What are the nine things you should be doing right now
to be ready when cruising is possible again.
I'm Gary Bembridge this is another
of my cruising tips for travellers.
I want to share with you things that I'm doing
and I think everybody should be doing.
If you're interested in cruising again,
whether that's when the shutdown ends later in the year,
next year, or even further away.
Things that you could be doing right now using
your time right now during lock down,
and have time in your hands to start
preparing to go cruising again.
So these are the nine things that
I'm doing and I hope they help you.
So I want to start first of all with this one.
One of the critical things to do is decide
where you actually want to go cruising again,
I think there's probably three groups of people
that I'm seeing. One group of people
who are basically holding on to
their bookings a little bit like me, I guess,
and are waiting for the day that shutdown ends
and they want to head out cruising again.
There's another group of people who will say,
look, I think probably later in the year is more realistic.
And then those people who are saying look,
I want to wait to 2021 and beyond.
So really important I think is decide when you
want to go cruising because that will
also determine which of these eight things
that I'm going to talk about next,
you do sooner rather than later.
One of the things I would suggest you do, though,
as you think about going cruising a little bit later,
is broadly think about your wish list.
So what are the destinations or the regions
or the areas that you want to go because
as we start going through these points,
a lot of the choices that you make on your wish list
is going to determine around when you
can go cruising because either
the season happens or it doesn't happen.
So for example, Alaska season that
really runs normally in most years,
from May to October, this year,
it's being completely thrown out at the moment
because it's Canadian ports are closed to July, and so
may or may not start later in the season.
So depending on where you want to go,
what is on your wish list that will determine
a little bit of how you use these next
eight things I'm going to talk about.
The second absolutely critical thing to do is
to make sure that you're well briefed
and on top of what your particular
government's travel restrictions are.
So at the time of recording for example,
in the United States, they have, I think,
what's called a stage four or category
four CDC rating (Centre for Disease Control),
which basically says no travel at all.
If I take a look at the UK, which is where I am based,
the government has updated the advisory
to say no non-essential travel indefinitely.
Now, clearly these things will chop and change,
but make sure that you're on top of
what your government is saying.
So for example, at the time of recording,
is people from EU countries, UK and Ireland,
they can't even fly into the US at this point in time.
So you really need to understand what are
the restrictions of travel restrictions that
are in place, as that also determines
whether your travel insurance will be valid,
because if you travel to a place that's a no travel area,
your travel insurance won't cover you.
We don't know at this point in time,
how long those are going to be place.
My gut feeling is that's going to last
for quite a long time and even way past even when
sort of more domestic lockdowns and restrictions are ended.
So really important stay on top of that
you can do that by following your
State Department or your Foreign Office.
The third thing you need to do is stay on top
of what regions and ports are opening,
or not opening, and when they're opening.
So for example, at this point in time them recording,
you've got Australia closing all
their ports until towards the end of June.
You've got Canada closed till July, and
you've got New Zealand closed to July.
Also, ports in Europe are in lockdown with no open dates yet.
So you need to really keep on top of when actually ports
and cruise lines are going to start cruising in.
So when regions and cruise lines are opening.
How do you do that?
Well, it could be quite complicated.
I'd say the way that I do and I find out
these things, that have worked pretty well for me
keeping on top of the situation.
First of all, one of the good things to do is
to follow your cruise line that you
are thinking of cruising with
on Facebook, you can also follow them
on other social media like Twitter.
What I found, generally speaking is
their Facebook pages have been very,
very active in terms of posting updates
or advising when they're making certain decisions.
I found that's actually the best
way of keeping on top of things.
The second thing that I would do also on Facebook
is follow another couple of groups and pages
that I would also recommend you follow
because these are really fantastic
at collecting all the latest information.
One of my favourite ones that I follow
where I've learned so much because
they post multiple times a day, is a site,
which is called Cruise Industry News.
Cruise Industry News, gives you multiple updates and is really,
really on top of everything that's happening.
They are a great source of information.
In fact, if you're only going to
follow one thing on Facebook,
that's the one page I would actually follow.
You can also follow of course CLIA
the Cruise Line Association they have CLIA Global page
and they also have CLIA Europe page.
