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Should you always book your port excursion through the cruise line you're traveling on or look
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elsewhere? I'm Gary Bembridge of Tips for Travelers. In this video, I'm going to look at the
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reasons for and against booking a cruise excursion with the cruise line you're traveling with
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Now, why should you go on an excursion with a cruise line, which is the thing that most people
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default to? Well, first of all, one of the things the cruise lines do is they guarantee that if
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any excursions through the cruise line, if it gets delayed, the ship will wait for you
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So that is one reason that people love to book cruise line excursions is knowing the ship will wait for you
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If you book any other way or you go on a private excursion or you tour yourself and you're back late, the ship will not wait for you
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Secondly, there's normally a great choice of excursions and they cater for all different types of activity levels and interests
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So you'll find a good selection. That's another good reason to choose a cruise line excursion
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The third thing is that on every single excursion, someone from the cruise line will actually go on that excursion
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So it means that you've got someone from the cruise line who's there if anything goes wrong
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And also importantly, if there's any issues with the actual excursion, there's someone
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from the cruise line that can verify and confirm the issues, particularly if you're challenging
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or looking for a refund because something goes wrong. Another reason for booking an excursion through the cruise line is if you have onboard credit
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you can put the onboard credit towards the cost of excursion. So obviously, that's a great way of spending any onboard credit that you've got and may
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make it actually very attractive rather than perhaps just spending on board credit on things that
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you don't really want on board. Another good reason for booking through the cruise line is usually you can
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do it online in advance so you can make sure that you've got all your excursions booked, you know
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have to worry, you know, everything that you're doing in every single port and you know exactly what
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it's going to cost you. The cruise lines will also have worked with the operators and done the tours
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many many times usually so you can be pretty sure that they know the quality of the excursions know the quality of the provider and know that they kind of safe and organized and that their passengers probably like them So why should you not book an excursion through the cruise line and look at other alternatives Well first of all cost Actually there can be relatively
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expensive booking excursions through the cruise line and you can find that the costs can mount up
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and you can spend a lot of money on cruise line excursions. Secondly, you might find that excursions are
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full, so the ones that the cruise lines are offering are full things that you really want to do
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and often the very popular ones do get sold out. So actually there's something you want to do
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and it's not available. So that's a good reason to look for another way of doing it
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If you're actually looking for a way of doing a tour but with less people, so cruise lines particularly will have very large groups
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and often you can find alternative ways of doing it with much less people. And if you are worried about the ship leaving without you
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there are also many options where the suppliers will guarantee to get you back to the ship or will make sure that you get repatriated with the ship
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if for any reason they cause you to be laid back. The other thing you might find, if you have a special interest, whether it's golf or a particular hobby
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you might also find a much more specialist excursion with a provider other than the cruise line
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Because the cruise line is really catering for the mass of people, for the broad interest
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So if you have a very special interest and you really want to do something very unique and different in a particular port
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that's another good reason for looking at an alternative to a cruise line excursion
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Cruise excursions can cost a lot of money. It can be many hundreds of dollars
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added on to your vacation cost. Hopefully that's given you confidence to consider alternatives
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to simply booking an excursion with the cruise line. It could save you a lot of money
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and give you many more options and possibilities. If you liked the video, I'd love it if you gave it a like
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But even more importantly, please subscribe to tips for travelers and you'll get much more cruising
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and travel inspiration, advice and tips
