Guarantees, Cruise Credits, & Upgrades

[ModestMeans]

For several weeks have been visiting these boards and am impressed with everyone's knowledge and willingness to help. Have seen numerous references to "Guarantees" for cabins, "Cruise Credits", & "Upgrades". Can you please give me a brief primer on how these 3 things work?

 

Jim

[wwinfl91]

I will attempt to explain the above three terms at risk of many others who may be able to do it better.

 

A Guarantee is a way to book your cabin on a cruise. Basically you agree that you are willing to take a cabin in a certain class of cabins, inside, outside, verandah, etc. In return the cruise line and your travel agent will place you in a cabin in that class of cabins or higher. Sometimes people can come out way ahead using this method of booking especially if you book early as cruise lines often go ahead and upgrade, give you a better cabin than you paid for, in order to be able to offer even better prices for the less desirable cabins on last minute cruise sites. They do this in order to try to fill as many ships as possible. We have used guarantees on several recent cruises and have come out with a better cabin than we originally would have gotten. The key with a guarantee is that if you don't get upgraded you will be happy with the cabin in the class of cabins you originally paid for. You also may not be assigned a cabin until very late in the process, possiblely as late as when you arrive at the cruise terminal to board the ship (this happened to us one time).

 

An Upgrade as mentioned above is a free or very low cost upgrade of the type of cabin that you will have on a cruise. If you book an outside cabin and end up with a verandah cabin that would be an upgrade. An inside to an outside cabin is another example.

 

Cruise credit is basically money that is credited to your shipboard account as a result of your travel agent or possibly the cruise line providing it for you. If you reserve a future cruise while on a cruise cruise lines usually provide you with cruise credit you can use to pay your shipboard expenses on a future cruise. This money can be used to pay for shore excursions, drinks, etc.

 

As I said in my opening many others may answer this question and do a better job than I did. But that is my understanding of the three terms.

 

Have a great next cruise.

[imsulin]

Excellent information, wwinfl91! I don't think anyone could state the answers as well as you did!

[pcur]

For Royal Caribbean cruisers, the cruise credit is the one you get toward your Crown & Anchor Society Loyalty Program. After 1, 5, and 10 cruises you reach higher levels with more perks.

 

They also give the same shipboard account credit for booking while on another cruise.