They do tend to update but they're probably
not as active in terms of updating
and with on-going information and all the nuances
as the Cruise Industry News would do.
Another fantastic resource is if you are into podcasts,
I would strongly recommend Doug Parker's Cruise Radio News.
Doug has run his podcast for many many years.
He has two key podcasts, the news one which is an
daily update every single day of the week.
It's a short couple of minutes
with all the latest news from the last 24 hours.
And then he has another podcast
where he also talks about the news
in more depth and does Cruise Line reviews.
So those are the kind of social media related things
that are really really topical and up to date
and the advantage they have, versus
a YouTube channel is they are
doing it hour by hour as news comes out they're posting it.
Another great resource is Cruise Critic.
On Cruise Critic they have a page
which they constantly update,
which gives you alphabetically line
by line for both ocean and river.
They will tell you when the cruise lines
currently scheduled to open cruising again
and also they will include details on what
the current refunds and cancellation policies are.
So that's another great resource and they
constantly update that as cruise lines are change.
And what is going to happen over the coming weeks and months, is
I think we will see lots of chops and changes on that.
The next thing I would spend some time thinking about
is whether you're going to do your future
cruise bookings through a cruise travel agent
or with a cruise line direct.
Now historically, I've always recommended
using a cruise agent particularly new to cruise,
because they can help curate,
they can help talk you through the different options
make sure you get on the right cruise line
on the right itinerary in the right cabin.
However, during the shutdown,
there are some limitations to that.
So certainly in some countries,
where there was a complete shutdown,
and shops and offices had to close,
in many cases, it was quite difficult
for agents to keep operating so actually
it became quite frustrating for many people.
I've had lots of people contact me saying,
actually, the fact they booked through an agent
has become problematic and difficult
in terms of getting refunds, getting anything changed and got
less information because of the shutdown.
So what you need to think about is,
is it better and easier for you to work
directly with the cruise line?
Certainly what we've seen recently,
for many people going through the cruise line
has been a little bit easier if they booked their flights,
their transfers, their hotels and the cruise,
they've had one cancellation and they've found
they've got refunded for things like airlines, hotels
and got that really quickly, and they've got
future cruise credit or they've got the opted
to take cash, depending on the cruise line.
So think about moving forwards do you
want to work directly with the cruise line or with an agent?
There are lots of benefits of working
longer term with an agent, because they
often get better deals and they often get you better cabins,
they might have thrown in different things
that you may want, but because everything that has happened,
take a more cautious approach and perhaps if you really,
really clear on the cruise line that you want to go with,
is working and bundling everything together.
And that the advantage of that is also
as I discovered because I've tended
to mix and match sometime I've used agents.
Sometimes I've used the cruise line,
and I've sometimes put together packages myself
where I've booked the airline
separately, I've booked hotels separately,
I've booked the cruises separately.
And actually the whole cancellation process
became quite complicated because those
had different cancellation policies and refund options.
So definitely spend some time
thinking about moving forwards.
How do you want to book your cruising travel?
The fifth thing I would do is get ready
for taking advantage of the great deals.
So sign up for all of the cruise lines,
email newsletters for those cruise lines
that you like or you think you might want to cruise with.
What we're starting to see is lots
and lots and lots of offers coming through.
I mean, even today, I got a whole bunch of offers,
where they're basically offering pretty
much all inclusive fares for a normal fares.
So for example, I got an email today
from Holland America and they are offering your gratuities,
your drinks, especially dining, Wi-Fi,
all sorts of things are going to be added
onto your cruise and deposits were 50% of what they were.
They're really trying to get more people
to book they're trying to get people to commit to cruises.
And you can book those right through
all of that into 2021, 2022.
That's why I said even if you want to
go cruising much later than in the short term,
now is the time to look for deals.
Also, it's important as many of them are bundling
in their cruising with confidence guarantee
where they're offering you some as much
more flexibility in terms of moving things,
not losing deposits, that kind of stuff.
So take a look at that,
sign up for the email newsletters and keep an eye on those.
The next thing to think about
is if you are a senior traveller,
and particularly if you're over 70 at the time
of recording what was put in place,
and I don't think it's going to go away for a long time,
was requirement to have a medical certificate
if you're over 70 before you went on a cruise.
