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Using low booking fees for contingency reservations?


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Thanks to CC, I'm learning more all the time about cruise planning strategies that others use, and one seems to be taking advantage of low booking fees to make a reservation for a cruise waaaay in advance, sort of as insurance against the prices escalating when the desired travel time draws closer, as can happen so often due to any number of factors (such as the price of oil jumping). Of course, if the prices drop as the time goes by, the savvy cruise shoppers can use that to their advantage too.

 

Anyway, one cruise line keeps emailing me about their $50 booking fees, which I gather must be some kind of bargain. Does anyone know of a listing of typical booking fees for the various cruiselines?

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It all depends on not just the specific cruise line, but the type of room you are booking also.

 

A deposit on a Suite or a "Ship in a Ship" room will be more expensive vs any other room. Also Carnival who frequently has $50 deposits have a non-refundable deposit fare which you loose some of the deposit and the rest can only be used to pay off another cruise, not to a deposit.

 

I actually do what you are doing. Our Med cruise was booked in 2016 shortly after the reservations opened. 5 months out they stopped offering our trip all together now.

 

We have a cruised booked for 2020 currently with NCL because they were offering a $1 deposit sale at the time and it was the only cruise I liked that far out I could book.

 

A note about the reduced deposits though since you mentioned prices dropping. Our MSC cruise we booked with a $49 deposit per person. The price dropped significantly on it ($500). In order to get that price though, we had to pay the full deposit since the deposit promotion wasn't being offered. For us it was a good value because our TA also at that point started offering $$ off the cruise fare instead of the OBC they normally give, which in turn saved us more than if we took the OBC.

 

Sometimes the promotions are key to making sure the change is worth it. Our NCL Bermuda cruise we booked when NCL didn't charge you the gratuities on the drink package AND it gave 3rd and 4th passengers soda packages. Sure the price dropped a little bit, but we would have lost those perks with the new booking and actually would have had to spend $600 more for a $200pp price drop so we would have lost $200.

 

In general though, for a deposit you are looking at between $100 to $500 pp depending on the room type, and those $500 pp rooms normally don't qualify for any deposit sales.

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