I'm Gary Bembridge, this is another on my cruising tips for travellers. I want to share
with you the really common and big mistakes that people make when booking a
cruise, starting with this one. Missing the best prices that are out there, and
in order to do this the most important thing of all is timing. Timing is
absolutely key to getting the best price. First of all when the price is likely to
be lowest when Cruise Lines launch new itineraries, they generally price them at
pretty good prices, often the lowest you're going to find - and that's because
they want to get people to sign up to booking a cruise way in advance. Because
they're often launching itineraries one, two or sometimes even three years ahead of
time, what they want to do is try and get people to book so they know how full
it is and get the money and get the deposits in. So if you are planning and are
thinking far ahead, booking a cruise when it first comes on sale you'll often
get the best price or certainly if not will get a whole bunch of extras added like
onboard credits or free drinks or gratuities or whatever, so when
itineraries launch is when you're going to find some of the sharpest prices. The
second key time when you look for great prices is 90 to 60 days before a cruise.
The reason for that is you have to pay your final deposit, as the way
rules are at the moment, 60 to 90 days (depending on the cruise line) before the
cruise goes. At that point in time, the cruise line then knows how full the ship
is and they then want to clear the rest of the cabins - so they will start to
offer really sharp prices, promotions and discounts to fill the ship. The third
really important time when it comes to timing, is what's known as Wave season.
Now, this differs a little bit based on country, but most countries will have the
Wave season just after the Christmas period and into the New Year, the
beginning of year as that's when lots and lots of people start to plan their
vacations for the year ahead, and this is when most cruise lines will launch big
promotions, and they have pretty aggressive sales targets to hit in the
Wave season to lock down sales. So you'll normally find really sharp prices as
well. Really important though is there will be ad hoc promotions coming
along the way, whether it's Wave or it's the 60-day late bookings, so sign up for
email newsletters. This is something I strongly recommend, any cruise line that
you're interested I, because that's normally where they will
push-out great deal. All through the year there may be deals that happen out
of these three other key periods that I was talking about. The other critical
thing when it comes to prices and timing is, don't assume that you will get the
best price always from the cruise line or from your agent. Shop around, look at
online sites, look at the cruise line site, talk to your agent and take a look
at what deals and offers are going around. Now largely speaking, you'll find
prices are often the same across the different channels, but what gets added
is often the key difference. So you might find certain cruise agents will add in
extra onboard credit or amenities, so make sure that you're shopping around
and looking and comparing prices before you decide to book. Critically important
though when it comes to timing is, once you've booked, particularly if you have booked
way in advance, is make sure that you track what's happening with fares. So
check in every now and again, or get your agent to check in with prices, and
if you find that your cabin has reduced in price, contact the cruise line and ask
them what they will offer because they will normally give you an upgrade or
add some more amenities in if your actual cabin price is now being sold cheaper.
The cruise lines won't proactively come and offer you a better
price, so really important make sure that you keep tracking. So timing is
everything, but also staying diligent and keeping an eye on prices is also
important. The second really big mistake and common mistake that people make when
booking a cruise, is not really looking at the nuance and the detail of the
itinerary. This is really important for a couple of reasons. One of the big
mistakes that people make is they look at the itinerary, say for example in the
Mediterranean, and they see it includes Paris, Rome and Florence.
However, the ports for all those places are a very long way away ,so you're not
to find that the itinerary might say Paris with little brackets from La Havre, it
might say Rome little brackets from Civvichavechia, or Florence little
brackets from Liverno. So you need to really understand what port are you actually go
into, how close is it to the place that you really absolutely want to see.
Another mistake that a lot of people make is they look at the itinerary, and
they think they're going to all these places, five or six beautiful islands in
the Caribbean or wherever, but make sure you take a look at the detail of the
itinerary and understand what time you arrive, and what time you leave. You might
find that in some of those ports that you you want to spend time in, you're only
spending a morning or an afternoon in. So a lot of people discover once they get
right close up to the cruise, actually the place that they want to
spend time in isn't actually going to happen as long as they would want to be there. Another critical thing when
you look at the itinerary, is make sure you understand what the sea days are. So
one of the things that cruise lines sometimes do is they only list the
port days, so you take a glance at their itinerary and think "oh that's great I'm
going to all these ports", but you might find there's a lot of sea days
interspersed between those - and if you're the sort of person that really doesn't
like sea days you might find out the cruise is not really the one you want
and you've booked on a cruise that has more sea days then you're really
comfortable with. Another really important thing when you look at the
itinerary, is look at which are tender ports and where you're actually docking.
