<p>Just wondering if anyone here has had experiences with on-line travel agency for purchasing cruise staterooms? It is considerably cheaper using them than using the bricks & mortar or the cruise line.</p>
<p>Thanks for anyone who has had experience. Have registered with cruisecompete.com and been getting some interesting offers. Am checking the fine print as well as reading reviews about each of these companies. Some make it tough to track down their fees, etc. & charge you for lots of little things. Some are registered & licensed.</p>
<p>Dang–turned out the offers were for 2013 when our cruise is set for 2012! Oh well, it was interesting. May stick with Costco.com, since I have been very pleased with their customer service for nearly everything we’ve ever used them for and I expect it should be good for travel/cruises as well.</p>
<p>I’m surprised no one has posted anything about this. I’d have thought SOME folks here have experience–positive or negative or have heard of folks who have.</p>
<p>My friend is a travel agent, going strong at 75 years young. She makes little profit from arranging cruises, unless it is a large group. She knows the ships well and, for her wealth of knowledge, worth the $200, IMHO.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, people will pick her brain, then book themselves. What they are unaware of is that she can often arrange for an upgrade.</p>
<p>Bookworm, does your friend charge travelers for her services? All of the travel agents with whom I’ve worked make their money from the airlines, cruiselines, hotels, etc. I think I assumed they all did, so I’m curious to know if that’s the case. HImom, we’ve only cruised four times but, each of those times, we went through a local travel agent who was able to find good prices, upgrades and a good amount of shipboard credit.</p>
<p>DH and I are still trying to decide what to do this summer for vacation. I’m afraid if we keep dragging our feet, we won’t do anything. We’ve been looking at cruises, too, as we just love them. Enjoy!</p>
<p>Travel agents don’t charge extra; they get commissions from cruise lines. My agent says she gives advice on picking room, e.g. Proximity to elevators etc.</p>
<p>Don’t really have an agent for cruises (it’s our first). The one agent who was trying to arrange the event for the group said NO balconies, even tho Princess and other sites say there are still some balconies remaining. Maybe I could try calling him again to see if there is an update because people have cancelled so now some are available.</p>
<p>Your agent may only have a partial selection of rooms available to him - that’s typical. Sometimes the cruise lines assign blocks of rooms to various organizations which are booking multiple rooms and sell the rest separately. I’ve used crucom and cruises only; cruisefish has interesting historical data available as well. Typically what you get from an agent is the same price offered directly by the cruise line, but with some added perks - a contribution to your on board account, a free dinner in the “extra price” restaurant, etc.</p>
<p>You’re likely to see that the availability of rooms fluctuates over time. About 90 days before the sail date people who have put a deposit down on a cruise have to pay up or cancel; sometimes more cabins become available then.</p>
<p>OK, so if the agent doesn’t have the room type we want, I think H & our friends would rather have our preferred balcony rooms over trying to spare the feelings of the agent, whom we’ve never met yet. I’ll call him today to see if he now has any of the cabin type we want & whether he can come anywhere near the quotes we’ve gotten so far. Thanks for your insights. Cruising is new to H & me, as is group travel. Rarely work with travel agencies–only when fares are astronomical & the agent can help reduce that.</p>
<p>Sounds like a smart decision to me. You’ll all be on the same ship regardless. Shop for price - the product doesn’t change. You can check out the cruise critic website for suggestion about good cabin locations, etc. - but I’ve never found that to be a big issue for me.</p>
<p>Try Cruiseplus.us or Cruiseplus.ca. They have great deals and will charter full ships for special runs. Incredible prices for those. Cruises are their bread and butter, and they know their business. Plus there are real people who ensure that the online side is right. Can’t recommend them enough.</p>
<p>We tried working with the AAA agent, but we were really too early in our exploration process. (We only knew that we had frequent flier miles to use, and we wanted to visit Europe. At that point we didn’t even know for sure that we wanted to cruise and had not picked out dates).</p>
<p>We really liked working with CruisesOnly. We worked with the agent extensively on the phone while refining our interests, picking a cruiseline etc. PM me if you’d like the agent name - she was verrrrrrry patient and helpful. After setting things up through a few calls over time, she supported us through email too.</p>
<p>HImom, there’s a great site from Germany that you can utilize to see of the cabin(s) you want are available at all. Many agencies (online & brick and mortar) only will show the cabins they want to sell you, or that they’ve blocked, but MUST sell a cabin that is available if asked. My travel agent has asked me numerous times how I know a cabin is open, but I absolutely will NOT tell him as there may be a chance that the cruise lines may rebel and make this online site stop it. If you PM me (and promise not to share the info) I’ll pass it to you. I have gotten every cabin I really wanted utilizing the info from this site.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the help! I am SO happy that I was finally able to get the travel agent to sell us a balcony cabin. Am still puzzled as to why he said none were available when Costco had them available. Perhaps Costco had a block that it later released?</p>
<p>Anyway, he held it for us yesterday, today & tomorrow, so that we & our friends can figure out what we’re all collectively and individually going to do about our respective travel.</p>
<p>I often use perx.com, or dargal.com. Though I’m an airline employee and we get some great deals, I think they offer decent deals to the general public too. But also, I like to book through my favorite airline sites to get airmiles (plus, they often have some really good deals too, lots of specials). I like Delta.com and AlaskaAirlines.com cruises, in fact, come to think of it I have booked through them more than the other sites.</p>
<p>Thanks–don’t qualify for either perx.com or dargal.com, but they do sound like great sites. Thanks for sharing the Delta & Alaska as sites to book cruises. Hadn’t tried that before but neither has the balcony cabin we want.</p>