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4 Things You Should NEVER Buy From Your Cruise Line!
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Jul 19, 2024
While Cruise lines make it easy and convenient to book and buy most things for a cruise directly with them, have you stopped to ask if it’s in your best interest? I have! Cruise lines are banking on us not shopping around and discovering that some non-cruise line alternatives not only cost less, but are better, safer, and more comprehensive. Including as you will hear, one that I think will totally surprise you. Join me, Gary Bembridge, as I help you get cruising right by knowing the 4 things you should stop buying through the cruise lines and why. By the way: The first one might sound completely counter intuitive and crazy! For bonus & exclusive content (including videos, articles, eBooks and more) become a channel member or patron: --------------------------------------------------- * Patreon Patron: https://www.patreon.com/tipsfortravellers * YouTube Channel Member: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_qE-Obs2ocdmPXY0TIU-cw/join Check out my cruise-themed T-shirts and products: --------------------------------------------------- * T-Shirts: http://bit.ly/TFTStore * Mugs, notebooks, hoodies etc: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/tipsfortravellers?ref_id=22354 My social media:
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0:00
While cruise lines make it easy and convenient to book and buy most things for a cruise directly with them
0:05
have you stopped to ask if it's actually in your best interest? Well, I have. Cruise lines are banking on us
0:11
not shopping around and discovering, in fact, that some of the non-cruisline alternatives not only cost less
0:18
but could be better, safer and more comprehensive, including, as you will hear, one that I think will totally surprise you
0:25
Welcome aboard, join me in Gary Bembridge as I help you get cruising right by knowing the fourth
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things you should stop buying through the cruise lines and why. Now the first one is going to sound
0:35
completely counterintuitive and a little bit crazy. If you book a hotel, you'll normally get the
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very best price by going direct to the hotel with chains like Hilton guaranteeing the best price when
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going direct. This is not true at all with cruise lines. Cruise lines never ever undercut travel
0:54
agent prices because they are too important to their business. So at worst, you will get the same
0:59
price as booking directly with the cruise line. And travel agents, in fact, may even give you a
1:05
better price because many get discounts if they sell certain amounts of cabins, which they will then
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pass some of that discount on. Some also use some of their commissions to cut the price for you
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or may actually give us extra onboard credit from that commission. Cruise lines also use
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travel agents to sell off unsold cabins at rather snappy prices when they don't want to
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advertise deep discounts, because they want to stop cruisers like me who track my fares
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then chasing them down to reduce my fare to the new lower discounted level
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But a travel agent will also make sure that we book the right itinerary
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go with the right line, on the right ship, in the right cabin, they'll answer all our questions, and importantly, they may even steer us away
1:46
from what we think we need to what we really need. For example
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I wanted to cruise to Greenland and I was set on a seaborn cruise that I'd seen
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After talking to my travel agent about what I wanted to see, do an experience
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She suggested a completely different option I had no idea existed and had not looked at
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I finally went with Hapag Lloyd because the ship and itinerary were better
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And they were absolutely perfect and my travel agent was right. If I'd just gone direct to Seaborn, I would have missed out on a better cruise
2:14
But even if you don't take this particular suggestion up, I think you should consider not booking, getting to and from your cruise with the line as you will here
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I know many cruises like to book the cruise line offered flights, transfers and pre-earnes
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imposed stays, which you can do whether booking direct with the line or with the travel agent
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you can still book the cruise line options. The theory being that if everything's linked
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if something goes wrong like, I don't know, a flight gets delayed and get into the ship
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on time looks challenging, the cruise line will then make plans, maybe hold a ship or sort you
2:46
out getting to the ship because you're still within that whole kind of connected booking. However
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booking these with the cruise line may not always be the best idea. I've often found, for example
2:57
that cruise line flights usually have way less appealing routings I assume that because the deals they have with the airlines For example the next cruise I going on as I make this is a silversy South Africa cruise out of Cape Town
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Their routing would have had me flying from London Gatwick, not Heathrow, the airport
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closest to me, to Istanbul, Turkey, onto Johannesburg, then on to Cape Town. But there is a direct
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flight which goes from Heathrow down the road for me and would take me almost half the amount of time
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to get to Cape Town. And actually, the price when I looked was lower if I'd actually booked that
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particular option myself, although it had less flexibility to be fair. When booking flights with the
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line bear in mind, it may not actually be the best routing. Now, I always, always try and avoid
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connections if I can when flying to cruise, because I feel it just adds more risks of things going
3:49
wrong from delays and cancellations, which makes me cautious of cruise line flights and routings
3:54
With one exception that I will come to, I tend not to book cruise line flights
3:58
line transfers as I get more flexibility using Uber, pre-booking car service on car service sites
4:05
or using a taxi. For example, I recently flew to a Norwegian Viva cruise out of Barcelona
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and I'd booked a transfer with the cruise line. I had to sit for well over an hour until everybody
4:16
allocated to that bus had arrived, and it actually took even longer than that by the time we got
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on board. If I had jumped into an Uber, I could have been at the ship and on board probably within
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20 or 30 minutes. But while that works in big, well-known port cities like Barcelona, I learnt
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sticking with a cruise line transfer makes sense when it's not one of those big well-known ports
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For example, last year I went on a Honda-America, Osterdam, South America cruise. I flew into
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and stayed overnight in Santiago, Chile, and I booked my own taxi transfer to the port of Valparicio
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which is over an hour away for the next morning. However, the cruise passenger check-in terminal
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is not where the ship docks. It was kind of tucked away, kind of behind a whole lot of complicated
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roads and things. The driver was struggling to find it and I was madly trying to use Google
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translate to find it and direct him there. I wish I'd book the cruise line transfer as they knew where to
5:08
go. So that is an exception I would always make. I've already mentioned the best hotel rates are
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booking direct if we're booking ourselves. In theory, the lines should offer us a better rate
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because they then get a volume or a group rate. But not always, as I've seen when I've compared
