i'm Gary Bembridge and i'm going to take a look at
whether now is the right time to book a 2021
cruise. Loads of people are asking me this very question,
lots of people want to book something so they have something to look forward to,
they're worried the prices are going up, the itineraries are selling out,
and they want to know is the right time to book.
I will take a look at five things you need to think about before you click
that book button, or you make that commitment, and also if
you do decide to go ahead with the booking, four things you
absolutely must make sure you do if you are booking.
First of all, everyone's assuming that i'm talking to
that 2021 is going to be returning to normal. They're assuming
that everything's going to reset and it's going to be
normal again. This is not likely in mind, these itineraries were developed
a long time ago, years and years ago before the pandemic came
and the world got thrown into disruption. So when you're looking
to book in 2021, do not assume that things are going to reset
back to normal. It's possible but unlikely.
Importantly no one knows when mainstream cruising is going to resume.
We've seen a couple of local cruises for local people starting in places like
France, if you're German you can go cruising
around Germany, if you're Norwegian you can go cruising
around Norway. I'm talking about mainstream cruising, so
cruising that goes around the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, Alaska
whatever. Nobody knows when these are going to start,
and no one knows when they're going to start. This year or even into
next year. The authorities like the CDC in the USA,
even the public health England in the UK, the authorities in Spain,
they have not agreed when cruising can resume, and we have no idea
whether that's going to happen this year or into 2021. So certainly if you're
looking to book, do not assume that cruising will have
started. So particularly if you're looking at the beginning of 2021
it's probably not the greatest time to book a cruise, wait until
it's absolutely certain that cruises are starting and cruising has
started where you want to go before you book, because we just don't know
if they're going to happen in that time frame. Also travel advisories are
stopping a lot of people moving around to join
the cruises, so in the UK you have advice which says don't go cruising,
the same in the USA, Australia is talking about not letting
people travel and leave the country to join cruising
until sometime into 2021. Also if you're from the EU you can't
even fly into the USA at the moment because of restrictions
in the USA, and USA can't travel into many countries of the world to join cruises.
So if you think you're booking a cruise, only book a cruise when you genuinely
believe that travel restrictions around you moving to join a cruise have lifted
and cruising has restarted. If you are an EU resident for example,
you could though book a river cruise in Europe because
these cruises are up and running, and EU citizens are allowed to move
around and join those cruises currently without having to do any self-isolation
returning to their countries. So there are some opportunities to cruise if you
do want to go cruising in French Polynesia those cruises are up
and running, you could go on one of those cruises if
you want to go cruising around iceland those are
up and running as well, so there are some cruises that are up and running and
accepting international travelers subject to Cover-19 testing.
So that could be something that you want a book because they are definitely
running. Even if cruises have restarted, the
second key thing to think about is the itinerary that you are looking at
booking may not run. So even if cruises have
started, you might find there's country restrictions or port restrictions
around accepting cruise ships and they may not all be open, so if you book an
itinerary because you've the certain islands you
want to visit in the Caribbean or certain places in Europe you want to go,
or certain destinations in Alaska you want to go to, wherever you're thinking
of cruising don't book a cruise for 2021
if there are absolute places that you want to visit on that itinerary because
we do not know yet if those are starting up. If you're
broadly happy to go to the Caribbean or the Mediterranean
and not that fussed about which specific ports you call at,
you may want to then say well actually i'll book because i don't mind if the
itinerary changes. The cruise line under their contract can
change a cruise once you have booked it, and don't
necessarily have to give you the chance of pulling out.
So you might find you book a cruise to Caribbean and they change all the ports,
or they have more sea days, the cruise line can do that quite
happily within their rights, so when you're booking an itinerary for
2021 bear in mind that itinerary there's no guarantees that that will run.
So if you're really locked in and set on a certain itinerary,
I would hold back from booking it until we know absolutely
that that is up and running. The third thing to consider, if you're looking to
book a cruise, is if you're booking a cruise because there's a very specific
ship you want to go and perhaps a new ship
that's coming out, you know launching for the very first time,
or some ship that's going to be revamped, or actually this is a very specific ship
you want to try one of the new Celebrity Edge class ships or
something like that, I would also hold back until we know
that those ships are coming into service and actually running.
Now the reason I say that is it's very clear that all the cruise lines have
said that when sailing does start, they're
going to be phasing in ships slowly and so they're not
going to all come on stream at one time. So you might find that your ship
is not up and running when you want to go cruising in 2021.
Arnold Donald the head of the Carnival Corporation that includes
obviously Carnival, Holland America, Cunard, P&O, Seabourn, AIDA, all those
cruise lines, has said that he doesn't expect the full fleet
to be sailing again until possibly as late as 2022.
So if there's a very specific ship you want to go on, be very cautious about
booking until that ship has re-entered service or
there is confirmation that it's re-entering. Some people found that out the hard way,
they'd booked for example a World Cruise on Holland America Amsterdam that has
been scrapped because Holland America sold four of
their ships. They sold the Amsterdam, the Maasdam, the Rotterdam
and the Veendam, so all those cruisers on the World Cruise,
Alaska, Canada, all those cruises have
disappeared. So we just don't know what ships will be
up and running, and it's possible still in 2021 we're
going to see a staggered approach to cruise ships coming back in,
so if you want to book a cruise because you really want to go
on a very specific ship then don't book until you know that ship is coming on
stream. Not only have new ships been delayed, but also upgrades have been
postponed. So we've seen Celebrity pushing back
some of their upgrades, Carnival pushing back the upgrades, Royal
Caribbean pushing their upgrades up into the future, so if you're
also choosing a ship which has brand new bells and whistles and
features, again we don't know when that will be coming on stream.
