This is the first of a three-part series on shopping for a cruise, finding the best cruise deals and budgeting for cruise vacations.
Are you a frequent cruiser? Please comment and share your tips.
I’ll admit I”ve been an ambivalent cruiser. I’ve been on a few (Caribbean) cruises and had a great time. I see cruise itineraries and my heart races. Destination after destination, all in one relatively short trip? The thought of that is exhilarating. Then, I see that I’d only have maybe six or eight hours to explore each locale. So much to see, so little time. My heart sinks; what a tease.
Still, my mixed emotions gave way to enthusiasm when a relative threw out the idea of a cruise for some milestone birthdays in our family this year. I immediately began surfing the web for options. I consider myself a good deal-finder and savvy travel shopper but…man, was this Frustrating.
I narrowed down the choices to three different 3-day cruises out of Miami on May 4, 2012 — on the Carnival Imagination, NCL Sky and Royal Caribbean’s Majesty of the Seas. All had similar, but not identical, itineraries in the Bahamas.
I compared prices on five websites, including each cruise line’s own website. I also checked Travelzoo and Costco, in case they happened to have a deal for the particular ships and dates we were looking for.
Here’s what I found price-wise when I searched, not including “special promotions” such as cabin upgrades, on-board credits or a free plate of cookies in my cabin (seriously?). The lowest prices I found appear in green, the highest in red.
The conclusions I drew follow after the chart. If your mileage varies, I’d love to hear your experience.
So what did I learn from my neurotic charting?
- Comparison shopping is very time consuming, reminds me of airline pricing (with slightly less wild and mysterious fluctuations) and makes me crazy. That said, saving money is important to me, and I will compare, even if my sanity suffers.
- I won’t assume booking directly with a cruise line itself will save me money.
- I won’t assume that sites with names that suggest bargain pricing actually offer the lowest prices.
- I will consider, but not be distracted by, limited-time-only offers and other promotions, especially not by those with asterisks and microscopic light gray print at the bottom of the page. Just about every site advertised some type free stuff (e.g. said cookies, a bottle of wine, chocolate-covered strawberries) as well as shipboard credits and cabin upgrades. I’m always skeptical of these things (see above about fine print) but, granted, some did appear significant. A four-category upgrade on NCL that I saw on one of the websites, for example, comes to mind. Other offers seeemed — at least to me — to be limited in their application, value and appeal.
My conclusion? Next time, I’ll narrow down the ship and cabin type I want and select several possible dates, assuming I can be flexible. I’ll look around at pricing and isolate my target date based on what I find. (Prices for the same cruises I looked at, but sailing the following weekend, were consistently cheaper.)
Then once I’ve settled on a date, I’ll compare actual prices for a particular cabin category after taking any (useful) promotions or upgrades into account.
What are your secrets for finding truly great deals on cruises? Do tell. And, may the force be with you.
