YVR Cockroach

Does anyone know of a cruise agent that books (and rebate commissions) for Ponant? First cruises I booked through VTG (very low clearance rates never to be repeated ) but they're not offering anything special these days.

Randyk47

Try Pavlus Travel. Annette is our agent and has always been excellent. https://pavlus.com/planners/

mahasamatman

What's the incentive for an agent to rebate their commission? Most travel agents are actually in the business of making money and not doing charity work.

747FC

Randy beat me to it. Annette is our agent as well.

747FC

They are in the business of making money, and their business model is to give rebates, which keep the customer loyal to the travel agency.

YVR Cockroach

Thanks. Has anyone used Luxuryonly.com? They clam to rebate up to $1,000 OBC,$2,000 travel credit and $2,000 Visa gift card up to 5-16% of cruise fare.

YVR Cockroach

Looks like someone has been paying too much.

mahasamatman

I guess some of us are willing to pay for quality service, and some aren't.

I can see an agent rebating part of their commission (usually in return for poor service), but your question asks for an agent who rebates the entire commission. You can find a ton of agents who do partial rebates by using cruisecompete.com, but I've tried it and have been dissatisfied with all of them.

Randyk47

I don’t think YVR Cockroach necessarily meant 100% rebate of commission. I can’t speak for 747FC but we have been using Annette at Pavlus for 10 years now and have always gotten super service from her. Of course we don’t ask Annette or any travel agent for that matter for much more than booking the cruise. After 29 years of cruising it’s not like we need a lot of handholding. We typically book our flights, arrange pre and post-cruise hotels, and sometimes transfers without help. We actually like doing that and at the same time leverage awards, etc., that we’ve accumulated from business and personal travel.

It also matters what type of cruise you are taking on what cruise line. An inside cabin on a mega ship for a 7-day Caribbean cruise out of Florida can be had for well under $1,000 so maybe the partial rebate of commission is no big deal. Now take a 10+ day cruise in the Med on an all inclusive luxury line and the fare is going to be around $1,000 per day. Any rebate or whatever incentives can add up quickly.

YVR Cockroach

As a FYI, cruise sales are one thing that still rely heavily on retail distribution so commissions can be very, very high (25% range even?). I've heard from someone who cruises on RSSC that it can be as high as 5 figures (obviously RSSC cruises can be very expensive). Those who offer rebates are the TAs who have minimum overhead (e.g., WFH, no bricks 'n mortar presence) so don't have to pay for that.

Like the above respondents, I am a customer that requires very little if any handholding; just book the cruise for me and I will arrange everything else by myself. No questions about almost everything under the sun (though I'd like to be informed of upsell offers, which I have never received). I'm also someone who has not sailed on a round-trip cruise for the past 40+ years (though only been cruising the past 10 years otherwise). I can arrange m own tours at either end, or both, + transport to/from. One of the people who will disembark at the port for Santiago (Valparaiso) by taking the metro, public bus, metro again and walk to my accommodation. Can arrange visits to Easter Island and Machu Picchu by themselves, and find their own way home.

I would say the only handholding I would needed - and more of an action - in the past 2 years would have been to get refunds on cruise fares due to COVID cancellations. Fortunately, I had absolutely no bookings for anything.

Yep, there is CCF (commissionable cruise fare) and NCCF (non-CCF). For anything close to "list price" or initial price, you can bet CCF is a huge portion of the fare. I booked one cruise (one of the supposedly-unpopular repos that sold out) for ~$40 pp pd before fees/taxes. You can bet CCF was probably nothing for that one! Even booked one within-final-payment cruise on a mass-market line, had a private sale fare of 20% off the lowest rate which was close to clearance, and got a significant amount (for the fare) of OBC (~8%) from the TA.

YVR Cockroach

I'd be happy to pay full commissions (or rather, expect no rebates in an form) if the TA ha access to really good fares. Here s the excerpt from my Ponant booking (from invoice issued by Ponant)

Might have been a Ponant marketing trial balloon for a few months back in the latter half of 2018. Have never seen anything quite as discounted since.

Ponant fares may start at 30% off at launch for some cruises but generally the prices are either full rack for more popular ones (such as the wildly-expensive Northwest Passage), or there might be free add-on repositioning "ocean voyage" cruises, air travel allowance, consecutive cruise discounts and the like. I asked VTG if Ponant would allow the 2nd leg of the cruise above to be include as a free ocean voyage but the answer was no, or I would have had to pay close to the full fare for the 1st segment which would have been more expensive than both bought individually at deep discount.

Hoyaheel

Count us as more Pavlus customers - Carol was our agent until she retired; now Susan cares for us. Which is to say she books the trip we ask her to and she tells us when payments are due and that's about all the customer service we ask for. I enjoy trip planning - I only want an agent if they're going to get better prices and/or perks than I can get on my own. However -my in-laws (who think they are low maintenance but are NOT when it comes to travel) also love Pavlus - they are a full-service agency if that is what you need.

We were scrolling the Pavlus website this weekend and boy - they are out there trying to show that 2% discount they can offer (seabourn cruises) like it's going to make a difference. I don't think 2022 is the year to find a cruise bargain.....

747FC

It may be unadvertised, but in practice, their Seabourn rebates are 10%

Randyk47

I would imagine Seabourn has the same policy as the rest of Carnival Corporation, and actually almost every cruise line, which looks very dimly on discounters openly advertising significant discounts or rebating of commissions. This became an issue probably 15 years ago across the whole industry. Brick and mortar travel agencies collectively threatened to stop booking cruises if the cruise lines didn’t come down on discounters. In defense of the brick and mortars they have a completely different business model than Internet agencies and sometimes several offices in a large city. On the other hand most Internet based agents work out their homes and the agency may have a small support staff in a small office. What that has meant is that Internet based agencies that provide significant incentives or rebates simply can’t and don’t openly advertise them.

YVR Cockroach

Its certainly the marketing model, or perhaps the realty of the market. B 'n M TAs certainly have a lot of overhead. It'd seem that cruising (unlike car rentals and hotels, especially, air travel) is the last bastion for rather-generous commissions to be earned, due to the substantial portion of the market that seems to be fixated on a controlled environment, and/or require handholding. As such, cruiseco excursions and transfers are exorbitantly priced to take all risk and uncertainly away. Of course, there may be a (smaller) market of those too busy to deal with arranging anything. I imagine a lot of cruisers just want to book and have the TA (and cruiseco) handle everything while many of us here just treat the cruise like another flight or hotel.

If only cruisecos would treat their fares like airlines (no rhyme or reason at times, I know, + contracted pricing) at a best and final price for the masses and let those ho need handholding and arrangement pay for it as an extra.