Price drops for UK Cruisers ?

[Elizanessie]

Have you been lucky and been able to get a price drop on your cruise while booked in the UK ?

 

Was it difficult to get and were you charged an admin fee for it?

[soccerref]

In my experience (28th cruise coming up in 2 weeks) I have never been able to access a reduction in price after I have paid the deposit and I have tried with many different cruise lines. This policy only seems to apply to US citizens (maybe Canadians too but not sure) as this topic has been raised by our Aussie cousins who also do not appear to be able to claim a price drop refund either. I always feel as if we come out as second class citizens with the cruise lines as we do not seem to get the same perks as people across the pond. Oh well....that's life. I still love to cruise!!

[iancal]

I am Canadian. We regularly enjoy price drops and have drops on just about every cruise that we have booked prior to final payment. We have received these drops on Princess, Celebrity, HAL, etc. In fact, on our last Celebrity cruise there was a price drop after final payment. Our internet TA was able to get us the reduction in the form of an OBC. My understanding is that Celebrity, as of a few months ago, will no longer honour price drops after final payment is due. This is reasonable. Our next cruise is in December. We were able to enjoy a substantial reduction when Celebrity reduced prices for a one week period. It is often the case that prices are reduced for a few days, a week, and are then increased. You need to watch the fares and act quickly when a fare decrease shows up. We only deal with travel agents who do not charge an admin fee for repricing, for changing cabins, or for cancelling prior to final payment (some charge admin fees that vary from $25-75 per person).

 

In addition to price drops, we often benefit from a 'consolidation' of the cabin codes. There have been a few instances where the price of cabins above us have been reduced to the same price as lower category cabins. In those instances, we have been able to upgrade to higher category of cabin at no charge. Our cruise deposits are refundable if we cancel prior to final payment date.

 

Being Canadian, we also get cruise prices in both USD and CAD. Often the cruise lines preset currency and this can work to our advantage. Canadian TA's will quote us USD fares and CAD fares, plus we typically get quotes from US based internet TA's.

 

Having said this, it can work both ways. We booked a very attractive deal on a hotel in Spain on a UK travel site. They would not let us book with a non European adress. To overcome this, we simply inserted our address as the address of a hotel in Spain that we were staying at prior to this reservation. It worked like a charm....they accepted our credit card and we had the booking.

 

This is how it works for us. All of our cruises have been Caribbean, Mexican, or Alaskan. I am told that we in North America sometimes do not see some of the more attractive, late booking prices on European cruises but I have no personal experience with this. Another thing that we never do is to purchase pre or post cruise hotels or transfers through the cruise line. The hotels tend to be priced about 40 percent higher than we can get by booking directly with the hotel via their website or by using the various hotel bidding sites such as Priceline or Hotwire.

[wilson4]

Hi

Yes I am from the UK and have had three price drops on a Celebrity cruise. I booked really early ( 19 months ahead), directly with Celebrity and keep a regular look out for drops in price. When spotted, I have rung up and there has been no problems in getting the new price and no admin fees.

This is only my second cruise. The first was with Princess and through a travel agent - there were no price drops there. :)

[DUNKINDONUT]

Previous experience with Royal Caribbean has been positive. A couple of years ago we booked a XMAS cruise 'early' only to be frustrated to note that the cruise tumbled in price as the year went on.

 

Had we not continued to check, we would not have been aware of the significant drops that subsequently took place.

 

Based upon advice from this website, we called Royal Caribbean (In MIA) who could not have been more helpful. They dropped the price immediately to match their website (revised price.)

 

The price dropped 3 times before we cruised, each time we called MIA and the price was reduced. In total, we saved almost GBP 1,200 (family of 4) which is obviously a considerable saving.

 

We have found that dealing with the U.K. office is not very productive (or friendly!!) and have kept to a policy of keeping an eye on the price with RCI, Cruise.com etc... websites then calling RCI in MIA on subsequent cruises.

