dockman

the emperor has no clothes....

The article is still up on USA Today under travel...Dec 9/10 and the link is still broken or at least does not work for me even trying two different browsers and still the same error message. How many hundreds of thousand possible customers may read the USA today story only to find they can't go to the HAL site to see the details? Shame on HAL and shame on the reporter for USA today for his careless "journalism".

Lose a few dozen or hundred customers because you have a crap website and it is a foolish attempt to save $$. These days as more and more products are sold online and more people expect working websites it is penny wise and pound foolish IMO...and a junk website is not going to just fix itself. Need pros then hire and pay them and quit messing around in the bargain bin of web developers.

Why does it appear so very very difficult for many cruise lines to hire some hot shot software/website experts like the ones who create a lot of the big online sites that actually work? It seems these problems go on and on year after year in one way or another. Maybe it is time to get rid of the people who continue to fail to provide a good solid website/app for years and fix it once and for all? I would think it would be in their best interest...it must get very old for the execs to read page after page of complaints/problems year after year.

usa today has article about the HAL $49 standby fare....big audience i would guess and it has a link to HAL for details...of course when u click link it doesn't work? Gee you get massive coverage on USA today and the link doesn't work? Once upon a time somebody would get fired for that type screw up.... 404 Error WE CAN'T FIND THE PAGE YOU'RE LOOKING FOR.

We shall see but i stand by the prediction that within ten years 75% or more of cruise bookings will be online direct with the cruise line. The technology will get better and better as AI will be incorporated more and more to assist online bookers with virtual ship tours as well as virtual agents who will be there to assist at the click of a button. Also more and more younger cruisers will age and become the predominate age group and these people will be much more inclined to book online. A lot of the really good cruise travel agents are diminishing as the good old time agents are retiring. The times they are a changing and as technology gets better and better along with cruisers becoming more and more internet savy/comfortable does not bode well for the good old fashion competent travel agents that many of us have used for decades. The rebates offered by many agents is generally coming right out of their commission. Not totally unlike what happened with airlines decades ago when agents would rebate a big chunk of their commissions to get the bookings . That no longer exists. The fact is the old time competent travel agents are a dying/retiring breed. At the same time the cruise demographic will also change and the future cruiser is more internet savy. For decades travel agents made good $$ booking air tickets and then one day it all ended in spite of airlines touting they were "partners in travel" with travel agents...until they were not. Yes a cruise is a more complicated booking but over time the cruise lines who are constantly looking for areas to save $$ etc will look more and more at that "agent commissions" line on their financials as an area that technology will enable them to reduce substantially. It won't happen overnight but happen it will. Enjoy those big agent rebates while they last but in the long run I predict the cruise lines will basically say the same thing the airlines once said about agents rebating commissions. If you can afford to rebate a big chunk of commissions we must be paying you too much and wham within a year or two agent airfare commissions dropped from 15% or so to 5 % to zero. That was over 20 years ago and in spite of agents anger and threats it quickly became the norm. I certainly do not blame anyone booking cruises now to take maximum advantage of the variety or rebates offered by some agents. But the times they are a changing and change they will.

that is probably the problem as right now i am in thailand and unless i use a vpn a lot of sites block me ...

tried reboot...tried with google chrome and firefox....still won't open...is there some other link or way to find details?

The trend towards more direct booking with cruise lines continues to grow slowly year after year....it is up to around 25% or so now and as technology gets better and better and as the average cruiser becomes more and more comfortable with online booking it will only grow...won't happen overnight but happen it will. The thing i think will be curtailed relatively soon is the "take over a booking" practice where you talk and book direct with the cruise line and then turn the booking over to a travel agent who gets a commission as if they had done all the selling and work. This forces the cruise line to hire pay and try to train staff to deal with answering questions etc plus still pay commissions after the fact. If you have a good travel agent then hold tight as they are a slowly dying breed as evidenced by the massive numbers of old time brick and mortar agents that are now gone and many are replaced by young inexperienced agents many of whom are working from home whose first hand experience on multiple cruises is very limited. It would not surprise me in the least if 75% of bookings are direct online within the next decade or sooner. Time will tell.