Now, once cruising starts up again that may be relaxed,
but I don't think that's going to happen
personally for quite some time till there's a vaccine
or some kind of procedure like that in place.
So if you're a senior traveller,
one of the things you do have to think about is
just how far ahead you want to think
about cruising what's going to be key
is your governments and regulators authorities,
changing their rulings on when
they're advising people over 70 to go travelling.
That's very important because if you are over 70,
you may struggle to get travel insurance to go cruising.
Now there are some exceptions that if you're in the UK,
you have some advantage because Saga which focus
on the 50+ they bundle their
insurance into their cruise fare.
And I'll think it's going to be really interesting
as an aside with a moving forward
we've seen more and more cruise lines bundling insurance in.
That actually leads me on to my next point travel insurance.
One of the things I always recommend
really strongly is make sure that
you have travel insurance before you go on a cruise,
what you'll find is both current
and new policies will not cover anything
to do with pandemics or anything
related to what's going on now,
or similar kind of breakouts, God forbid if they happen.
But what they are absolutely important
for is if you have other things,
you might have some medical emergency on the ship,
or you might need medical treatment
or repatriation or evacuation
or whatever those costs are enormous.
And travel insurance will still cover those.
But really, really important is to think about
when you are going to be able to get travel insurance.
What I would actually suggest,
which is what I do is I have an annual policy,
because actually it works out in the end about
the same or cheaper versus trying to buy multiple policies.
So what I've done actually my policy was due to expire,
I've actually renewed that for another year.
And make sure it's got built in cruise cover.
That's really important, check that
your travel insurance includes cruise cover.
But make sure you've got travel insurance
in place because then if you do do bookings,
and you have to cancel them for non pandemic related issues,
you do have recourse with your travel insurance.
So at the time of booking,
make sure you've got travel insurance in place.
And of course, once you go on your cruise,
it's going to protect you.
If you do have other medical issues or lost luggage,
stolen luggage or whatever,
I strongly recommend not booking cruises
unless you know you can get travel insurance.
It's really, really important,
even though it's not going to cover you for pandemics.
The next thing I would suggest you spend
some time thinking about as you're planning cruises,
particularly if you want to go
cruising sooner rather than later,
I would actually recommend you focus closer to home.
What we saw in the whole run up to the shutdown
is people who'll have gone on these very exotic,
long distance cruises actually had
some quite stressful times if there
was quarantine, or even when there wasn't quarantining,
getting home and just being
really really far away from home.
One of the things I would therefore recommend
is focus close to home so you don't have to worry
about the whole problems of long haul flights
or long distance flights because we don't know
when they're going to start up
and reconnect to be flowing smoothly.
We don't know what the itineraries are going to be,
so to try and focus local, I think you'll find it
much less stressful in the short term,
and probably much easier because you also will know
much more around what's going on in your region or country.
Another key thing that I spend some time focusing on,
I think it's really really important
is as you think about going cruising again,
if you have either moved cruises, or had cruises cancelled,
and you've taken the future cruise option
is you need to understand how that's going to work
because each of the cruise lines
has different ways of doing it.
So for example, I've had a Cunard cruise
and a Virgin cruise at this point in time cancelled,
both of those issued future cruise
or took the future cruise credit option.
And both of those, they don't send you any documentation
for that it's held with them in your account.
In fact, what they do is it's linked
to original booking reference.
So actually, when you want to trigger that,
you kind of have to contact them and book
that way to then be able to use your future cruise credit.
On those future cruise credits you can spread
it across a number of different cruises for example,
however on other cruises on Royal Caribbean, for example,
what I've seen them do is they're issuing
more sort of certificates via email
so that those are used in a different way.
So making sure that you really understand
if you've had a cruise cancelled and you
have a future cruise credit,
how it works and how you're going to able to trigger it.
In many cases what is kind of frustrating
is a lot of cases, you're going to
have to phone the call centre which of course
is crazy busy with cancellations to try
and book cruises to apply your future cruise credit.
So spend some time clarifying and making sure
you understand when you get future cruise credit details,
how you can actually use it.
I hope that has helped you.
I have lots more videos of course of cruising tips
if you once you start thinking of going cruising again.
And so why don't you watch another one of those right now.