 

I suppose it's a 'Business' BUT to me, it should be an automated process whereby existing customers who book EARLY... should receive the discounts without having to spend their time checking websites and calling RCI.

 

Overall, we have never had a bad experience with RCI and will embark on another cruise during the Oct Half Term break.

 

DUNKINDONUT

[swoggy]

What is the reason for these cruise lines reducing the price - I've nothing against it, jealous at never qualified:( - the customer was happy to cough up the original quoted price, so it's not done to attract their custom. I thought early customers would get reductions for early business and as the passenger room got less people would be willing to pay an excess as time went on.:confused:

So basically if they have you committed to a price why offer these deductions and has anyone ever had reductions on P&O cruises ... never saw them mentioned here or other areas reducing prices or upgrading.

[iancal]

Cruise line pricing is similar to airline pricing. It is based on supply and demand-they must each have a formulae based on occupany level and days left to sail. They need to get 'bums in the seats' so to speak. Once the ship sails, the revenue opportunities for an unoccupied cabin are gone. We booked early for our upcoming Celebrity cruise. The price was good. Celebrity subsequently increased the price a little, then it dropped to below what we paid. We got repriced. Not long thereafter, the price jumped to a higher level than the first price increase. Go figure. All I know is that we keep an eye on it and jump on any price decreases or take advantage of any category consolidations.

[weejasser]

I've just booked via a UK agent a cruise on Allure. I asked them all as I rang round their price drop policy. Most declined to offer any reduction should RCCL drop the price. Finally managed to find one or two that did. Don't think I can mention them on here however they will also accept next cruise certificates

 

Reason for going via an agent was that they were able to easily beat RCCL's price - why is that when they will also be making money out of it?

[Lyann]

I have twice had price reductions, both sailing with Royal Caribbean. Both reductions were with two different TA's and had no problem getting the lower price. I do think it depends which TA you book with. I would agree that looking at the boards that US customers seem to get reductions more frequently than us in the UK.

[irnbru]

We were lucky enough to get a price drop refund around 7 wks ago from Celebrity. Thanks to the posters on the roll call forum. I told my TA, he got it verified and we got £58 each back:D

[triona]

We were lucky enough to get a price drop refund around 7 wks ago from Celebrity. Thanks to the posters on the roll call forum. I told my TA, he got it verified and we got £58 each back:D

 

Yep us too.. Our TA was really helpull when I phoned him after I had seen a price reduction with Celebrity.. We got £140.00 back beween us :D It realy dose pay to check the posts on the forums...We are new to cruising and without the forums we would not have a clue on this and other items..x

[Elaine0138]

I have had price reductions from Celebrity and RCI on numerous occassions the hardest part used to be convincing the TA's now they have got used to me phoning up. One TA did charge me an admin fee of £40 but my reduction was over £300

 

P&O do not honour price reductions

[crazydizzymoo]

Has anyone had a price reduction on a Princess cruise?

 

I've gotten the impression that UK Princess passangers don't receive price reductions in the same way as US passengers, is this correct?

[Costafox]

We were lucky enough to get a price reduction of just over £100 GBP on our Transatlantic cruise last year on the Navigator of the Seas. As we had booked directly with RCL, I just rang the UK office and the reduction was applied immediately with no problem.

 

Best Wishes

 

Gill

[Floflegs]

Has anyone had a price reduction on a Princess cruise?

 

I've gotten the impression that UK Princess passangers don't receive price reductions in the same way as US passengers, is this correct?

Princess don't give price reductions. We have had them with Royal Caribbean.

[Princess Cat]

Princess don't give price reductions. We have had them with Royal Caribbean.

Last year Princess sent me an email about 3 weeks before sailing with very good prices on suites, about £15 more pp than I had paid for a balcony cabin. I rang and said we would like to upgrade and pay the extra £30 but was told by Princess that was not their policy and if we wanted to upgrade to a suite, we would have to pay the price it was at the time we booked. We had sailed 28 times with Princess at that time and had always been loyal to them. Not any more! We have since sailed with Cunard and RCI, and next year we are booked on Celebrity. We will still sail with Princess if the itinerary is right, but we now look at other lines too.

