Book through NCL or travel agent

[FlorenceItaly]

You'll save a lot of money using a good TA. I can't think of any advantages of booking direct that outweigh the savings of using a TA.

 

 

I will most likely switch to a TA right before final payment. However, at this time I like being able to just pick up the phone, and have my request met with no problems(and wait), especially in the case of a price change.

 

 

 

Marie

[ubdkjrb]

My Kingdom for that upsell number! We are booked through a TA because the original PCC was a sleaze and played so many "marketing" games, I swore off. (Used to teach marketing....I know crap when I hear it. In fact I may still write to Co Hq. ) However I would like to do all I can to see if the Fairy would consider waving a wand in our direction. Any suggestions? Thanks,

 

Blessings,

 

Gail

 

Even if I gave you the number, you couldn't call it yourself and do any negotiating because you booked thru a TA. Successful calls are made after final payment so anyone that books direct and then transfers to a TA would be out of luck as well. Sorry.

 

Peter

[newmexicoNita]

Have completed one NCL cruise last year and thinking of another one this year. We booked through an online travel agent last year. Is there any advantage in booking directly through NCL?

Thanks all.

 

Whether there is an advantage is a matter of opinion, if you were happy last time I would go that route again. If you think you might save by using NCL direct, absolutely that is not the case. In fact you stand a better chance of saving a little by using an agent.

 

Nita

[newmexicoNita]

I am currently booked with NCL. I may transfer to an agent right before final payment, I don't know. I like the ease of dealing with NCL. I booked the cruise on a Monday, saw a price drop on Thursday, left a message with the PCC, and had an invoice with the lower price within minutes!

 

 

Marie

 

you would get the same service with a good outside agent..

 

ubdkjrb, you don't really have a good idea how the system works or you wouldn't have made the statement about prices being higher because of commissions. If you checked with the cruise line management and they answered you honestly they would tell you, they can save money by everyone using agents. Sure, they pay a commission, but the fewer agents they have the lower they overhead. It is cheaper to pay an agent than it is to pay health insurance, vacation, office overhead, more managers, to just list a few of the expenses.

 

You also mentioned how you can tract rate drops, well, guess what? Some agents do this or at least periodically but never have I heard of cruise line res agent call to tell someone the price has dropped.

 

For some there may be benefits to booking direct, your reasons are not valid though.

 

Nita

[flowerchild]

the price differance between the two are not wide enough for me to justify dealing with a TA...

 

On our most recent booking for 2011, we saved $400 per cabin by going with a TA. If that is not significant enough, than you must have much more money to burn than I! LOL That $400 goes a LONG way towards my on board account, excursions and shopping.

[ubdkjrb]

you would get the same service with a good outside agent..

 

ubdkjrb, you don't really have a good idea how the system works or you wouldn't have made the statement about prices being higher because of commissions. If you checked with the cruise line management and they answered you honestly they would tell you, they can save money by everyone using agents. Sure, they pay a commission, but the fewer agents they have the lower they overhead. It is cheaper to pay an agent than it is to pay health insurance, vacation, office overhead, more managers, to just list a few of the expenses.

 

You also mentioned how you can tract rate drops, well, guess what? Some agents do this or at least periodically but never have I heard of cruise line res agent call to tell someone the price has dropped.

 

For some there may be benefits to booking direct, your reasons are not valid though.

 

Nita

 

A good internet portal for online bookings would require nothing more than a good design and a bigger server. I would never suggest that the cruiselines replace travel agencies with their own reservation people; that would be just about as inefficient as the current TA network. You'd be surprised what the cruiseline could do with the extra hundreds of millions of dollars they currently spend on commissions. This is very valid.

 

As for the price drops, as I've said many times, the only way anyone is going to know for sure if their TA is catching all the price drops is to watch them themselves. If you're going to do that, its not a reason to use a TA. This is valid as well.

 

Peter

[njhorseman]

A good internet portal for online bookings would require nothing more than a good design and a bigger server. I would never suggest that the cruiselines replace travel agencies with their own reservation people; that would be just about as inefficient as the current TA network. You'd be surprised what the cruiseline could do with the extra hundreds of millions of dollars they currently spend on commissions. This is very valid.

 

As for the price drops, as I've said many times, the only way anyone is going to know for sure if their TA is catching all the price drops is to watch them themselves. If you're going to do that, its not a reason to use a TA. This is valid as well.

 

Peter

 

As a former travel agency owner, I can assure you that the considerations when booking a cruise are far more complex than booking most airline tickets or hotel rooms.

 

For other than the most knowledgable cruisers who have done a lot of homework ahead of time, there is no way a priori way to know which cruise is a better choice for a particular person, while buying an airline ticket comes down to little more than date, time of day and if there is a choice, which flight or airline is offering the best price. There isn't a hill of beans worth of difference among most major airlines for coach travel, while there are huge differences from line to line in the experience aboard similarly priced cruises.

 

The cruise lines have the technical capability to build a better booking engine, but have chosen to not do that for a very good reason. Their ships would be filled with passengers mismatched to the line's market niche resulting in a lot of unhappy passengers. The advice of a competent agent can and does make a world of difference when selecting a cruise and the cruise lines know it.

[ubdkjrb]

As a former travel agency owner, I can assure you that the considerations when booking a cruise are far more complex than booking most airline tickets or hotel rooms.

 

For other than the most knowledgable cruisers who have done a lot of homework ahead of time, there is no way a priori way to know which cruise is a better choice for a particular person, while buying an airline ticket comes down to little more than date, time of day and if there is a choice, which flight or airline is offering the best price. There isn't a hill of beans worth of difference among most major airlines for coach travel, while there are huge differences from line to line in the experience aboard similarly priced cruises.

 

The cruise lines have the technical capability to build a better booking engine, but have chosen to not do that for a very good reason. Their ships would be filled with passengers mismatched to the line's market niche resulting in a lot of unhappy passengers. The advice of a competent agent can and does make a world of difference when selecting a cruise and the cruise lines know it.

 

Being in the business, you know that the most important component of a cruise is the itinerary. Yes, there are some ships that are refered to as "destination ships" that provide more shipboard activities, but the majority of cruisers are primarily interested in destinations. Given that, booking cruises isn't really a whole lot different than booking airfare. There are a limited number of mass market ships that go to the exact same destinations. Pricing, then, becomes the next differentiation. With few exceptions, Carnival is the cheapest; the next tier includes RCCL, Princess, Celebrity and NCL and the rest start with HAL and end with Crystal, etc. Some of the old cliches where Carnival is the party ship and Celebrity is snobby have evened out. I personally don't think any of the big five would be a "mismatch" for the vast majority of cruisers. It really does come down to itinerary and price. These are very easy variables to build into an online booking system.

 

Other questions that the inexperienced cruisers might have like the best cabin locations, or categories, etc. can all be asked and answered on CruiseCritic. Sure, some people on this board might give out some misinformation, but I've never seen an instance where that hasn't been corrected by someone that really knows. Sometimes, it's by a TA. I assume that their main reason for being on CC is to impart the knowledge that they have, just like the rest of us.

 

Anyway, booking cruises will migrate closer and closer to full online participation sometime in the future. Maybe it will be next year and maybe it won't be for twenty years; but it will happen. Not only is technology here to stay, it's going to get even more amazing in our lifetime.

 

Peter

[Richie2pies]

I would still like to know if you have booked with NCL and have an OBC, do you lose it if you transfer the booking to a TA before final payment? Can you still keep the NCL OBC and still receive whatever the TA is giving?