FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - What is the Fee and Booking Agency Pays CruiseCompete
Old Jul 6, 2012, 2:43 pm
  #15  
tcook052
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Join Date: May 2002
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Originally Posted by DanJ
Royal Caribbean and their various brands don't allow TA's to advertise prices lower than what the cruise line website displays. But that doesn't stop some TA's from giving the customer various forms of kickbacks, either through direct payment, to on board credits and dinner vouchers to the specialty restaurants.

Carnival also does this, but not across all their brands.
Not anymore Canival doesn't according to a press release issued today, a portion of which I'll paste here:

Today marks an important step in Carnival's commitment to ensuring that all travel partners have the equal ability to sell the Carnival product at the same great rate. Nearly two years ago, we introduced a popular revision to our Advertised Price Policy, which ensured a level playing field for all agents. Following our 2010 policy change, we continued to hear from many partners that they saw the ongoing value-adds in the marketplace as excessive and another form of rebating and Carnival was encouraged to revisit our policy once again. We are proud to announce that effective August 1, 2012, we will take this commitment one step further by revising our value-add policy.

With this revised policy, value-add booking incentives may only be non-cash equivalent items and have a value equal to or less than USD 25 per passenger. The policy applies not only to advertising, but to all forms of communication, including in-person, phone or any other means. Our former policy allowed non cash-equivalent value-adds that were less than five percent of the Complete Cruise Fare or USD 25 (whichever was greater). In addition, it allowed for cash-equivalent value-adds that were less than 10% of the Complete Cruise Fare (with approved marketing plans).
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