Has anyone booked a cruise without use of TA or internet agency

[penkitten86]

Has anyone booked a cruise without using a TA or for that matter a internet agency???

I have booked a cruise for this december without using the above. If anyone has any tips/advice it would be appreciate.

I have gathered many tips from reading your great posts on various subjects.

thanks in advance.

[Dixe Lee]

Has anyone booked a cruise without using a TA or for that matter a internet agency???

I have booked a cruise for this december without using the above. If anyone has any tips/advice it would be appreciate.

I have gathered many tips from reading your great posts on various subjects.

thanks in advance.

 

What kind of tips and/or advice are you looking for? I have booked using a TA, I have booked using an on-line travel service and I have booked myself. Frankly, most of the tips and advice that I have gathered over the years came from these boards, and not our TA. Our TA was good at booking our cruise and answering our questions, but if we did not know what to ask, she was not good at offering info that may have proven helpful to us. But here on these boards, any and everything that one could possibly ask gets presented and I constantly pick up new tips and advice, especially for our cruise on the Crown Princess as we have never sailed Princess before. Believe me, you are at the right place. Just take some time to peruse the threads and don't be afraid to use the "search" feature. Print what looks to be helpful to you so you can refer to those messages, also. Helps when you try to find an answer you saw to one of your questions, and that answer was posted a while back.

[WeBeGone]

Tons of people book directly with the cruise line - usually because they haven't figured out that any good TA can save them money - especially when booking Princess. Some TAs "give away" as much as 10% of the cruise price. There are absolutely no advantages of booking directly as I see it.

[NthernLgts]

Tons of people book directly with the cruise line - usually because they haven't figured out that any good TA can save them money - especially when booking Princess. Some TAs "give away" as much as 10% of the cruise price. There are absolutely no advantages of booking directly as I see it.

 

I think the OP will find this to be a prevailing sentiment among many cruisers. Even with a past customer discount, princess' direct pricing is all over the map as evidenced by the thread a week or so ago where gold members were getting better direct pricing than some elite members.

[drpack]

I've twice booked directly with Princess when I found a cabin available (from their online site) and I wanted to make sure I got it. Both times I told Princess I would be turning it over to my TA and they said no problem. I've always wondered why Princess would let my TA take it over and give me a better price plus they had to pay his commission.

[coolcat12]

I booked direct with Princess for our Alaska cruise last year. The cruise was in June and I was shopping in April. I called Princess and they had a bottom of the ship GTY inside with an onboard credit promotion for a great price. I held it while I compared prices with online and warehouse membership TAs and the best any of them could do was match the price. I stayed with the direct booking and ended up getting upgraded to a deluxe oceanview the night before sailing. It turned out to be a great bargain. I have never had Princess beat or even be close to what a TA could quote me before that or since. My upcoming Hawaii cruise is WAYYYYY less than the Princess pricing.

 

I like to cruise but I need to be frugal!:p

[Toto2Kansas]

I booked direct with Princess for our Alaska cruise last year. The cruise was in June and I was shopping in April. I called Princess and they had a bottom of the ship GTY inside with an onboard credit promotion for a great price. I held it while I compared prices with online and warehouse membership TAs and the best any of them could do was match the price. I stayed with the direct booking and ended up getting upgraded to a deluxe oceanview the night before sailing. It turned out to be a great bargain. I have never had Princess beat or even be close to what a TA could quote me before that or since. My upcoming Hawaii cruise is WAYYYYY less than the Princess pricing.

 

I like to cruise but I need to be frugal!:p

 

If Princess is running specials, especially last minute, you can sometimes get a great price with them. But ordinairly, booking in advance, you can get a much better price through a discount cruise TA.

Personally, I have never been able to beat the TA's price direct with Princess on any of 21 cruises with Princess. (19 sailed with 2 more in the works)

[geoherb]

I booked our last cruise after the final payment date directly with Princess. The quotes I got from TAs were higher for some reason.

 

I used to have a local TA. I booked our first 10 cruises through her. I booked the next few with an Internet TA--he had great prices and our local TA retired.

[Coral]

If Princess is running specials, especially last minute, you can sometimes get a great price with them. But ordinairly, booking in advance, you can get a much better price through a discount cruise TA.

Personally, I have never been able to beat the TA's price direct with Princess on any of 21 cruises with Princess. (19 sailed with 2 more in the works)

 

Even with last minute specials - good agents can beat Princess's price. My agent will discount anything I book with Princess and transfer to her.