Thread: Cruise bookings from Australia

The info that Norman ( The Cruise Duo) posted is from the Vacations to Go web site.
You can see it here

Just checked our records it was the Auction we bought our Costa cruise wuth.

Originally Posted by Char

The info that Norman ( The Cruise Duo) posted is from the Vacations to Go web site.
You can see it here

Well, you can't believe everything you read on Vacations to Go - after all, they brag about offering "deeply discounted rates", which we all know is not true. And their claim of "save up to 75% off last minute cruises" borders on false advertising. The 75% off is based on the brochure rate and nobody, not even the cruise line, sells cruises for the brochure rate. They offer the exact same rates as any agent offers. They offer nothing more, nothing less.

And their statement is still not accurate.

Originally Posted by Cruise Planner

Not sure where you got all this, but it's not altogether accurate. For example, I have a long-time client from South Africa who books two or three cruises every year and we have booked him on RCCL & Celebrity on several occasions. In fact, he just got back from a roundtrip cruise out of Dubai last week on the Brilliance of the Seas. We've never had any problems and he does not use a U.S. address.

I have clients all over the world including Germany, U.K., Switzerland, Poland, Ireland, Australia, etc, etc. and there are only a couple of lines we have to work around.

Which lines are those, Pete?? and how do you work around them???

Originally Posted by *Lars*

Which lines are those, Pete?? and how do you work around them???

I obviously can't go into details in an open forum like this, but I did talk to one of our District Sales Managers today about this very issue. He even gave me a couple of 'loopholes', as he called them. And this was directly from the cruise line! So while it's not illegal or flagrantly going against their policies, there are ways to work around them - just have to know what to do and how to do it.

Some of the cruise lines have just recently changed their policies on this matter; for example Oceania. I sold one of their cruises last year to one of my clients in Amsterdam and it was not a problem, now it is.

But this is definitely not something popular with agents, as you can imagine. There are no basis for these policies and in today's global environment, they are ludicrous and counterproductive. In fact, this issue is a major topic of conversation at one cruise line's national sales meeting this week. As was said by one DSM I talked to, this is a restriction on free trade that they are not even sure if legally enforceable. So it'll be interesting to how it all plays out.

Pete

If cruiselines charged the same prices for their cruises & paid travel agencies the same level of commission world wide this wouldnt even be a conversation. When I hear of agencies in the UK recieving 18% commission (which is then turned into discount) from a certain cruiseline and we recieve just 10% in Australia (regardless of the amount of business we give this cruiseline) for the same line it is impossible to compete, even if the cruise price is the same.
No one denies the consumer the right to shop around for the best fare, and with e-commerce the world is a much smaller place, but everytime a reservation is made overseas it damages the local market, risking the future of local Travel Agents and their workforce.
Fortunately a recent survey in Australia discovered that 85% of all cruise reservation are still made face to face with a Travel Consultant, so for the time being its only a small amount of reservations are lost overseas, but if trends continue that number will decrease.
Cross Border Trading restrictions are often quoted by cruiselines, but rarely inforced when the passengers is at the wharf with a ticket and credit card in hand....