Booking Question

[Mountaincb]

My husband and I would like to book a cruise to the Panama Canal for next Spring. Would you advise to book directly through HAL via Personal Cruice Consultant ( or am I confused about PCC?) or should we use a site like Cruise Direct, or should we wait until September and book while on board a Alaska cruise? In the past we have just called HAL and booked with whomever answered the call.

 

Thank you in advance for your advice.

[jtl513]

There's pros and cons for every choice, and we've done the entire range of choices depending mainly on how complicated the cruise is. For a couple of short cruises where we could drive to the port we booked on-line with no other human involved. For a longer cruises involving air travel and hotels we've gone to a local TA. We only used a PCC once and that worked out well for us.

 

One thing for sure is that if you use a PCC you'll usually pay top dollar, but they can sometimes offer discounts with promos that you might not get booking another way.

 

Booking while on-board gets you some OBC and a lower deposit ... and you can then transfer the booking to a TA after you get home and see a good offer of a discount or other benefit.

 

Using a TA or a PCC can give you somebody to help solve any problems that might come up, or make changes for you with just a simple phone call.

 

There's no "best" way for everybody in every situation, so you have to decide how much help you need and how much you're willing to pay for it.

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Edited July 15, 2015 by jtl513

[LUPY48]

We booked our Canal cruise on board. Then transferred the booking to an online big box store TA. We got $740 in on board credit and many other perks that HAL did not offer to us. We're very pleased.

[Krazy Kruizers]

Everyone has their personal choices as to booking cruises.

We prefer a TA -- because of the perks we got from her.

If you don't have a particular cabin you want, then wait until you are on your next cruise to book your Panama Canal cruise. This way you can ship board credit depending on the length of the cruise and the cabin category you get.

By the way -- we are not allowed to name Travel agencies on here.

[take us away]

Also recommend you book on board and transfer the booking to your own TA. Our TA gives us great 'perks', comparable pricing and will honor lower fares when and if I find them but he also has alerts set up for the booking. Seems like the bigger the agency, the better the 'perks' you may receive. Like using a known person not an on-line agency but that is just my preference.

[Alberta Quilter]

Instead of booking a cruise onboard, I recommend that you purchase a future cruise deposit while onboard. and then book your cruise after returning home. You'll still get the same OBC that you would get if you booked onboard and you should be able to use the ZPM promo code (within 60 days of disembarkation) to double your OBC.

[Mountaincb]

Thank all of you for your advice. I appreciate it.