How to Plan a B2B Cruise

[Lovincruisin1321]

My husband wants to take advantage of Celebrity's sale in 2025 8-day roundtrip Athens.  I would like to connect a cruise to Sicily or Venice.   

I tried using Cruise Mapper to track itineraries of cruiselines.  Is there an easier way?  This is getting overwhelming!

[doghog]

9 minutes ago, Lovincruisin1321 said:

My husband wants to take advantage of Celebrity's sale in 2025 8-day roundtrip Athens.  I would like to connect a cruise to Sicily or Venice.   

I tried using Cruise Mapper to track itineraries of cruiselines.  Is there an easier way?  This is getting overwhelming!

I use the cruise lines website I want to book with or a TA website to compare prices for the intinaries, dates, cruise line and ship. I do this no matter the length of the cruise or setting up a B2B cruise.  

[Essiesmom]

I use cruisetimetables.com.  You can use the end port of your chosen cruise as your ‘cruise from’ port and see who is sailing from there the day you get there.  Maybe not the same cruise line or ship.  EM

[wallyj]

8 hours ago, Lovincruisin1321 said:

My husband wants to take advantage of Celebrity's sale in 2025 8-day roundtrip Athens.  I would like to connect a cruise to Sicily or Venice.   

I tried using Cruise Mapper to track itineraries of cruiselines.  Is there an easier way?  This is getting overwhelming!

FYI, B2B is used to imply consecutive sailings on the SAME ship. S2S is when you will move to another ship whether with the same Cruiseline or not. Celebrity offers an additional discount on both cruises if you are doing a B2B, based on the length of the sailings.

[ijscheer]

Be aware that Celebrity no longer ports at Venice.  Ravenna is the closest Celebrity can get to Venice.

[Tudy]

I would use my TA's search and just plug in the month and the embarkation port for the second cruise. That shows me all the ships sailing out of that port and I can then look and see what is available and I can decide if I am happy with what ships leave that day or if I want to spend a day or 2 in that city for a cruise that I like better.

[jlawrence01]

We have been doing that quite a bit in recent years.  We live in a city far from cruise ports and a significant part of the cost is getting to the cruise port.

 

We book a cruise that really interests us.  Once we get that booked, we look for cruises that leave from that port or a close by port that are reasonably priced that interests us.  OR we find a land destination that we would like to spend a week or two exploring.

 

For example, last February, we cruised the Eastern Caribbean on Celebrity starting in Fort Lauderdale and ending in San Juan, PR.  Puerto Rico has been a dream destination for my wife so we decided to spend a week driving around the island.  Then we saw a great deal on an 8 day cruise to the Southern Caribbean on NCL.  We booked that cruise.  After that cruise, we flew to Ohio as we found a good fare and we wanted to see our parents.  Then we flew home.

 

The way that I find the cruises is to use the 90 DAY TICKER of my travel agent's website.  It brings up  the cheapest fares in each class for every cruise available during a selected time and in a selected region.  If you are going out of Southern Florida, you will notice that you may have 10-15 cruises leaving in the next 3-4 days out of nearby ports.

 

I have not found this to be that difficult.  however, it does really help to make a calendar of where you are going to be each day so that you get your hotel and cruise reservations correct.

 

It does help if you book the two cruises from the same port or if you depart a cruise one day and give yourself a full day to get to the second port (like sailing into Fort Lauderdale and out of Miami the next day,