Tender ports are those where you actually use the boat tenders, so the
ship docks outside the port and you get ferried backwards and forwards, which does
reduce quite significantly in many cases the amount of time you actually get to
spend on land. The third big mistake that people make when booking a cruise is not
really think in detail about the significance of the time of year and
weather. Now of course some cruises are very seasonal, so you can only Cruise
in certain areas and certain times of the year, but there are things you still
need to watch out for. One of which is related to the weather, so you might
decide that's great I'm going to go to the Caribbean in July because it's the
middle of summer. However that's in the hurricane season, so make sure that as
you look at the regions although you can Cruise in some of them
the weather's not great. So for example in Alaska you get a lot of rain
particularly as you head into the middle and towards the end of the season. If
you're going to say to Tahiti and the French Polynesian islands, you'll find
the rainy season really runs up to the end of May into June time and then it
gets really good weather after that with very little rain. So when you're looking
at booking also take a look in detail about what weather you like to have on
that cruise, because the cruise lines going there doesn't necessary mean it's
a great time of the year to go to. The other thing linked to that, is make sure
that you're understanding the type of travellers you're going to have on different
types of cruises. So again I'll use the Caribbean as an example, if you're
heading in the middle of summer you're going to have lots of families, if you're
heading it's spring break time you might have lots of partying people, if you head
out say in January / February you might have an older crowd.
Really think about what the school holiday and the college holidays, the
university holidays are and the big public holidays that are taking place at
different times of the year, because that could affect the type of person
onboard. So for example, I don't have kids and I like to travel without kids on
board so I would always choose to go to the Caribbean out of school holiday
times, so perhaps in November or February because it's going to be more people
that are more couples, more solos and more of an adult crowd for example.
People in their enthusiasm to book a cruise and book a particular itinerary
don't always think through or understand the fine print the cancellation the
refund terms, and this is really important. One of the things we got more
used to in the whole period of the shutdown and resuming of cruising, is
Cruise Lines introduced much more flexible cancellation, change and
refund policies, however as we look further ahead
it's reverting back to the old more traditional booking and cancellation
terms - which are pretty rigid. So when you're booking a cruise, take a look at a
couple of things. First of all, understand what the deposit level is going to be.
Some cruise lines have very large deposits, so for example the time of
recording you had to deposit 20% with say Virgin Voyages while some other
cruise lines were offering really low deposits. Also understand if the deposits
will be refundable or you can move them, so that actually means you might want to
book a cruise but you're not a 100% sure but you know that you can get
the deposit back. Also carefully understand the cancellation terms, so a
lot of cruise lines (certainly once you've paid the final balance) it's very
very very strict cancellation, where you can lose between 75% and a 100%
of your fare. Even sometimes on some
cruise lines simply changing a passenger name is counted as a cancellation ,so
perhaps you're cruising with somebody and they can't come and you want to
switch it, some cruise lines will actually take that as a cancellation and
you will lose that fare for that person. Now you can often normally negotiate
around that if you're good at negotiating and perhaps put your foot
down, but it is a really big challenge. So bear in mind that cruise lines
within the cruise contract can change without any compensation the itinerary.
You might be heading to the Caribbean, it might have a certain amount of ports but
because the ports are then closed or there's an issue
at the port or it gets too busy, they can chop and change out ports at will - pretty
much without having to give you compensation.So really understand as you
book, some of those limitations and some of those rules. Another big mistake that
people make when booking cruises, they get really excited about the cruise they
booked the cruise but they don't think through travel insurance. Travel
insurance is really really important. It's important to take our travel
insurance ideally at the time of making a booking, and having a travel insurance
that includes "cancelled for any reason". Now some of the rules and regulations
have got much tighter through the whole pandemic situation, where the
insurance companies are taking out some of the cancel for any reason, but you
really want travel insurance when you book so that if you do have to pull out
of a cruise at any stage you have insurance to cover you. Also make sure
that you understand does it cover if there are any pandemic related issues
crop up. Many of them are not covered, now with everything that's happened it's not
entirely clear how expensive or easy it is to get insurance that includes cruises, so
for example my partner recently got a notification from their insurance
company which said they no longer by default carried cruise as part of their
policy, so you have to contact them and pay quite a big premium to get cruise
cover. So really important make sure that you can get travel insurance, because if
you're older or have any pre-existing conditions before you make a booking
Going on a cruise is very risky without having
travel insurance, if something does happen to you god forbid you break a leg
or something or you fall ill and you have to be evacuated, or put in the
hospital on land, the cost can be absolutely enormous.
Cruising without travel insurance is a really bad idea. Those are some of
those common mistakes I see people booking a cruise make. Ee've all done these, I've
done many of these which is how I've learnt those or I've heard people
talking about those! I have loads more videos packed full of tips and advice
about cruising, so why don't you watch another one of those right now?