own air and hotel and use car services to and fro but this particular cruise seemed acceptable as a D2D.  It was annoying that in Barcelona SS changed a very nice, centrally located hotel to something pretty awful and BTW much cheaper.  None of these hotels seem to be SS level either.

 

As for Tokyo, if you’ve not been before I can highly recommend FS Marunouchi, FS Otemachi or Peninsula.  Tokyo is my favorite city!  You do not want to be staying in Yokohama.  Transportation from the airport and to the port is easy.  

[Marstan79]

3 hours ago, Gourmet Gal said:

This just happened to us.  On a Rome to Barcelona cruise the SS hotel in both cities was adequate and in good locations so we kept the D2D booking so be able to use the SS transfers in both cities.  Significant in Rome, not so much in Barcelona.  They changed the Barcelona hotel to a convention hotel at the port that was totally unacceptable so they refunded those nights and we booked our own in a lovely boutique hotel.  We normally book our own air and hotel and use car services to and fro but this particular cruise seemed acceptable as a D2D.  It was annoying that in Barcelona SS changed a very nice, centrally located hotel to something pretty awful and BTW much cheaper.  None of these hotels seem to be SS level either.

 

As for Tokyo, if you’ve not been before I can highly recommend FS Marunouchi, FS Otemachi or Peninsula.  Tokyo is my favorite city!  You do not want to be staying in Yokohama.  Transportation from the airport and to the port is easy.  

Thank you very much for the recommendations. Do you have any car services to recommend?