Booking shore tours online

We are booked on the Aria in May and tried to book shore tours online. Went through the process only to find they want payment immediately. We have a big onboard credit that we would like to use for tours. We called P & O and were told that we could only use the credit once onboard so we could miss out on tours we would like to do. Another p&o way to extract more money from passengers. Not happy!

I tend to disagree that it is a cash grab by P&O . On board credit is as the name suggests funds to be spent after boarding. It is very rare that any passengers board without OBC credited at the time of booking. I agree that it would be a benefit if you could use OBC prior to boarding but as I said the name says it all. Personally I have never missed a shore excursion I wanted to go one if I booked on board at the first possible ocassion.

Since they introduced this ruling last June I book shore tours online which I think might get booked out and leave others until on board, taking pot luck.

I found out that although you have to pay with a credit card they did not charge a surcharge which was good. Also when our visit to Tangalooma was cancelled because of bad weather the repayment was put on my account as refundable OBC so I could get it in cash at the end of the trip.

I would like to think that paying in advance would make the confirmation of numbers for shore tours more stable. Some small ports such as Kangaroo Island have to bring the busses from the mainland for the day and it must be very difficult estimating numbers when people leave it till the last minute. When people use OBC then they often leave it till the last minute because it's not like real money.

I guess there are two sides to every story. :)

I tend to disagree that it is a cash grab by P&O . On board credit is as the name suggests funds to be spent after boarding. It is very rare that any passengers board without OBC credited at the time of booking. I agree that it would be a benefit if you could use OBC prior to boarding but as I said the name says it all. Personally I have never missed a shore excursion I wanted to go one if I booked on board at the first possible ocassion.

We booked a tour with Princess last Nov-Dec cruise to NZ online and used OBC for that with no problems. We have $550 OBC on the P&O cruise of 7 days and only 2 ports,so will have to take pot luck.

We are booked on the Aria in May and tried to book shore tours online. Went through the process only to find they want payment immediately. We have a big onboard credit that we would like to use for tours. We called P & O and were told that we could only use the credit once onboard so we could miss out on tours we would like to do. Another p&o way to extract more money from passengers. Not happy!

All the cruise lines are doing this, but i found there was plenty of tours and booked them on the first day on board

I think if you have a lot of OBC then it makes sense to book on board unless it is a "must do" trip that is very popular and you don't want to miss out on it.