You may have noticed that the return to cruising in summer 2021 so far looks to be
very expensive. With prices sometimes double what they would normally be. We give you the
reasons why they are so expensive and still let you know how you can grab a great bargain.
Well ahoy, their cruises welcome to this video with Cruise with Ben and David. Make sure you
hit that subscribe button right now because that does help our channel and it keeps us growing. So
yeah cruise is coming back in summer 2021. There are loads of cruises planned to sail from the UK
as well as the Caribbean and Bermuda across the pond. But there's something glaringly
obvious. These cruises are more expensive than usual. Most cruises we have seen are 50% to 100%
so double more expensive than they usually would be. UK cruises seem to be the most expensive.
But Caribbean cruises are not far behind. But obviously, you need to add in that you're going
to have to have to add flights to the Caribbean on top. So usually if you were departing from
mainland USA cruises would be historically a lot cheaper but you've got to fly to the Caribbean as
well. L we've even seen three and four-night cruises to nowhere, so calling at no ports,
as much as £700 that's $900 per person. And we've seen the average seven-night cruise over £1000 per
person for a balcony cabin with no extras and no drinks packages or anything like that. Just
for a basic cabin. So you're gonna be paying a premium and we have to say we are surprised
at some of the prices we have seen. Some of the cruises are almost as expensive as luxury lines.
And on top of this lots of cruises don't even go anywhere. They are just cruises to nowhere
or a cruise to the cruise lines private island. Also on board is going to be different to how
it was before. We've spoken about this a lot in the past. You're going to have social distancing
and masks will be required. And we've heard from cruise ship entertainers that entertainment will
be cut back from what it was before. Yeah, we've had a few people contact us on Instagram from the
cruise ship entertainment business and they're not being employed and that they're cutting back. So
you're gonna have to do all of these things like wear masks, social distance, as well as
not as much entertainment. So you're not gonna be getting what you used to get before. At least
at the start anyway. Yeah, what do you think? Do you think that it's fair that you're not getting
all these types of things or is it just something that we have to accept? And on top of this cruise
lines won’t have to pay many of the expensive port fees for passengers as a lot of the cruises
are not going anywhere. Or there are fewer ports stops now. We're positive people and this really
isn't a moan because we do understand some reasons why they're going to be more expensive.
But cruise lines have a big job to correct what happened during the pandemic.
Lots of things did go wrong with cruise and their reputation has been hit hugely. And we have had
an overwhelming amount of emails, comments and posts from you, our lovely subscribers,
asking why these prices are so high. So we looked into it for you. Let's have a look at some of
the reasons why. So the first reason cruises are more expensive is because of the pent up demand.
You, us, everybody, we want to get cruising again. So there's a big supply-demand situation.
Lots of people want to cruise. It's been over a year and people are willing to pay through the
roof for these cruises. And a lot of us have cruise credits to use so the cruise lines need
to charge more for new bookings as future cruise credits aren't new revenue. So many
of these people on these new cruises wouldn't have paid any new money to the cruise lines.
Number two is reduced capacity on board. So ships will be sailing at a reduced capacity. Sometimes
around 70 per cent or even less. This basically means there'll be fewer cabins available to sell
and fewer people on board. So cruises will be more expensive because of this. Cruise lines are
going to have to charge more to make up for the missing passenger numbers on board. Fewer people
means less revenue. The ship still costs basically the same amount to run regardless of the number of
people on board. Things like fuel, electricity, all of that stuff. So as you can see this is a
big problem. Taking into consideration point number one, where there's pent-up demand, and
point number two, where there aren't enough cabins to go around for everybody who wants to cruise,
they can charge as much money as they want. But we have to say we are a little bit surprised.
Because there is so much competition here in the UK. There are now about 56 cruise lines going to
be doing summer cruises to absolutely nowhere. As well, this is a really big point, you're not going
to be going to all of the lovely destinations that cruise is famous for. So we're just so surprised
that they're not a little bit more competitive with their pricing. So reason number three is
to recoup the losses. It's no big surprise that cruise lines have lost billions of pounds over
the last year. They've had to keep here for the upkeep of the ships even while they haven't been
cruising. On top of this, they've had to pay for expensive ship refits. Things like new air
conditioning, new technology and new air filter systems. They've equipped these ships with new
expensive cleaning equipment and they're working hard on new protocols. This all costs a lot of
money to get cruises safe again. And they need to make back some of this money as soon as they can.
