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Its front page is clunky and sort of in your face, but CruiseDirect is still one of the best cruise sites for a variety of reasons. As a cruise-only company, CruiseDirect doesn’t deal in flights, hotels, or rental cars, allowing it to focus its full capacity on helping you find the best cruise deal possible. On the site, you can search by destination, departure port, month, length of cruise, and cruise line. There’s real-time online chat and a contact number for support from a cruise expert.
Booking the Trip
Their expertise and remarkable connections work hand in hand, ensuring seamless cruise booking experience for their clients. One is automatically considered a VIP on any luxury cruise if you are a client of Santa Barbara Travel. Specializing in luxury cruises and luxury land travel, Elite Cruises and Travel have been to most of the world’s continents. Elite Cruises and Travel is a member of travel and vacation selling networks, allowing them to provide their clients with a custom approach service that gives their clientele peace of mind.
13 expert-approved tips for saving money when booking a cruise - CNN Underscored
13 expert-approved tips for saving money when booking a cruise.
Posted: Fri, 07 Jul 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
The 9 Best Sites to Book a Cruise
Once you’re ready to book, Cruise Critic shows you a variety of offers from some of the best cruise booking sites, including bonuses such as onboard credit and prepaid gratuities. Avoya’s team of staffers and wide network of independent agencies make for a cruise booking website that’s a bit different from the rest. Its front page shows the “Best Travel Deals,” which might include half-off cruise fares, onboard credit, prepaid gratuities, and free or reduced airfare. Though Tripadvisor is technically a meta-search site for cruises, which means that it will send you elsewhere to actually book, its search engine lets users sort by destination, length, cruise line, and month of travel. The default search results are ordered by “best value”, unless you specifically click that you’d rather see the results organized by price, cruise length, departure date, or cruise ship.
Cruise Critic
It is their mission to find the perfect fit cruise, tour, and accommodations for each client. They formed a team capable of providing you with the most competitive prices and services that are knowledge and experience-based. Bertie de L’Arbie founded the agency in 1947 after his service with the United States Army and the O.S.S. during World War II. With 71 years of experience in the travel industry, Santa Barbara Travel is considered the premier luxury cruise travel agency in Santa Barbara County.
Hotel Reward Programs
They’ll help you find the most romantic spots and events on the ship, and any ship-sponsored excursions. They can also provide you information about when or with whom to book a private tour guide for port excursions. Tripadvisor Cruise, which launched in April 2019, is among the best websites for cruise deals—it lets you nab the lowest price by comparing more than 70,000 ocean and river cruises from some 60 of the best cruise websites.
Grab Your Tour With Cruise Port Advisor Now!!!
Remember, you might be a DIY type when booking airlines and hotels, but booking a cruise is more complex. If you enjoy doing your own research, focus on what to do and see in the ports of call. However, when it comes to booking the cruise, we recommend you still contact a travel agent who specializes in cruises to help you learn a few tips and avoid any rookie mistakes. The site also lists traveler reviews about each cruise ship (as supplied by Cruiseline), though the reviews often include comments about the ship’s destinations other than the one you’re considering, which isn’t entirely helpful. The cruise travel agent should have questions for you as well, to better understand your dream vacation desires. If you are calling a cruise agency for the first time, the agent should be interviewing you as much as you are interviewing him or her.
They have done a great deal of research through familiarization trips and cruise line seminars, so you don't have to do the work yourself. Even better, agents often have access to special discounts or perks -- or know best where to find them -- and as the cruise lines pay their commissions, you don't pay more for their services and expertise. Question the agents on cruising trends or up-and-coming destinations, and ask them to explain the differences between cruise lines. Find out how many cruises they've taken that year and with which lines they've personally cruised. If the agent has rarely cruised, you might want to take your business elsewhere.
Their perspective is that a cruise vacation is an investment of the client’s time and money. This philosophy gives them all the more reason to arrange the most exceptional personal service, top industry knowledge, and excellent value for your luxury tour. Having a top-down view of pricing and availability, Luxury cruise travel agencies are keen on identifying the best deals and passing the valuable information on to you. They monitor fare increases and decreases and do their best to secure the one that suits you and your cruising needs the best. When looking for the best site to book a cruise, don’t be put off by CheapCaribbean.com’s overly specific moniker. The site’s vibe is beach-oriented and a bit cheeky, with a front page that can overwhelm—but click on the “Cruises” tab, and a cleaner interface appears.
Search Cruises
So, you've decided to go on a cruise -- perhaps your first venture on a vacation at sea -- and you're a little overwhelmed. You have to consider how much you're willing to pay, whether to book an inexpensive inside cabin or splurge on a suite, and which cruise line and ship are right for you. Add dinner seatings, shore excursions and cabin location to the list, and planning a relaxing getaway suddenly seems like a second job. You should also ask if the travel agency offers 24/7 assistance (usually an 800 number) in case you have last-minute questions or something goes wrong before or during your trip.
The best cruise agents will do a thorough job of interviewing potential clients to find out which ship, line and itinerary would be the best fit. You aren't just booking general passage on a ship, either, as you will be asked to pick a specific cabin and when you prefer to dine. Making a mistake in these categories can ruin your cruise experience, as there are such thing as "bad" cabins and dining times (think noisy or claustrophobic cabins, dinner at 8 p.m. with cranky children, etc.). When you book a cruise, you are making a vacation decision that goes way beyond a flight or hotel nights. Which ship you choose determines your dining and evening entertainment choices for the duration of your vacation. Which itinerary you choose impacts which destinations you'll visit and which shoreside activities will be available to you.
Many people think of Tripadvisor mainly as a travel review site, where you go to get real talk on hotels and attractions, and to see non-glamorized photos of places as seen through actual travelers’ eyes. But Tripadvisor is also an excellent site for travel deals, including on cruises. To save you the hassle, SmarterTravel investigated the glutted space of cheap cruise sites to determine which are worthy of listing as the best cruise websites; below are a few that come highly recommended. You can search for a CLIA-certified travel agent on the organization's website. Use the search tool to locate agents in your area with a variety of levels of CLIA training. Most cruise lines, including Carnival Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line, have some version of a "Find a Travel Agency" search tool on their homepage.
Thanks to this comprehensive price history, Cruisewatch can predict cruise prices and drops with an accuracy rate of around 80 percent. Using the site’s cruise price prediction alerts, travelers can save up to 71 percent just by booking at the right time. Using the seven-night Alaska example, Priceline brought up an itinerary aboard Royal Caribbean International’s Radiance of the Seas that starts at just $374 for the full week—roughly $53 per night. Hard-to-believe cruise deals like this show up on Priceline with regularity, which is part of what solidifies it as one of the best cruise websites.
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