Incentive to book shore tours

[retired067]

I'm amazed at the negative attitude towards this offer and Celebrity. Why do some of you sail with this cruise line? X offers promo's on dinning packages, wine packages, beverage packages etc., so what's the difference, no one has to buy them, they are offering you not forcing you. And what's the big deal with ships tours, again X is not forcing you to buy, they maybe convenient if someone has OBC to spend or for first time cruisers. In my opinion this board has developed a negative vibe and the same questions are asked over and over.

[tgg]

I'm amazed at the negative attitude towards this offer and Celebrity. Why do some of you sail with this cruise line? X offers promo's on dinning packages, wine packages, beverage packages etc., so what's the difference, no one has to buy them, they are offering you not forcing you. And what's the big deal with ships tours, again X is not forcing you to buy, they maybe convenient if someone has OBC to spend or for first time cruisers. In my opinion this board has developed a negative vibe and the same questions are asked over and over.

 

Nobody says you have to read them.:)

[dwhe]

I'm amazed at the negative attitude towards this offer and Celebrity...............

 

Most of us are more than entitled to offer an opinion on what Celebrity offers, and part of the reason why these forums exist, or am I wrong.

 

Whilst I will defend your right to post your opinion, I don't have to agree with it.

Edited October 31, 2014 by dwhe

[ladylemondrop]

Well, after giving this promo the thumbs down, I actually ended up booking enough tours to give us $125 in total OBC, (5 of us travelling) - we found that some of the tours offered just suited us as a family - beach transfers, etc. and I am now feeling that $125 is better than a poke in the eye as we say here! This is not affecting our 123go promo, its just a little added incentive to purchase tours with them, so thank you Celebrity!

 

This offer runs to 30th November if anyone is interested. Just wondering how I prove we are entitled to it once onboard, as it says in small print it gets added on last day of cruise...

[Nebr.cruiser]

What a dumb offer! Perhaps X and all the other cruise lines should take a look at why passengers, like us, nearly always book private tours: they are usually significantly less expensive, we're NOT herded around with 40-50 other passengers, we see the same things and often more than the ship sold tours, we can ask to stop anywhere for picture taking, we can tell the private tour operators that we DO NOT want to stop for shopping, and we're not afraid of the usual line from the ship, "we won't wait for you if you're late coming back." Having taken private tours all over the world we know, and have been repeatedly told by private tour operators, that they can't afford to ever miss a ship departure, and they have back up plans. The closest we've ever come to missing a ship departure was one hour! So X, take a look at what you're charging, the mass mentality of 50 on a bus, no flexibility in your tours, always stopping to shop, and then tell me that if I buy seven of these types of tours, you're going to "reward" me with a whole $100 OBC, that you also expect me to spend onboard. :)

 

Exactly our thought. Really Celebrity? It will take a lot more than that to entice us to book through the cruise line. We only do so if there really isn't any other viable way to do a tour or we have so much OBC that's non-refundable that we can't figure out how to use it. It's been at least 5 years since we took a cruise tour, and that one was mostly just transportation to a fairly far away site. (Santiago, Spain.)

 

Maybe half off on tours might make us think about booking with them--or maybe not.

[Eddie's Girl]

Hi Louise...like you we changed our minds and booked our excursions with Celebrity. After doing a lot of research for our Baltic cruise I could not find much that I liked in the way of private tours for any of the ports except St Petersburg, where we're booked with Alla. Normally we do go for the smaller groups. The excursions offered by the companies (Alla, etc, that are based in St Peterburg) are actually more expensive than ship excursions. So that's five ports and 2 people. We don't mind having a little extra OBC. And we can always cancel later if we find something better.

Edited November 29, 2014 by Eddie's Girl

[gdpups]

Just off the Equinox for a Caribbean cruise and DH and I just happened to have booked excursions with the ship that qualified for the promotion, he had 4 ($40) and I had 3 ($20) booked. We each received a letter in the middle of the cruise stating we qualified for the OBC and it would be posted to our account the second to the last day of the cruise.

 

The second to the last day happened to be a stop in Cozumel and most of the excursions were cancelled due to rough seas. I was curious to see if this would affect the OBC since Celebrity cancelled the excursions, but we were paid the full amount $60 total as they stated.

 

We didn't book the excursions because of the promotion and I had initially questioned if we would qualify because of other promotions we received, but I feel it was a nice perk and look forward to getting another nice little bonus OBC during our Mediterranean cruise next September.

[Want2Cruise 701]

Does anyone know if we have to purchase our excursions separately or can we do it altogether?

 

I booked 4 tours each for the three of us all at the same time. I'm assuming we will each receive $40 OBC totaling $120.

 

DH thought the terms were contradicting and he was wondering if we each had to book our tours separately from one another.

 

Thanks.

[gdpups]

Our excursions were booked at the same time and we qualified for the OBC, so not sure why you would think that would be a problem. As the rules state, you need to make sure at least one of the excursions (per person) was booked during the booking period to make sure your excursions qualify for the OBC.