winter cruises from Southampton

[cruisingiscool]

Could someone please enlighten me to the reason why there are so few cruises being advertised out of Southampton for next January? Is it me? We recently did our first cruise from Southampton. We usually do the caribbean late January but medical issues made us change our minds this year and boy did we love it! We cruised with RCI for the first time and found the ease of boarding and driving home straight after the cruise a really big plus. No horrible security issues at an airport, no 3 hour wait at the airport followed by an overnight flight and no sleep, then a long drive home after the immigration shuffle. It was a revelation. So much so that we could not wait to book our next cruise on IOS for next January, but find it is being relocated to the caribbean for next year. I have trawled the internet and even contacted a local TA in case I was missing something, but only P and O Oriana are departing from Southampton late Jan 2013 as far as we can see and we really would like to have more of a choice. We like the size of RCI freedom class ships and have used Princess and Celebrity many times before and that is the type of cruise we are looking for. Is this a lost cause?

Thanks

[aquilegia]

Well, the simple answer is presumably because there isn't the demand at that time of year. Being from the UK myself it doesn't surprise me. I'm a good sailor and I don't like really hot weather, but being surrounded by grey seas and grey skies, with freezing temperatures on deck, isn't my idea of a holiday. Why don't you try one of the many summer cruises out of Southampton?

[John Bull]

As Aquilegia's answer, supply & demand.

 

Winter cruises ex-UK don't appeal to folk from other countries - in the same way that I doubt you'd consider winter sailings out of New York to the Caribbean. So they rely heavily on a Brit clientele.

 

Even tho' I live close to Southampton, in the winter I'm prepared to put up with the cattle markets of Heathrow or Gatwick in order to fly long-haul to decent weather same-day, rather than waste days of sailing the grey, cold, & sometimes stormy English Channel & Bay of Biscay, to the not-that-special winter weather of the Canaries or the Med. Especially with such cheap winter flight options

And sadly for you there's more with my outlook than yours, hence the re-deployment of Indy in the winter.

 

JB :)

[Suzieanna]

Bay of biscay is notoriously rough. I am a good traveller but it's not something I would do again as my DD isn't! She was quite poorly last time we went through here and that was the end of April not early January.

[jocap]

The ships which home port in Southampton nearly all go on world cruises in January, so there's usually only one or two left.

NCL Jade has a similar problem, in Barcelona. She can't return to the States for a few years, so has done trips from B/C to Egypt....but now people don't want to go, due to the problems there, so she's offering low prices to the Canaries instead.

Last winter, Indy's prices were very, very low....it seemed silly to stay at home!- but there were complaints because she's not built for cold weather cruising, with no indoor pool, and people said they felt crowded in the inside space during the bad weather. She's built for sunbathing on deck and a cooling pool, not snow and gales!

Some non flyers take the train to Barcelona, or Savona for MSC and Costa, which have a few cruises round the Med all winter,

Jo.