So they will be charging premiums for these cruises. So cruise lines will lose money from
excursions. As many of these cruises are sea days so they'll lose a huge chunk of revenue. Lots of
staff have also been made redundant and they need to bring them back now. So that brings us on to
number four, the crew. First of all many cruise lines are going to be paying for vaccinations
for all of their crew and replacing the crew back onto the cruise ships. It such a huge logistical
nightmare. We're not talking about a few people here we're talking thousands of different crew
members from all around the world on each and every ship coming back. That includes things like
organizing their transfers, their flights, their quarantine in the different countries that they're
coming into depending on the rules. There are not even many flights at the moment and then they've
got a quarantine when they're on the ship. They've got to be tested. You're talking about hundreds of
thousands of different people. And they're going to have to have extra staff as well. Extra crew,
like extra medical staff, for the medical centre and brand new equipment. As well
and all of these crew are going to have to be trained again. Because it's been
so long since they were on cruise ships. So they need to go through most of the training procedures
as well as all of those brand new training procedures for the new protocols on board.
So extra cleaning, the way they're going to do the temperature checks, the way they're going to do
social distancing. It's a really big job because half of these crew have never done it before.
And the ships themselves need bringing back up to standard. At the moment they're only filled
with ghost crews so around 50 to 100 crew members. So having so few crew on board for the last year
has made things, like exterior paint jobs, have slipped and cruise ships are starting to look a
little bit rough. So there are lots of jobs around the ships and inside the ships for the crew to do
to get them up and shipshape. Ready for you to get back on. So overall the cost of bringing back
a cruise ship with all of the crew is absolutely huge. There are so many logistics and things that
cruise lines need to do that we're probably not even aware of. There are so many things going on
behind the scenes. So despite all the increased costs, we've got some tips for you to still grab
a bargain and save money when booking a cruise. The first tip is that you need to book as soon as
these cruises are released. The model cruise lines are using is that the prices start cheapest and
when people book and the cruise has more demand when it becomes more popular it
gets more and more expensive as the availability reduces. It's similar to hotels and airlines and
things like that. Yeah so the more booked up a cruise is, at the moment anyway in most cases,
the more expensive it's going to be. And there's lots of demand, as we said, so you need to be
really quick. We booked four cruises. So far each time we got the starting price, or that
from price because we booked as soon as possible. So another tip is to book further down the line.
The most recent cruises from what we can see are the most expensive. So you can book right into
the future, later into the year, even into 2022 and 2023. Because that pent-up demand
should reduce as time goes on. So cruise lines are going to have to reduce their charges
and it should get cheaper. Another great tip is to look out for promotions and extras that
are going to be included in your cruise. We're talking about things such as drinks packages.
Many cruise lines such as MSC and Princess are offering drinks packages gratuities and wi-fi
for a very small amount of extra cash. This can make the overall cruise price much more
reasonable. Particularly if you are going to be buying drinks, wi-fi and things like that.And
some cruise lines are even offering big discounts for front line and emergency workers so make sure
you check to see if any of those are doing that. We know that MSC and Royal Caribbean are bringing
some things in as well. Also, it's a great idea to check the cashback and point sites like Quidco, Be
Frugal or Rakuten. They offer cashback on lots of cruise companies. You can get sometimes up to 2%
to 5% cashback reward in some cases. We always use it and it's always great. So what do you think? Do
you think it's expensive? We're going to leave it to you. We're not going to say whether or not we
think it's too expensive. Well, we've already said that we do think it's a little bit too expensive.
But we understand why cruise lines have to do this. But are you still going to book? Let us
know in the comment section below. We'd love to hear from you and again these things are going to
get back to normal. These prices are just being hiked for now because there's such a big demand
and it's been so long. Can you believe it's been over a year since we've cruised? But at the end
of the day, there are still upsides to cruising sooner. Reduced capacities will make the ships
feel much less busy and hectic. It'll be like a private yacht. Every cloud. So that's it for this
episode. We thank you so much for watching. Please hit that subscribe button and give us a thumbs-up
as well. It really helps us. And drop a comment in the section below. We'd love to hear from you.
And thank you so much to all of our patrons as well. We really appreciate you guys are
so fantastic in keeping our channel running. We're giving you loads of things like extra
behind-the-scenes videos, extra vlogs and things like postcards when we're back up and running. The
caption of the week is Raymond. So oh ahoy there Raymond. That's it till next time, happy cruising.