david55

As someone who is quite inexperienced in the world of cruising... could you explain why booking locally is not recommended? I always thought cruises should be booked by a TA but did not gave much thought to which TA.

Randyk47

YVR Cockroach

Not only commission rebates but sometimes exclusive clearance prices. I booked my Ponant cruises through Vacationstogo.com which is a place for cruisecos to dump unsold inventory (not all the time so its worth checking periodically or even regularly). The prices I got were substantially better than OTAs let alone the local bricks 'n mortar ones. Cruisecompete.com is a good place to see if your TA is competitive.

The cruisecos still need TAs to sell so they don't have a lowest fare guarantee, yet.

Also check net fare i.e., after taxes and port fees are included. Not that it applies to what you're looking at but I was looking at a cheap Holland America repo cruise (not that I can take it). Although there is a currency difference (but shouldn't be so much), the HAL rate was at least 15-20% higher next of taxes and fees than the VTG rate.

You might also look a cross-border bookings. The June sailing this year is pricing out at C$12,341 (11,200 fare + 1145 taxes & fees) which is less than USD 10,140 that VTG is asking for a basic suite.

NYC Flyer

So maybe "shop around" is better advice than avoid a local TA?

hedoman

What Randy posted are things you learn by sailing around. People that sail around are probably sharper than 98% of travel agents when it comes to booking so called luxury lines. For a novice reading this thread, you're getting free advice others have paid $$$ to learn.

david55

That is the beauty of FT..... the sharing of information about subjects you know something about.....as I do often in the areas I know.

Hoyaheel

Yes, I think Randy's original response was about using Cruiseline specific agents, not actual "local" TAs, so I think that was perhaps a bit of a misunderstanding or misread?

We don't have any local TAs, last time I talked to a local bricks & mortar TA was in 2000 as I was planning my honeymoon. And I knew WAY more than she did and gave up on TAs completely for a few years ;-) For "regular" cruises, I wasn't finding that TAs gave me much more than I could get direct, or I was booking with Costco - just for whatever good price they could get me, not for any TA knowledge or hand-holding. For luxury cruises, there are TAs who had more to give me than I could get on my own, so I used them - again mostly just as a booking agent because I like to do the planning & research on my own....

Randyk47

HMPS

OP, just saw an ad from Princess of a cruise starting and ending in Hawaii, touching several islands.

freecia

Booking with a Cruise TA's means they handle interfacing with the cruise line. This is good in the sense that if something needs to be changed like a sailing has been altered, stateroom is re-classified, downline request (getting off early), or dining seating requests, the TA contacts the cruise line. Cruise lines have customer service agents who interface with travel agents. This can be useful if your sailing gets chartered or an entire season is cancelled to reposition the ship elsewhere - you don't get stuck on hold as the TA deals with the runaround. The downside is also that you can't touch the booking directly- if you want to move/cancel your sailing due to personal reasons, move to another cabin cabin, or see a price drop and want to inquire about possible price adjustments then you need to contact the TA who usually takes calls during M-F (maybe Sat) business hours.

It is a bit like booking airfare through OTA vs direct if you know the itinerary could be complicated, uncertain, or suffer IRROPs. As mentioned above, you can also book directly and transfer the cruise booking to a TA within a certain amount of time for the perks. It is hard to takeover the other way - book with TA and remove TA from the booking. My usual Cruise TA also initiates the final payment a few weeks in advance of the cruise line's direct booking final payment to make sure the charge goes through and they can add their perks.

YVR Cockroach

Yes, but it's possible but also very unlikely that a local TA will be competitive (commission rebate and access to blow-out inventory). I'll admit the only B'nM TA I've dealt with is Expedia CCS and only because the cruises, repos, booked so cheap it was all NCCF taxes and fees. Just about the whole fare was "non-commissionable cruise fare" which means there's very little profit earned) and thus no rebates, OBC or anything to earn. I've shopped Costco travel for the same cruises and there was nothing to give away.

As an FYI, if you can get a TA to show you how much a cruise is invoiced at showing full fare and NCCF, see if NCCF is small relative to the whole amount. You expect a rebate.if so.

FWIW, Expedia CCS appears to be a franchise so the owners/franchisees have to make enough money to pay Expedia. In addition, the agents are independent contractors who essentially have to pay to train and make their money (and travel privileges) by not only booking enough cruises but selling ancilliary items such as flights, hotel, insurance, excursions, etc.

Be aware of the apparent deep discounts that are advertised for some cruises (usually the luxury/premium U.S market-oriented cruisecos). Whenever I look, these cruises always seem to be going at at least 60-75% off if not more. Mind you, I have heard that some people do want to get onto fully-booked cruises so bad that they'll pay full sticker (or very close to it). An old FTer I know once got a bump offer that included a full cash refund on his cruise (bought at a discount which was still not cheap by any means), a not-insignifcant amount of OBC, flight refund costs, and a choice of cruises, free.

For what the OP is looking for (even if they're open a closed-loop cruise), I'd highly recommend avoiding Princess. I don't think I would even go for a very cheap Princess repo cruise anymore. Those cruises also chug all the way south to Kiribati (or thereabouts) and back to comply with the PVSA.

YVR Cockroach

The other factor is, upsells. Cruisecos try not to give away free cabin upgrades so they'll try to sell them - some even have online bid processes. If booked through a TA, the old-fashioned way is the cruiseco contacts the TA (or a lot) by phone or e-mail and the first to bite gets to upgrade. If you don't have a TA that is on hand all the time and will communicate directly and quickly with you, you may miss out.

I've only ever booked guarantee cabins (other than for the upcoming Ponant cruises where there wasnt such an offer but we're happy with our locations). Fortunately we've never gotte a bad cabin and once, the OTA agent (VTG) even called HAL and got us a decent outside from a cheapest inside guarantee.

NYC Flyer

Costco, Expedia, Vacations to Go all have overhead just like a bricks and mortar agency. One additional consideration is that the large travel agency consortia often have blocked space selling at group pricing, exclusive on board hosts, events, etc. Using an agent is simply a choice like booking through one of the consortia or credit card hotel programs vs picking Agoda.com or whatever booking channel is cheapest on Kayak.

Randyk47

YVR Cockroach

I don't think that's how it works. As RandyK47 mentioned above in how they work, some of them have very light overhead. I think most of VTG's agents are home based, as were the other OTAs I've dealt with. I imagine HQ just runs a phone operation to direct call to agents and of course an accounting department and perhaps an IT department to update the webpage with specials (notice you can't book online for the most part). Not sure how Costco runs their agency (a real call centre or at-home agents). The very few times I've looked, their cruise prices don't seem particularly competitive.

Expedia CSC has a lot of overhead as it almost seems like a MLM of sorts. Owners of the local agencies have overhead to pay in the way of rent + all the accoutrements required for a physical walk-in location, as well as pay fees to Expedia. The TAs who are ICs have to drum up business (not much walk in apparently). Expedia of course provides the listing and pricing information for cruises and all the accoutrements cruise pax can be sold.

Some large regional TAs (there's one in my area which is supposed to be one of the largest agents for Oceania) may have special pricing and tak blocks of cabins ahead of time that they sell at whatever price, and offer exclusive onboard events to their customers (as Expedia does). When these blocks aren't sold and released, especially after or just before final payment, outfits like VTG get to sell the leftovers (and they seem to have a line to cruises not offered by other OTAs).. Maybe I don't book far enough ahead but I've never seen any exclusive or group prices.