Pro’s / Con’s booking HX from US on .NO website

[Pmctexas]

Anybody research this ? Seems less expensive…
Thanks

[CDNPolar]

1 minute ago, Pmctexas said:

Anybody research this ? Seems less expensive…
Thanks

 

We are Canadian, and there is not a Canadian site for Hurtigruten.  We are pretty much relegated to using the US based site.

 

If I remember correctly we did look at other country sites and found them cheaper, but generally there are some sort of filters that will prevent you from booking based on your IP address, or everyone would do this.

 

We found cheaper rates certainly, but then through the Hurtigruten site we found a TA that was certified by Hurtigruten and contacted her and her rates were even cheaper.  We went through her.

 

We normally do our cruise bookings ourselves, then transfer to a TA, but we had never booked Hurtigruten before and this was Antarctica and we felt that we needed a TA to assist.

[hallasm]

Prices are often much lower on the Hurtigruten .no page - but read the terms & conditions regarding advance payment and especially cancellation.

[karen11g]

We are in the US and booked the Antarctica cruise we took last year on the .no site. We actually booked it first in 2020 for 2021 and had two years of COVID cancellations before we were able to cruise in 2023.

 

We saved about 25% vs prices on the US site for the exact same product. That was a lot of money on an expensive cruise.

 

Pros:

1. It was easy - there was no attempt to stop us doing it, and no questions about it after we booked. In fact, an expedition staff member on the ship said, “Ah, one of the smart ones - you found the trick” when he learned about it.

2. We dealt with Norwegain customer service throughout, including having two cruises cancelled - one after we had already arrived in Chile. Our experience was stellar through all of the changes, rebookings and refunds, as well as for general question asking.

3. Though main language used was Norwegian (of course), everyone we dealt with spoke English, and email communcations came to us in both Norwegian and English.

 

Cons: 

1. You must deal with Norway office, US office won’t be able to help you.

2. Terms and conditions differ, mainly due to laws & regs in each country. If I remember right, Norway’s terms were the more consumer friendly, but as Hallasm said, read them. We were satisfied and as mentioned, all issues we experienced were handled well.

3. I used a translation app to read info on the site at times, others may or may not be okay with that. Most info you may need about the cruise itself was identical on both sites.

4. Basically, it’s $$ savings vs. ease. I’ve planned a lot of travel all over the world, so felt very comfortable with it. Savings for us were really significant. For less significant savings, I’d book thru US site. That price point will be different for different people.

 

[Pmctexas]

Thanks for the info…