And a very large OTA has just announced a new partnership with one of the largest OTA cruise sellers to push cruises across their platforms....and their software for bookings is very much more user friendly than the cruise web sites....not to mention they will no doubt offer a variety of rebates in the form of OBC extra amenitity etc....while a good experienced well trained and well travelled travel agent offers expertise and advice that no OTA can match it is still a very tough way to make a living as many many passengers will take that advice then expect the agent to match the price/obc of the big online booking sites...

Just did it on princess in june no problem

The link won't open for me and when i google it gives me the same link which also still does not open. Where/how can you find the list of cruises being offered? Is this an old promotion that is no longer offered perhaps?

Another benefit of back to back is if you like you can buy a bottle or two of booze onboard from the duty free shop and it is delivered to your room at the end of leg one allowing you to have your own bottle in your room for leg 2.....must be two different booking numbers which would be normal if book two 7 days back to back rather than one 14 day.

I think that the number of travel agents that really know the various products including cruises that they sell from first hand experience is dwindling. Once upon a time travel agents were treated to some very good agent rates and fam trips so they could actually experience the products first hand and thereafter provide their clients with their expertise. But those "perks" are rapidly either getting worse or disappearing and of course the younger agents likely can't afford to go on a bunch of trips to learn the products without getting big discounts/comps/fam trips.. On the flip side you can now go to you tube and watch all kinds of videos, some very well and professionally done, others just average people sharing their videos and opinions. Once upon a time if you became a travel agent you maybe did not make a lot of $$ but the perks were very very attractive. Now the pay is still lousy and the perks are a shadow of what they once were. I would guess that a lot of the outside/home agents are people who did go on a lot of cruises, liked it and thought i can share my experience and expertise and make a few bucks selling cruises. Many of them have been reasonablly succesful but a lot of them quickly find out that going on a lot of cruises and selling and booking a lot of cruises for the general public can be a real challenge. As it was once said in the travel biz, those that can sell will sell. Those who can't sell will rebate bug chunks of their commissions to "buy" bookings. Some do it to make a few bucks. Some do it in the hopes that their volume may get them invited on fam trips or get agent rates or worst case they make a commission booking their own and maybe families cruises. While there are certainly some very good travel agents left they are a dying breed and every year more and more of them retire, die,or just get tired of doing a lot of work only to have another agent offer to rebate a big portion of their commission to take "their" client. There are also plenty of agents who do a lot of work, give good solid advice based on years of experience and then the client never calls back and they later find they booked via an OTC or big box store who gave them a gift card or OBC etc. Some agents have tried charging an upfront fee that is refunded when clients book.....but it seems most people still think that travel agents provide a free service and are unwilling to pay a fee...more likely they ask for/demand a rebate.

Cruisers specifically are becoming more comfortable booking on their own. Phocuswright's U.S. Cruise Market Report 2021-2025 found that direct bookings increased to 22% in 2021, up from 10% in 2020, and direct offline sales increased to 27% from 14%. The report cited as causes reduced availability of travel advisors, shorter and more easily online-bookable itineraries, and past cruisers being comfortable booking directly. In a year of testing its platform, Cruisebound found that 91% of purchases were made on a mobile device and that the average customer was 36 years old.

When the airlines first began to cut travel agents commissions and later eliminate them there were many agent groups who thoght that it would not last. They were very wrong. Now the airlines have most booking online as well as doing their own seat assignments and other tasks that the airlines reps and travel agents used to provide. One major factor in the airlines decision to stop paying agents commissions was the number of agencies who were willing to rebate half or so of their commission to get the business that was going direct to the airlines. I believe it was Crandall president of American who opined that if agents are giving away half of the commission we are paying them then we must be paying them too much....it is not totally different from all the agents who now rebate a big chunk of their commission in order to get people to book with them instead of direct with cruise lines. Cruise lines are more complex but at the same time the technology as well as the desire/ability to book online is increasing. Every year the percentage of direct bookings increases a bit more. As the bean counters look at cruise expense/revenue lines in the never ending search to decrease expenses and raise revenues one expense that jumps out is agent commissions. IMO the cruise lines have done a horrible job of making their online booking engines/websites/technology user friendly...just look at the horrible roll outs of things like the medalions which after years still apparently is full of bugs and glitches. But....one of these days that will change and the cruiseline sites will be fixed to make online booking a simple process for anyone with even a bit of computer savy...which of course increases every day as more younger people book cruises and more of the not so savy older clients will pass away. I suspect in a few more years the direct bookings numbers will continue to increase.....a lot of the old time travel agents are fading away and not a lot of young people are choosing a travel agent career. ,,,and who can blame them as the pay is generally low and the old days of getting offered all sorts of special fam trips, comp or greatly reduced price agent rates are rapidly disappearing. Why the major cruise lines don't hire or buy the software used by the major online booking companies is a mystery. While their sites are not yet perfect they seem light years better than the cruise lines sites. Bottom line: The days of travel agents being paid to "take over" a booking that was made direct with the cruise line are numbered. Once the cruise line figures out how to properly use technology to eliminate a lot of cruise line staff expense as well as travel agent commissions they will do it. Eventually I suspect that the cruise sites will have virtual agents who with some AI help will be able to answer any and all questions, give an HD video tour of any room or area of the ship better than most any agent. United Airlines for years told travel agents over and over that we are "partners in travel"....then they found a way to eliminate them and they did it and have never looked back. Those who think nothing will change need to read "who moved my cheese".