Another good reason for not booking a 2200 cruise
absolutely right now on any of those big mainstream
lines, is you have no idea what the actual protocol is going to be and what
the cruise experience is going to be like. So you could be
booking a cruise, and you find you don't like the way the cruise is
running. So for example what we've seen at the moment is some indications of
what could be the case, but they have not been agreed, we've seen
for example lots of talk about more pre-screening,
so some cruise lines have actually introduced a doctor's notes where you
have a doctor screening beforehand, so for example on Ponant,
they've introduced that they've also required that you have to have a
Covid-19 test before you go on that, many of the other
cruise lines may or may not happen on other cruise lines,
and you may not want to go with that for example. We also don't know exactly what
the on-board experience is going to be. We've seen lots of indications,
for example, that there will be fewer passengers on board to enable more
social distancing, we've seen the fact that you may have
limits on the amount of people that can be around the swimming pool,
the theatre, the bars, the casino at any point in time.
So you may not want to go through that experience if you can't go to the pool
whenever you want, or in the jacuzzi the hot tub, you may not like that
experience. There's been lots of changes suggested to dining, no self-service
dining, perhaps only being able to sit with
people in your travel party, much more staggered timing of dining,
more people eating room service to encourage and free up
space in the dining room, changes to the dining room process
could happen which doesn't appeal to you. Masks may be
part of the cruise experience, we've seen on some cruise lines that they started
up mirroring what's happening on land with
the current mask regulations, so masks may be part of the cruise experience
and you may bot want to do that. We just don't know which of these will be in
place, we've seen some indications based on cruise lines that have started up,
but if you're going on a cruise line for example Ponant around France
or Mein Schiff or Hapag Lloyd or AIDA in Germany or Hurtigruten,
if you book those cruises now if you're a resident in those countries you know
exactly what you're going to have to do and put
up with, so i would recommend if you have any reservations
about what the changes could be wait until you know exactly what the
protocols are before you book your 2021 cruise,
because you're not going to be able to pull out of the cruise once you're
committed to it if you don't like the protocols. Another
critical thing to think about is prices, at the moment there are deals
going around but the prices overall are quite high, they haven't
really factored in reduction of prices. So what you're
seeing is lots of deals which will bundle new
things in, so you'll get gratuities, drinks packages, perhaps some
excursions thrown in, Wi-Fi those kind of things are being
bundled in, but the overall rate of fares hasn't really come down to
reflect possibly fewer people wanting to go
cruising. So i would say if you're looking for a
great deal, now is probably not the time to book. Once the cruise lines know that
they have the go to start selling, they know what ships are coming on stream,
they know what itineraries they're running,
they'll know what the real demand for those cruises are, and
then we will see prices start to meet much more the demand.
I personally believe that we will see much sharper fare pricing
as we head into next year, and people then have to physically make the
decision of boarding ships or not, die-hard cruisers, many people are big
fans of cruising and are I think going to want to cruise, but
the new to cruise, perhaps less frequent cruisers, I think are going to
hold back, bear in mind a lot of those cruisers in 2021
are people who've booked year or more ahead before the pandemic, and I think a
lot of those will drop out. We will see much more capacity coming on stream,
so if you want to book now because you're worried about not getting a great
deal i wouldn't worry about that, I would wait until
the ships are committed to sailing and we know what's actually going to be out
there and running, and then we will see the real prices
coming on. If you do decide to book and that is a risk that you are going
to take that prices actually work against you, if despite all
of that you decided you still want to book, four critical things you should do
when you make a booking. These are absolutely essential if you
make a booking for 2021 right now. First of all make sure that
you're perfectly fine if you have that cruise cancelled on you
or significant changes to the itinerary. If you say you don't mind taking that
risk, then proceed with booking. Secondly make sure that you're making a
booking which has a very low deposit, which many are doing,
or certainly you have a refundable deposit, or you're able to move the
deposit so you're not going to lose that money.
I've seen lots of cruises for example in 2021 where you're paying as little as
$50 or $75 to make a booking, so you may say
that's a risk you want to take. Thirdly make sure you take out insurance
when you book, and insurance includes two things: first of
all it includes cancel for any reason, so if you change
your mind and you want to pull out of cruise you can do that,
and also make sure that it does include Covid-19 cover
for cruising. Fourth thing to do is track prices, as i mentioned Ithink prices are
going to be volatile, so once you've made a booking keep an
eye on that. There's a couple of sites you can go to Cruise Critic,
enter your cruise and you can set up a tracker or site that i like to use
called cruisewatch.com. I input my cruises and keep an eye on it,
and i've already seen i have some cruises booked for
January / February in 2021, I've put my cruises in there and I have
got four alerts already in the last six weeks of that price of
those cruises coming down, so if you are going to book a cruise
make sure you track prices and that gives you leverage to then go back and
negotiate a lower fare or upgrades. Is
now the right time to book a 2021 cruise? If you desperately want to book it,
there are some key watch outs and things that you need to be absolutely careful
of because you could be booking a cruise
that just is never going to happen, so think very carefully
about it before you make a booking. I have loads more videos
packed full of other tips and advice so why don't you watch another one of those
right now?