Save me money on a cruise!

oligopoly

Hi,

After some deliberation we've decided on a cruise to go on next summer - it's cruise N714 with P&O - 14 nights in the Med on the Ventura.

There's me and my wife, my mother in law and my son who will be 3 at the time of sailing.

My mother in law has been quoted by her long-term cruising adviser £10,536 for a family suite, and as an alternative option (to save some money!) £6,036 in total for one balcony cabin and one inside cabin situated opposite each other.

Only she has cruised before so i believe those prices include 1 (or 1 room's worth) of returning customer P&O discount.

Can anyone make any improvement on this price or point me in the right direction on how to? I'm familiar with how to save on hotels/car rentals etc but cruises is completely new to me!

Thanks in advance.

blindman

oligopoly wrote: »

Hi,

After some deliberation we've decided on a cruise to go on next summer - it's cruise N714 with P&O - 14 nights in the Med on the Ventura.

There's me and my wife, my mother in law and my son who will be 3 at the time of sailing.

My mother in law has been quoted by her long-term cruising adviser £10,536 for a family suite, and as an alternative option (to save some money!) £6,036 in total for one balcony cabin and one inside cabin situated opposite each other.

Only she has cruised before so i believe those prices include 1 (or 1 room's worth) of returning customer P&O discount.

Can anyone make any improvement on this price or point me in the right direction on how to? I'm familiar with how to save on hotels/car rentals etc but cruises is completely new to me!

Thanks in advance.

Do NOT use UK brokers but look at USA ones instead.

I booked though WMPH on our first (and so far only) cruise to Alaska

Their $$ price was the same as the UK ££ price so effectively 1/2 price (then)

Andypandyboy

Some cruiselines will not allow that. I* think * P&O is one of them, they will only allow you to book via UK agent. Some US agents have a workaround (they use their own address rather than the cliet's UK address) but others won't do that.

It is worth checking though as we have saved thousands booking via a US TA. Other than that play the agents off against each other they are all looking to undercut. The big box agents have an allocation of cabins and will sometimes discount to use them. Definitely get several quotes.

[Deleted User]

You've got to shop around, and get firms to price match against each other. You're buying almost an identical product from firms, so it's a perfect holiday for playing firms against each other.

I typically get the best price by going via Thomas Cook or Cruise.co.uk - but also look around. Never trust a price on the net, always phone them. The *only* time I would buy online is if you can buy it with Quidco too.

It's a game of haggling. Try to get the best prices, or 'things' thrown in (e.g. free parking, credit on the room, gratuities)

You cannot purchase P&O cruises through USA brokers

oligopoly

ringo_24601 wrote: »

I typically get the best price by going via Thomas Cook or Cruise.co.uk - but also look around. Never trust a price on the net, always phone them.

Thomas Cook displays no cruises in the month this one is sailing! cruise.co.uk is the company my mother in law has used. I'll contact them to see if i can get it any cheaper.

Any other suggestions?

Andypandyboy

Some areas have Travel Counsellors which are an independent network of self employed TA's. We got a great deal for our first ever cruise with one of them. We haven't been able to replicate it since but it is worth a try.

Planet cruise/Iglu are awful for CS once they have your money (in my personal experience) so I would avoid them if possible. CruiseNation seem to have some good deals at the moment.

blindman

Andypandyboy wrote: »

Some cruiselines will not allow that. I* think * P&O is one of them, they will only allow you to book via UK agent. Some US agents have a workaround (they use their own address rather than the cliet's UK address) but others won't do that.

It is worth checking though as we have saved thousands booking via a US TA. Other than that play the agents off against each other they are all looking to undercut. The big box agents have an allocation of cabins and will sometimes discount to use them. Definitely get several quotes.

We went with Norwegian and they were on of the "If you're UK then NO USA agents."

As has been said the US agent workaround was to use their own US address instead of ours.
No problem.

Andypandyboy

blindman wrote: »

We went with Norwegian and they were on of the "If you're UK then NO USA agents."

As has been said the US agent workaround was to use their own US address instead of ours.
No problem.

Out of interest which agent did you use?

I used CruiseCompete (OP you could try that -it sends your details to multiple agents and they compete for your business) and didn't get many responses for NCL due to the non UK issue.

duchy

blindman wrote: »

We went with Norwegian and they were on of the "If you're UK then NO USA agents."

As has been said the US agent workaround was to use their own US address instead of ours.
No problem.

They are a bit hypocritical- I used to work for a cruise specialist and the "No USA! was applied to customers booking direct (by Norwegian - P&O were more but not totally consistent)and ignored when the booking came from an agent that gave them any kind of volume -they'd even send us the US offers.

Sounds like MIL has done a pretty good job with the rates and the OP is on a mission to beat her

It's worth considering any impact on insurance if you are making any declaration to the cruise company that you are US residents.

oligopoly

duchy wrote: »

Sounds like MIL has done a pretty good job with the rates and the OP is on a mission to beat her

Sounds like you know me!

Are you looking at those quotes and thinking they're good prices or do you not mean it like that?

blindman

blindman wrote: »

Do NOT use UK brokers but look at USA ones instead.

I booked though WMPH on our first (and so far only) cruise to Alaska

Their $$ price was the same as the UK ££ price so effectively 1/2 price (then)

Andypandyboy wrote: »

Out of interest which agent did you use?

I used CruiseCompete (OP you could try that -it sends your details to multiple agents and they compete for your business) and didn't get many responses for NCL due to the non UK issue.

The link is in my post
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