[Lancashire Rosebud]

It appears that the US and Canadian cruisers are better at getting discounts than we are. I'm new to cruising and this type of communication. We booked direct on a P&O cruise, and have only paid the deposit so far.

 

 

How do you:

1. Spot that discounts are available;
   
2. Persuade the cruise line to give a discount without upsetting them and spoiling the holiday?
   

I beleive that P&O is a subsidiary of Carnival?

[Greghouseo]

On Mariner last year, and Adventure this year started off on inside cabins.

 

Had the option of price drops or upgrade to Balcony (for a very small increase - and I do mean VERY small) ............ took the upgrade, then had the option of price drop or upgrade to Junior Suite. Again took the JS option.

 

Benefits have been two-fold

1) Nicer cabin

2) 2 Crown and Anchor credits for Mariner, 2 for each Adventure and Adventure (B2Bs) means a much speedier elevation to Platinum.

[fantasy51]

I sailed on a Princess cruise in May this year. I had booked through a High Street TA. I noticed online that the cost of a balcony cabin had dropped below what i was paying for my outside cabin. I approached my TA and asked if I could upgrade. They said all I could do was cancel my original booking, forfeiting my deposit, and book again. Their price was not as good as the Princess website price and it would have meant quite a price increase to do it. Disappointing.

[Princess Cat]

I sailed on a Princess cruise in May this year. I had booked through a High Street TA. I noticed online that the cost of a balcony cabin had dropped below what i was paying for my outside cabin. I approached my TA and asked if I could upgrade. They said all I could do was cancel my original booking, forfeiting my deposit, and book again. Their price was not as good as the Princess website price and it would have meant quite a price increase to do it. Disappointing.

That is basically the same as Princess told us, but as it was only 3 weeks before sailing we had paid in full. I don't see how they could expect us to cancel and re-book at that late stage. If they had just asked for a booking fee change as well as the £30 it would have been acceptable.

[beautifulgorgeous]

I have just cancelled and rebooked our Jan carribean cruise with Princess to get a balcony cabin instead of an inside,£150 loss of deposit loss of 350 dollars of on board credit and another 500 quid but they wanted £1703 just for the upgrade with no cancellation, It is still showing on there website as over 2000 each for a balcony, so much for booking early.....tho it was only the begining of Sept, I hope the price stays high now as I had til mid Nov to cacel and lose only the deposit!:mad: Why they couldn`t upgrade for the 500 and an amendment fee and save the work of cancelling and rebooking is beyond me.

[EtherlyCC]

I always check the prices as often as possible and when a price drop has occurred I have spoken to my TA and had it reduced. The first time was 3 years ago on a b2b on the Legend of Sea (RCI), 2 weeks before we were to travel I heard on our cc thread about a price drop. I went to see my TA and she actually laughed at me when I suggested the price drop. It took me 10 minutes or so to convince her to ring RCI and when she came off the phone we got a reduction of £14 off the first week and £278 off the second, she laughed no more and has not had any other business from me either. Last year we got a drop of £300 on the Serenade and £250 off the Brilliance, all good savings. I agree though with the previous poster is so much as when a drop occurs the cruise line should honour all passengers. I bet they make a small fortune in this way.

 

Just my 10 peneth:confused:.

[CaroleC]

When I booked our May 2011 cruise on the Independence a couple of months ago (direct with Royal Caribbeans UK office), I was told to keep checking their website and if the price of our cabin goes down, to ring them and they will honour the price drop. So far though the price has been increasing :(.

[Albert Ross]

Changing ship and/or sail date on RCI incurs a £75pp admin fee (chargable against the first 2 people in the room only). A notable exception to this rule is that Diamond Plus and Elite members of the loyalty scheme get one transfer free of charge.

Not a lot of people know this.

[Ray66]

I sail with Cunard and price drops after booking are only available to those on the other side of the pond and not to us Brits.