Cabin Allocation & Availability Different on Legs than Combined Back to Back Itinerary?

[pghflyer]

We just booked a 2026 sailing that is available as 14-day legs or a combined 28-day itinerary.  When booking the 28-day version, I was surprised how few cabins were available this far out and even inquired with my agent to check on a few of the "better" cabins I was particularly interested in.  None were available (I checked online at agent and HAL too).

 

Being curious if one leg was the problem, imagine my surprise when I found TONS of better rooms (ex. Aft Balconies) all available on both of the 14-day legs.....but just not available for selection on the 28-day version. 

 

My agent says Holland is notorious for not allocating the best rooms to the longer sailings and normally won't allow passengers to choose rooms not explicitly on the longer sailings.  He is looking into this, but I find this incredible.  I am giving them more business and frankly, would get more OBC overall by booking the separate 14-day legs rather than combined 28-day itinerary (enough extra to overcome the small 4.8% discount on the 28-day versus booking the two 14-day).

 

Anyone else run into this or am I the only lucky one?

[Wehwalt]

No, we've had this on several cruises, such as a B2B we are taking on the Rotterdam next fall. HAL is sometimes willing to re-allocate a desired room from the Collector's Voyage to the individual sailings, or vice versa. They talk to "inventory".

[Crew News]

I have discovered this situation, especially on repositioning cruises. 

 

My HAL PCC contacted Ship Inventory and resolved my issue in a few minutes. I booked my cruise to start in San Diego instead of Vancouver.

[pghflyer]

Thanks. Honestly now that I am aware and looking at this booking again, it actually has me scrutinizing the math on always quickly booking the combined voyage.  I am saving $576 (balcony rates) by booking the combined version....and Mariner Early Booking Bonus is a wash ($200 each or $400)....but AARP would get DOUBLE OBC ($200 each cruise instead of once), Healthcare industry would get DOUBLE OBC ($100 each cruise instead of once), and shareholder would get DOUBLE OBC ($250 each instead of once).  

 

So in this case, the extra OBC by booking separately completely equalizes the small discount by booking them combined. I wonder if sometimes you are better to book separately.

[pghflyer]

Just to update, my agent quickly went to bat for me and made a few calls and got the room I wanted, plus a little more OBC since rate was a little higher for room I wanted.  Still, I had no idea they didn't have a single inventory allocation and were doing this manually by sailing.

[StLouisCruisers]

Is AARP credit one per stateroom, per booking?  We are both signed up with HAL for it, but only get one credit per booking.  Is everyone else finding this too?

[pghflyer]

15 minutes ago, StLouisCruisers said:

Is AARP credit one per stateroom, per booking?  We are both signed up with HAL for it, but only get one credit per booking.  Is everyone else finding this too?

I am getting one per cabin with a member in it (doesn't matter if multiple members in same cabin)

[kazu]

40 minutes ago, pghflyer said:

Just to update, my agent quickly went to bat for me and made a few calls and got the room I wanted, plus a little more OBC since rate was a little higher for room I wanted.  Still, I had no idea they didn't have a single inventory allocation and were doing this manually by sailing.

 

It’s not a biggie really, if the cabin is available on both segments, your TA just requests it be moved out of inventory (hope I am saying that right)  and then assigns the cabin to you.  My TA does it for me all the time on collectors cruises.

 

I have no idea why HAL assigns the better cabins to the segments and not to the collectors (of course my opinion of a better cabin might differ from others) but they seem to.  they also seem to make collectors do anytime dining and waitlist for fixed quite commonly.  Why, I don’t know - but it’s frustrating.

[*Miss G*]

27 minutes ago, StLouisCruisers said:

Is AARP credit one per stateroom, per booking?  We are both signed up with HAL for it, but only get one credit per booking.  Is everyone else finding this too?

 

Yes.  When I asked my PCC to add it to my booking he made sure to let me know that it can only be one per cabin; not one per person.

[Toad]

3 hours ago, StLouisCruisers said:

Is AARP credit one per stateroom, per booking?  We are both signed up with HAL for it, but only get one credit per booking.  Is everyone else finding this too?

That’s what we were told, one per booking

[POA1]

Revenue management determines the allocation per leg or segment. (Using lucky astrology dice and a Ouija board.) Ship inventory can usually assign a room if it's available across adjacent segments.

 

There are some weird exceptions though. There's a 14 day circle Great Britain that can start in either the Netherlands or England. It's the same cruise, but the turnaround port is different by a day. None of the inventory is in Dover. It's all in Rotterdam (or Amsterdam, I forget.)

