Obc

I am considering booking a cruise thru a TA . She has told me that my OBC is determined by the net amount of the booking. In other words if the per passenger amount is a total of $2250, taxes and port fees are taken into account when the OBC is applied, reducing the adjusted amount to approx. $1650. I thought the OBC is determined by the total amount per passenger, not an adjusted amount. What has been your experience?

Not sure what your TA means. OBC (on board credit) is generally an amount that you would have to spend on board the ship during your cruise. It can come from a TA, the cruise line (as a sort of bonus), etc.

For example, Princess has an OBC of up to $250 for veterans (amount depends on the length of your cruise). So for our upcoming cruise we will have $250 to spend on the ship because my DH is former military.

As the above posted stated, Princess offers OBC if you are a veteran, the Carnival family of lines offers an OBC if you own Carnival stock, and there may be other specific OBC's but our experience has been that with an OBC from a TA, the amount has always been a set amount, regardless of the cost (total or adjusted). IE: "If you book such and such cruise with me, you get an OBC of $XX." There's never been a mention that the OBC would be higher or lower, depending on the cabin price, regardless of it being the "total" or "adjusted" price. I frequently orchestrate cruises for a group and folks book different category cabins, (therefore paying different amounts) but everyone gets the same OBC from the TA. However, I guess it could vary by line and/or TA, but what I mentioned has always been our experience.

OBC is a fixed amount that you spend on-board. Probably the TA is trying to explain how much your cruise will actually cost you after OBC will be applied.

In my experience, we pay the price of the cruise, and OBC, if we have any, will be applied to daily gratuity, tours, on-board shopping, drinks, whatever other expenses may be.

$ 600 PER PERSON?? That's an awfully generous OBC - unless it's something prepaid by you.

In many cases, a TA give OBC as a gift to you for your business. It is provided out of their pocket, from the commission they receive on your booking. That said, your TA may be referring to the commissionable amount of your booking. Taxes, port fees and gratuities are not commissionable. Mine tells me up front, based on the room (and cost of the room) how much OBC she can give me. It could be $100, $175 or as low as $0 like my last minute Solstice Cruise back in May where DH and I together cost less than $1000 commissionable.

Often, there is also OBC from the cruise line, too. It could be from booking on board, from being a shareholder, from a special they are offering, or something else. That is separate and should not come into play.

She could also be trying to put your costs into perspective - that your cruise really only costs you $1600 after you consider all the OBC, some from the cruise line and some from her.

Thank you for replying. Based on your information, I will go ahead and put down my deposit for 2 cruises, next winter on the Equinox.

Yes, the OBC from a TA can indeed be adjusted based on the cost of your cruise. When we have priced various cabin categories, the OBC would go up as the price of the cabin went up. So this does happen. On our last cruise there was a price drop right before final payment, and we were able to get that drop, and our OBC went down slightly too.

I would suggest making sure the TA does not charge fees for changes or cancellations.

My TA frequently is able to give me OBC. Usually he lets me know ahead of time the amount. Sometimes he'll tell me that a certain amount of OBC will be given with a certain category of cabin. For instance, we may get OBC if we book a balcony cabin but not get it for just an outside or inside cabin.

Between future cruise credits, military credits, travel agent credits, and shareholder credits, someone could have a pretty hefty amount of OBC.

We have a Carnival credit card (Barclay Bank) and every time we use it we get points. We can and have used them to get OBC. The 1st time we used it I went and a bottle of gin to use what was left of our OBC. However we got a surprise when we got our final bill the last morning. We had a check for what I didn't spend - which was $3++ - stapled to our bill! So, of you use the ship's card, depending on which cruise line, you may get cash/check for what you don't use for OBC!