Overcharging Customers on Celebrity Cruises and How to Avoid Overpaying

Ship tip

Rip-off Cruise Prices and How to Avoid Them-Beware of Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Recently I went on this Celebrity Cruise. Before making the final payment for the cruise, I did my usual check and found that a lot of cabins were still available. As a person who has been on 75 plus cruises, wrote a dissertation on travel agencies, and teaches the Cruise Ship Management/Marketing course at my University, I am quite aware of the cruise lines marketing practices. So, I did the usual thing and checked to make sure there would not be a price drop after the final payment. This was checked directly with the cruise line, and guess what? They lied to the travel agency and me! Further, they would not make any accommodation to make up for the overpayment. In this case, the overpayment was over $1,500. The one other time I had this happen for a lower amount was with Norwegian Cruise Line and they offered me a future cruise credit or a cabin upgrade. After many runs around, Celebrity would do nothing. I also found on the cruise that many people had the same story. I would say it was at least 25 percent of the passengers, but may have been a lot more as just people I asked at random amounted to much more than 25%. Cruise lines overprice things, and then when they go into non-refundable fare periods, which are usually 120 days before the cruise, they tend to drop the price due to unsold cabins. This is largely due to the fact that some of them do not have good capacity controls, and from what I have seen, Royal Caribbean and Celebrity are the biggest culprits. (Capacity controls are statistically calculable and are used by most travel companies, including airlines, hotels, etc.) Often with other travel products, you get a better price if you book early! Many other companies such as Delta Airlines always gives you a credit for a future flight (always frequently check the fares for airline tickets after your initial booking) and if you do not pay for a rental car in advance (I advise not to pay for any rental car in advance unless it is a huge bargain) it is often that if you start checking about a week before your rental you will find a price drop. From my experience, Gate 1 Travel and Virgin Cruises have excelled with the concept of pricing correctly early on and then raising the prices rather than lowering them. Many others do much better than RCL/Celebrity. Other cruise lines price things accurately and, therefore, do not have these problems with filling the ship. Carnival, NCL, and MSC, from what I have experienced, are not as guilty, and clearly, Virgin is the champion at not doing this. On Virgin , I booked a cruise months prior to departure, and they gave me a lot of perks and the best price. The price included $700 worth of bar purchases for a seven-day cruise. I think I will be buying drinks for a lot of cruisers! As a result of the Celebrity debacle, I will never book an RCL or Celebrity cruise before 120 days prior to the departure of the cruise. If we all do this, they will be forced to stop screwing people who are loyal to them and book cruises far in advance. Celebrity also tends to tout you with what are really non-bargains to book again while you are on the ship. Other cruise lines try to get you to book another cruise while on the ship but are usually offering a better deal! It is pretty easy to see if a price drop will or is likely to happen. Go on the site of the cruise line or any of the online agencies and try to book it about 125 days out. They will show you the cabins that are available in each class of cabin, so it will take a while to get a good picture of what is happening. If you see many cabins still available, you should probably not make your final payment and cancel your reservation. Usually, there is no penalty for doing this or very little. (Incidentally, when you make the original booking, make sure there is no penalty for canceling within 120 days before the cruise. Sometimes, the cruise line does this to try to lock you into the reservation further.) Also, be more cautious when booking any cruise that is ten days or more because these are the ones that sometimes have booking problems simply because not everyone in the population can afford to take this amount of time off. If you see many cabins left, drop any reservation you may have had and look forward to the price drop. If the price does not drop on the cruise you booked, you can rebook it or just pick from the many other last-minute availabilities that are out there.