It's that complaining Brit again!

[terrierjohn]

Here's another pricing special from Princess. After booking our Tahitian cruise we fancy Aus/NZ next, so I have been checking out Sapphire Princess Auckland - Sydney cruises. The price for a balcony cabin in Jan 2008 is about £3000 from a UK on-line TA, but cruise compete came up with a cruise only price of $2086, about £1130, which makes the flights look fairly expensive. Checking out expedia I could book an open jaw (into Auckland out of Sydney) flight for about £1000 (Jan 2007 price), now this looks like too good a bargain to miss.

Does the above cruise only price look realistic to you US cruisers?

[Toto2Kansas]

I hope you get a quick answer as not sure if you realize that posting the names of other travel agencies is not allowed here on Cruise Critic. Just a little heads up.

You might try just putting the prices in next time without the names of where you found them, that way the post will not chance being pulled.

[barbarah33]

I have no idea if the ship is currently pretty empty so they are offering big discounts or what but that is much less than I paid for my Aussie/NZ cruise in 2002. Have you tried Princess direct just to see what they're asking and compare?

[chrysalis]

I looked it up for you on the Princess website, because I know that since you are in the UK, you can not see fares there yourself.

 

The Auck to Syd Jan 21/08 sailing, balconies start at $2295

 

hope this helps

[ewheelock]

The name that was mentioned is not a travel agency. Can you still not say it?

[spocruiser]

While I can not give you feedback about that price and cruise, I would say that my limited experience with obtaining good prices through ***** has been very good. The agencies I have worked with have been very professional.

 

I don't consider ***** a travel agency, but simply a resource such as insuremytrip.com or any other website that provides a basis to comparison shop. If mentioning either one of these is against the rules, sorry.

[chrysalis]

The name that was mentioned is not a travel agency. Can you still not say it?

 

....but one of the two he mentioned is a travel agency

[terrierjohn]

I looked it up for you on the Princess website, because I know that since you are in the UK, you can not see fares there yourself.

 

The Auck to Syd Jan 21/08 sailing, balconies start at $2295

 

hope this helps

Thanks chrysalis that is helpful, the discount of 10% looks to be at the top end of the range I would expect, but not impossible.

As regards TA advertising, like spocruiser I don't consider ***** to be a TA, and e*****a or e******s are to cheap flights rather like google is to internet search engines. (**see wise saying below....)

[terrierjohn]

I looked it up for you on the Princess website, because I know that since you are in the UK, you can not see fares there yourself.

 

The Auck to Syd Jan 21/08 sailing, balconies start at $2295

 

hope this helps

Chrysalis,

You're right I can no longer access the "Find & Compare Cruises" part of the Princess.com website, it now directs to be my travel agent. But I used to be able to browse this data (I last used this about June/July time) and very useful it was to compare US cruise only prices with the UK prices. Looks as though Princess have closed this loophole, probably because of the huge price differences, maybe they do read CC after all.

John.

[phillipahain]

Terrier John

 

The difficulty you will find is that Princess UK will not quote you a true "cruise only "price or if they do it will only allow a bare minimum flight allowance

 

Its a disgrace that on USA folk are treated so very very differently to their USA/Can cousins not only on price but also on terms since in the UK deposits are no refundable and cancelletions incure hefty penalties