Online travel agency question??????

[sherin65]

I came across an offer on a well known online travel site the confused me a bit. It offered the same price per person for the cabin as RCCL but also threw in $100 obc. How can they make any money on that? Is rccl offering the same obc and it's just not posted? How does this work? Does the obc come from the TA or the cruiseline?

[lvtotrvl1]

Agencies may have a group on that sailing that offers the OBC....RCCL does allow a cetain % of the cruise fare rebated (in form of OBC, not price reduction). So, to answer your question, it may come from the cruiseline, via the group booking (but RCCL will not give you the same OBC if you book through them), or it may come from the agency....

[Keith1010]

The agency might be getting a credit from RCL that they are passing along to you or they are giving back a portion of their commission in the form of an obc to increase bookings.

 

Keith

[forensic]

Every cruise cost has a commission built into it. IF you buy your cruise directly from the cruise line, they keep the extra money. If you buy from most TA's they get the commission. NOW because this was a RCL cruise, RCL and Celebrity will NOT allow ANYONE to discount their cruise fares!. BUT a TA is allowed to give you something like an onboard credit, gift certificates to the Speciality Restaurant, Flowers, etc. This comes out of their commission and is an incentive for you to buy from that TA. In many cases you are much better off with a personal TA, you will get great personal service and pay less for your cruise at the same time.

 

IF this were a (for instance) a Princess, or NCL cruises a personal TA would be able to discount your cruise cost.

 

All this and GREAT PERSONAL SERVICE!!!!;)

[jimbo5544]

Typically, if TA's book groups they can get perks which they can share (or/not) with their clientele. Examples of these are shared cocktail parties, OBC, WIne, flowers etc.

[JerseyGem]

As other posters have said, you might get some perks using an online TA, but if anything goes wrong- you might find that they're not very helpful. DD and BF booked with a popular online agency - great for booking a cruise, but now that DD has had to cancel, they have been very unresponsive. We had to ask them several times to actually cancel the cruise, several times to send us a confirmation email about the cancellation, and now DD is still waiting for a refund! The latest excuse is that the form for the refund was not completed properly (by them), so NCL wouldn't issue the refund. They'll try again. Other excuses- we never received the message you left on our voicemail system, your agent only works late hours on Pacific Time, so NCL is always closed when she works, you shouldn't need anythig from us because you have trip insurance, etc. Always an excuse- because they're losing their commission.

 

And don't think that trip insurance will save you from an incompetent TA- you must submit written documentation from your TA to your trip insurance company before they'll even consider your claim.

[johno95]

and i am sure you realize that the $100 OBC is per stateroom, not person. if the staterom costs $1,500 pp, not $750 pp, there may be more TA profit to kick back $50 pp.