US booking prices now shown inclusive of taxes/fees.

[Até]

I assume it's to do with the California law.  You can still see the breakdown if you look at the Summary page.  Actually now it's going to be tougher to see when MSC randomly changes the taxes and fees.

[Ed342]

 

Royal Caribbean, Carnival, and MSC make a key pricing change

S.916 - Junk Fee Prevention Act

[Two Wheels Only]

I just priced one and MSC rounds up to the nearest dollar. 😁

[Até]

On one of my bookings they again pulled the trick of significantly lowering the Port Fees/Taxes and raising the booking rate.  It's only about $50pp total less but this gets old.  Maybe this law will put a stop to it but I doubt it because now you actually have to go into a mock booking to see the fees/taxes.

[KINGBOBOFTHENORTH]

I think it's great. Too many cruise lines were advertising super low cruise prices and then padding it with overpriced taxes and fees. Now we will all see the full price. The other day I saw a low priced NCL 2-night cruise to their private island only with over $200 in taxes added on. No way does Miami and their Great Stirrup Cay have over $200 in taxes. The airlines have been forced to do full pricing for the past decade or so. The price you see is the price you pay. Now the cruise lines will have to do it too.

[Illbcruzn4life]

17 hours ago, KINGBOBOFTHENORTH said:

I think it's great. Too many cruise lines were advertising super low cruise prices and then padding it with overpriced taxes and fees. Now we will all see the full price. The other day I saw a low priced NCL 2-night cruise to their private island only with over $200 in taxes added on. No way does Miami and their Great Stirrup Cay have over $200 in taxes. The airlines have been forced to do full pricing for the past decade or so. The price you see is the price you pay. Now the cruise lines will have to do it too.

Ncl is notorious for this. Highest port rates/taxes of any cruise line that I have seen

[Até]

My issue is that no one seems to be checking what the cruise lines are charging.   So many times I've seen MSC set very high port fees/taxes for months, only to cut them by 75% for later bookings.   Now that the fees are hidden from obvious view people will never realize they paid three times as much as others for something that is supposed to be fixed equally for all passengers.

[peder]

2 hours ago, Até said:

My issue is that no one seems to be checking what the cruise lines are charging.   So many times I've seen MSC set very high port fees/taxes for months, only to cut them by 75% for later bookings.   Now that the fees are hidden from obvious view people will never realize they paid three times as much as others for something that is supposed to be fixed equally for all passengers.

People will pay what they want to pay. If they see a fare they like and buy a cruise, then nobody's getting scammed.

[KINGBOBOFTHENORTH]

On 7/3/2024 at 1:23 PM, Até said:

Now that the fees are hidden from obvious view people will never realize they paid three times as much as others for something that is supposed to be fixed equally for all passengers.

The fees will no longer matter. If you see a total price you like, you purchase it. No longer will the cruise lines get away with advertising (and competing on) low prices and then jamming you with real and made-up fees. Now they will have to compete on total price. I think we will see overall prices drop over time as they are forced to advertise real deals and not fake deals.

[Até]

You used to be able to easily find the taxes/fees right on any general search page, albeit in small print.  Now with MSC you have to dig much deeper, with a mock booking.

 

I have no problem with making cruise lines show an inclusive price but it needs to be easier to see the actual taxes/fees.  They could just state "Inclusive of $XX.XX taxes/fees" right on the search page like they used to.

[peder]

Why tho? The only price that matters is the total price.

[Até]

Some weird hypothetical examples; The cruise line says port fees are only ten dollars and you miss eight out of ten ports.  They could claim you are only due eight dollars.  Same goes if you cancel after final payment and only get the port fees/taxes returned.  What will insurance cover? Conversely they could under price the cruise fare and claim taxes are higher, artifially altering their earnings profile.  Likely illegal but I've see MSC doing it on several of my sailings. 

 

I think it's better to keep these two items accurate and transparent.

Edited July 5 by Até

[KINGBOBOFTHENORTH]

Frontier and Spirit were notorious for advertising really low fares but then adding all kinds of weird fees including fees for booking on the internet. But now they can add all the fees they want, even crazy fees, because the fare they advertise on their website and on internet sites such as GoogleFlights has to include all their fees. If it's a good price, I book it. I don't care what they include in there. Same now for cruise lines. It's not important what they include in their price quotes anymore. If it's a good price, book it. The BS they include doesn't matter anymore.

 

What I'm seeing so far this first week of tax inclusive cruise fares is that they simply added their prior fare to their prior taxes and that's the new tax inclusive price.But I expect that to evolve over the coming months as they have to compete with each other on total price. Customers will experience sticker shock when they see these new tax inclusive prices but they're going to come down and we won't care how much is the fare and how much are the taxes because they'll all be bundled together. 

[paceyswife]

With this new policy, is the daily service charge added or is that billed once onboard as in the past? TIA. 

[Até]

For US bookings there is still a daily service charge added to your on board account.  It is discretionary. 

 

https://www.msccruisesusa.com/manage-booking/before-you-go/service-charges

Edited August 2 by Até

[paceyswife]

22 minutes ago, Até said:

For US bookings there is still a daily service charge added to your on board account.  It is discretionary. 

 

https://www.msccruisesusa.com/manage-booking/before-you-go/service-charges

Thanks… thought the price was too good to be true!