 

If you are looking at voyages and see on that ends in an A or B (possibly C for some of the Panama Canal transits) you'll know that you are looking at one of the combined cruises. You can tell me voyage code by looking at the URL for the cruise.

 

For example:

 

https://www.hollandamerica.com/en/us/find-a-cruise/c4f21c/y467a

 

Has a voyage code of Y467A.

 

Y is the Rotterdam. 4 is for 2024. The A is your clue that it's a cruise made from segments.

[Haljo1935]

6 hours ago, StLouisCruisers said:

Is AARP credit one per stateroom, per booking?  We are both signed up with HAL for it, but only get one credit per booking.  Is everyone else finding this too?

Yes - per cabin not per person. 

[Cruise Junky]

Yes, we just ran into that when booking for March, 2026.  Their loss, we decided to do the first leg as a land trip 🤷🏻‍♀️  Stupid games.   If looking at the B2B for 50 days only less desirable cabins were available 

[pghflyer]

Yeah it is very frustrating and a curious approach on their part. If anything you would think the best cabins would be on the longer / more expensive sailings.....plus cabin selection becomes more important the longer you will be in it.

[cruisinsusin]

13 hours ago, POA1 said:

 

There are some weird exceptions though. There's a 14 day circle Great Britain that can start in either the Netherlands or England. It's the same cruise, but the turnaround port is different by a day. None of the inventory is in Dover. It's all in Rotterdam (or Amsterdam, I forget.)

 

 

 

[cruisinsusin]

Yes we noticed that- we are booked on the British Isles cruise and , at least when we booked, Do we cabins were

all guarantees and the only

way to choose was to start in Rotterdam 

[Dutchman48]

22 hours ago, pghflyer said:

We just booked a 2026 sailing that is available as 14-day legs or a combined 28-day itinerary.  When booking the 28-day version, I was surprised how few cabins were available this far out and even inquired with my agent to check on a few of the "better" cabins I was particularly interested in.  None were available (I checked online at agent and HAL too).

 

Being curious if one leg was the problem, imagine my surprise when I found TONS of better rooms (ex. Aft Balconies) all available on both of the 14-day legs.....but just not available for selection on the 28-day version. 

 

My agent says Holland is notorious for not allocating the best rooms to the longer sailings and normally won't allow passengers to choose rooms not explicitly on the longer sailings.  He is looking into this, but I find this incredible.  I am giving them more business and frankly, would get more OBC overall by booking the separate 14-day legs rather than combined 28-day itinerary (enough extra to overcome the small 4.8% discount on the 28-day versus booking the two 14-day).

 

Anyone else run into this or am I the only lucky one?

ON a recent B2 B booking we saw different cabins available for the different legs at time of booking. Our TA saw the same options and was not able to get HAL to give us one room (of our choice) for the entire cruise. We booked separate rooms for each 14-day segment and asked out TA to keep an eye out for when HAL unblocked the rooms. About the time final payment was due she notified me I could have one of the rooms we booked for the whole cruise. 

 

Moving cabins between cruises is doable, but an inconvenience for both the passenger and crew. So I was not surprised HAL reached out to us prior to assigning guaranteed rooms.

[AncientWanderer]

We just recently encountered this situation for the first time -- and it frustrated me enough that we canceled our booking.  It's really counterintuitive because for a long cruise, accommodations are more important.  What I might tolerate for two weeks, I might not tolerate for a month.

 

It's just something to be aware of, and if we need to do separate bookings to get accommodations we want, we will do that.

 

 

[Ipeeinthepools]

3 hours ago, Dutchman48 said:

ON a recent B2 B booking we saw different cabins available for the different legs at time of booking. Our TA saw the same options and was not able to get HAL to give us one room (of our choice) for the entire cruise. We booked separate rooms for each 14-day segment and asked out TA to keep an eye out for when HAL unblocked the rooms. About the time final payment was due she notified me I could have one of the rooms we booked for the whole cruise. 

 

Moving cabins between cruises is doable, but an inconvenience for both the passenger and crew. So I was not surprised HAL reached out to us prior to assigning guaranteed rooms.

Were there any cabins available in the category you wanted for the combined voyage?  I’ve run into this situation a couple of times and I understand that HAL may cap the number of cabins it wants to sell for a combined voyage. I can understand that limitation.

[pghflyer]

I am sincerely curious, what makes sense about that limitation?  I thought the goal was to fill the ship. My measly 4% discount for the combo version isn't even worth the labor costs they will incur turning over my room and processing me as a new customer.