would seem to me that everyone you dealt with at HA was indeed "doing" or at least attempting to do some work and they no doubt are paid by HA to speak direct with clients....if they are clueless that is even more reason to have a competent travel agent handle all the dealings.......still don't understand why your agent could not have handled the entire transaction dealimg with HA agents who are hired to deal with agents (and not necessarily direct with clients) as that is after all a big part of why agents get paid commissions.. my point is that sooner or later this commission payment to agents system will change and not be as agent friendly....you can;t have it both ways that your agent handles all the dealings and then say "except in this case or that case"....

so OP travel agent could not get the deal so the HAL rep figured it out and did all the work and now the booking gets transferred to the agent who will make a nice commission?? i guess the first question is WHY was travel agent not able to get on the phone or online and get the deal for OP and do the work? One of these days the cruise lines are going to get very tired of paying their agents for doing bookings and dealing with clients and then wham it all gets transferred to agent who gets a nice commission check after most of the work is already done....once upon a time travel agents got paid for selling a cruise and handling all the communications and questions with the client...fair enough as saves the cruise line from having to pay their staff to deal with it. But is if fair for an agent who has no involvment with client until after it is all sorted and booked to come in right before final payment and say give me a commission?

no idea where she stashed it as i only saw the bills....

my ex always seemed to find a place for a credit card no matter what she wore....as amex said...don't leave home without it.

seems always a place for a credit card though?

Me as well. Not a big deal but i often wonder why so many people like to wear their key or medallion on a lanyard around their neck? Reminds me of being a kid at summer camp. Key in pocket for me. Of course I also wonder why in the world people would spend $$ to buy special bracelets etc to hold a medallion but obiously they must sell as cruise lines sure like to push all the accessories. I have a drawer full of old key cards and don't need more memorablilia...but that is just me maybe.

He was on majestic mexico for couple of months few years ago...i went on 3 back to backs and saw leo presentations 3 different times and never got bored...he is also very nice guy to get to know...anyone who was/is a fan of fleetwood mac, the beach boys, and many other groups will love to hear his stories about his decades of managing and touring with some great bands...he also has lots of pics and videos and has a well organized series of several lectures.....he makes teh presentations about the bands and not about himself and explains he will not go into sorid details of their sex lives etc...in other words even though he saw a lot he doesn;t necessarily go there...but he sure has some interesting stories to tell....go see leo.

Eventually cruise pricing will more closely align with the way airfares are sold...an alogorithm will monitor it all and compute and forecast how a cruise is selling compared to past history or expectations and then prices will be adjusted in different categories to whatever the computer predicts will give the maximum return...there is no "refaring" on airfares (unless you want to pay a lot more for refundable fares) and eventually i would guess there will be no more refaring on cruises though maybe there will be much higher prices that do allow refunds or refare....but if you book early you will get to choose your preferred cabin, category etc while late bookers will get what is left if anything. They may also sweeten the spot for early bookers by throwing in a few extras like a shore excursion or transfer that is not avail for free to late bookers. There are lots of ways to fill last minute inventory like travel agent fam trips, interline rates, special military rates, teachers rates, etc that are not advertised or available to the general public. Bottom line I highly doubt that there will be zero last minute deals available as no way are they going to want to lock themselves in to no discounts and end up with bunch of empty rooms.

Is there a bad place to watch a sunrise or sunset while at sea? Outside on deck is always good.