This post is going to save you tons of hours. I am going into my second "week" of research on getting the best price for a cruise to Alaska. As an environmentally conscious mommy, cruises aren't normally my thing, but since this is for a family reunion at the suggestion of someone else, here I am entering the gluttonous world of all you can eat, and travel with your entire hotel room in tow.
Now, I am assuming that you are the kind of person who knows what they want and just wants the best price, and does not need to have her hand held.
Here's what NOT to do. Don't bother with booking directly with the cruise line. It's always at an outrageous price. And here's the crazy thing. Cruises to Alaska in particular book up nine months in advance, so they say. This was certainly true in my case. All Vancouver return sailings to Alaska have all their balconies fully sold in the lowest categories. Except for one sailing. At a whopping $5000 for a family of four, who are these well heeled folks? I could have flown to Disney World and stayed at a nice hotel for a week for $4000.
Agents Bid on Your Business
The first step was figuring out the itinerary and choosing the right ship. Only five ships had the embarkation port I wanted, and only two of those visited Glacier Bay. Now this sounds simple enough, but I obsessed for days and days, researching on Cruise Critic and Cruise Reviews until my eyeballs bled. I had the near impossible task of booking a mix of balcony and outside cabins on the same floor. Well, I managed to do that. THEN I found out that my balcony would be above noisy public areas. I hate noise. Then I found out that my category of balcony has steel railings instead of plexiglass, effectively blocking the view for half the window. That was not readily apparent when you're booking a cabin on any of the travel agent sites.
Once you've narrowed it down, go directly to Cruise Compete. At Cruise Compete, you will have 3-6 agencies bid on your business. The problem with this is that there really are something like six agencies tops that bid on Cruise Compete, so don't kid yourself if you think you're getting quotes from across the world... there are only the same six agencies who bid on this site. Or at least that's what a gathered from my snooping around. Cruises'N'More, Crown Cruise, Dream Vacations, Cruise Vacation Outlet, and National Discount Cruise are some of the names.
The bids you get at Cruise Compete will come within 24-48 hours, and you're going to end up with quotes that are very close in price. If you see a huge difference in quotes, it will be because the agent was too lazy to actually read what you specified when they did their quote, mistaking a double for a triple, or a F for a G category, or something like that.
So, why are the amounts so rock bottom on Cruise Compete? You are getting a bottom line price and should not expect much in the way of service. Agents are paid a commission, and they will chop it down to get your business. Sometimes they offer on board credits (OBC) or free gratuities, but really this is a way of re-distributing where your money goes. For me, I prefer a lower price since I usually spend next to nothing on board. Yes, I'm the passenger that the cruise lines have nightmares about, the person who doesn't go to art auctions, drink alcohol, or darken the entrance of gift shops. Or shore excursions!!!
After your quotes come in, compare incentives and prices. Double check that you are not paying any hidden charges. Make sure you will not get dinged cancellation fees or change fees.
Double Check
You will also want to check Cruise Quick to double check if you've really received the bottom line deal. According to Cruise Quick, the Wall Street Journal calls them "The least expensive place for experienced travellers to purchase cruises." I loved the ease of the cool pull down windows and search engine, which allowed me to input the ages of the passengers instead of breaking it up into adults/children THEN specifying the ages of the children. Cruise Quick has very high incentives, but ultimately, I did not find they were offering a better price.
Here's a comparison on my balcony VD cabins for four. I subtracted any incentives from the price to come up with a net price.
Cruise Compete: $5109 - $50 OBC = $5059
Cruise Quick: $5595 - $405 ("shipboard credit") - $50 (OBC) = $5140
Cruise Compete wins!
Price Drops
Update, February 20, 2013: Ignore this section on Price Drops. I subscribed to this service, and it has just been garbage so far. Quite often (once every 2-3 weeks?) I receive an email from them regarding a Price Drop from $2,036 to $1,999, and within a few hours the price increases again back to exactly where it was, and I receive another email. So the verdict for now after having subscribed for five months is don't bother with this. I am including this "Price Drops" section for your reference only if you are doing research on Cruise Fish.
Update April 18, 2013: I cancelled my original booking since I found a much better deal on Crucon. Previously, my total price for 4 cabins was $18,046, which included three balcony cabins (and two quads) and an obstructed ocean view. I found a special price through Travelzoo for balcony cabins. Now I have six balcony cabins for $15,627. So I saved $2,500 plus got TWO additional balcony cabins on higher floors, although two of those are category VE instead of VD which I originally booked, so a slight downgrade. It was cheaper booking two doubles instead of one quad balcony cabin. Hard to believe, isn't it? The only thing I lost was the proximity of the cabins. I was choosing from the last dregs in categories VB, VC, and VE in order to make up the six cabins. One pair is positioned at the far aft and has only showers instead of a bathtub, another pair is positioned near the elevators (but a review I found online assured me it is quiet), and only one pair is in a relatively inoffensive location. Each pair is located away from the other cabins. If I pay an extra $100 per cabin, I can move them all to the same location by putting them all in the same category.
We now resume our regular programming:
The last thing you should do is set up a price drop alert. You see, if the price of the cruise drops before you make your final payment (in my case, in April), then you can ask for a price adjustment to the lower rate. This can only be done once, and the travel agent will not (usually) do this for you. I signed up for Cruise Fish for the price of $5 for tracking 5 cruise prices. Now, that is impressive: usually my hands have to be cold and dead before you can pry any money out of them to pay for services on the Net... I would never pay for extra photo storage space, pro upgrades, classmates.com, but I *will* pay for this service, otherwise I would have to check the prices regularly myself.
The cruise I bought for Category VD (nice initials!) shows this:
Current Price $2099 (price per person for first and second passengers):
So, it seems that the lowest price was in March, 15 months before the cruise, with prices changing quarterly--yet no price change in June. We'll have to see how many times the price changes before the sail date.
When To Book
If you require a quad cabin, you need to book early as there are a very very limited number of cabins that can accommodate four people. For example, on my deck, of the more than 100 cabins, only nine can take four passengers. If you are part of a couple, prices may be lower closer to the sailing date. You can also save money by booking a "guarantee" cabin which assures you of a certain type of cabin but not the location. The only problem is that you may sometimes be given a cabin in an undesirable location.
Happy cruising!
Post-Cruise Update, August 15, 2013:
We've returned from our Alaska cruise. It was wonderful. Relaxing. While I have some criticisms of Holland America's Zuiderdam (toilet not flushing, mediocre food), for the most part I recommend the ship for the incredible value I received. For $5226 inclusive we had four people total in two balcony VB cabins, plus $500 in on board credits, which we applied toward the gratuities of $11.50/day per person. So in effect we paid $1181.50 per person for a balcony cabin with double occupancy! Fantastic! So much room to stretch out in, two toilets, two bathtubs... and a double width balcony.
We were able to open up the partition between the balconies so it was convenient to travel between the two rooms side by side (there were no cabins available with an adjoining door). My husband spent one entire day with food poisoning, the Glacier Bay day, but he was able to see the glaciers and the island of seals from his bed. I highly recommend a balcony cabin if you can afford it.
Also, it turns out my worries about noise in our location close to the elevators was unfounded. The passengers on the Zuiderdam were predominantly white haired and mellow. We heard next to nothing. Dead silence, after 9 pm! Only once did we hear noise, from a herd of kids that was racing around the hallways around 11 pm. They did three rounds then they stopped. The rooms were well insulated for sound.
No comments:
Post a Comment