Originally Posted by
LGANightOwl
The last 2 times I booked a RCCL cruise, I went through them directly. The first time, when the price went down, they refunded me the difference (no longer being done) and they claimed that this only occurred when booking through them. The second time, the price went down and they offered me a higher-class cabin. Would TA's be able to do the same?
Yes.
Originally Posted by DeirdreTours
the last time I had a cruise quoted by multiple agencies the lowest to highest price quoted for the same class of cabin on the exact same cruise was different by more than 20%.
That different could easily have come from one online TA having special group pricing while the others didn't.
FWIW the whole TA discounting topic was debated in this thread as well:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/cruis...ug-2010-a.html
MHO is that like the airlines cruise lines would like to access direct bookings but found the public had little incentive when the big online TA's beat their pricing through commision rebating. Take away the discounting and the level playing field means more consitent pricing regardless of vendor.