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So always compare the quote for hotels. For example, the Silver Sea cruise I mentioned
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their price for a three-night pre-stay at the Capital 15 on Orange Hotel in Cape Town
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I could actually beat the price going direct. Though, to be fair, on other trips
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this has not always been the case, but do some comparisons. But there are two other things I've found
5:45
with booking hotel with the line versus myself. First of all, the hotels always seem to allocate a better room when I'm booking myself
5:53
versus those used for the cruise line group. I found this when setting out of Barcelona because I stay often at the Eurostars Grand Marina Hotel
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I've been there many, many times, and I booked sometimes through the lines and sometimes direct
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and I find I always get a better room when I booking direct Secondly booking with the line means that I get no points towards my loyalty I have with the hotel group so I lose out ultimately on getting perks and benefits
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and free nights and so on. While I know many of you like to keep flights, transfers, and hotels
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linked to the cruise, so there's kind of one contact. It's all linked. It makes it simpler. It's interlinked
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that there's a problem occurs. However, do check if your travel agent can do the same thing
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So my travel agent, which is Sarah Bolton of travel counsellors, she can do it
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all those different bookages, she can package all those things together, and they're all interconnected
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still. I have a 24-7 contact if anything goes wrong, night or day, and often I've found that
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she will tell me there was an issue before I know it and solve it. So, for example, recently I had a
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flight to Panama City to join an Oceana Marina cruise, and that was cancelled literally 12 hours
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before departure. She picked up that it was happening. She told me to wait while she sorted out
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alternatives, she found a new routing, she changed the transfer she'd booked, she changed the
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hotels based on the new times and my arrival. So doing what theoretically cruise line could do for you
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So this brings me, though, to another critical cruise item to not buy from the cruise line
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First of all, when you're going cruising, get insurance as the costs, if anything, goes wrong
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is enormous. None of us expect anything to happen, but it can. For example, as I was preparing
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this. I was following the story of Natalia Ortega and her partner Ashley from Tampa, the USA
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And they thought the same. Nothing will happen to us. But they actually, unfortunately, had a terrible accident on a scooter that they'd hired in Cozumel while their ship Carnival Paradise
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was in port. Now, they had no travel insurance, no insurance at all. And the hospital demanded
7:48
$20,000 for the operation on Ashley's broken ankle before they would even let them leave the
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hospital. The families didn't have it. They didn't have that sort of money. They were then desperately trying to raise it and then they also figure out the huge cost to get the two
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injured ladies home. So you should always, by the way, also ensure that your insurance has
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cruise-specific cover because some travel insurance policies will not pay out for losses incurred
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during a cruise without it. So if you're relying on insurance, for example, link to your credit
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card check that cruising is specifically covered. So if anything happens on a cruise, it will
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cover it. Now the cruise lines offer insurance for us to buy. But this is, Two is not the best option, I believe. Many policies will include things like trip cancellation
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insurance due to unexpected weather or illness, trip interruption or delay if we have to join
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the cruise late for some reason or return home early, some include emergency medical and dental
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care, medical evacuation off the ship, delayed and lost baggage and so on. However, there are
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some big watchouts and some really important things to understand about cruise line insurance. First
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I've always found travel insurance from third-party providers is cheaper than any cruise line
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quote and also has many more inclusions than cruise line insurance. Not all cruise line policies, by the way, cover everything in that list I gave earlier
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So also check what is actually covered Secondly cruise line insurance usually does not cover any pre or post cruise expenses like airline hotel or transfers unless they been booked directly through
9:25
the cruise line. Thirdly, cruise line insurance policies tend to have much lower limits on medical
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cover versus third-party cover and you'll get paid up much more if you have a medical issue
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with independent cover. And next, if the cruise is cancelled or disrupted, I discovered that many
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would not pay me back in cash, but only give me future cruise credits. Now, of course, I'm not a
9:48
travel insurance expert, but I've found that I use third-party insurance for all those reasons
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that I've given you. So my advice really is check before buying the cruise line option as easy as it is
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to do. Now, I've seen different travel magazines suggest different companies like a FAR magazine in the
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US suggest travelers like you and I look at companies like Alliance, Travel Guard from AIG
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Travelex and Berkshire Hathaway. Personally in the UK I've used at various times
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stay shore all clear and holiday extras so these could be places for example for you to start
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having a look. Now this leads me though to another area you should be really cautious
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about booking with the cruise line even though it's very easy and it's incredibly
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convenient. While I have a deep dive video on this topic where you can get even more
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information on it I do though need to address buying cruise line excursions without comparing
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three things first in this video as well. First, never book a hop-on-hop-off bus with the cruise
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line because it will be significantly more expensive. For example, on that Norwegian
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Viva trip that I mentioned earlier, the line was selling the Barcelona hop-on-hop-off
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bus for around $70 US on board, but it cost half that by buying it from the hop-on-hop-buss
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station in the terminal. Secondly, don't book cruise line excursions to well-known and nearby attractions
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or rides as the line will charge a hefty premium. In that video that I spoke about earlier, I give examples of how the flam train and the low
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in sky lift in Norway, the White Pass and Yukon train in Skagway, Alaska, all of those kind
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of attractions and things cost me dramatically less by booking direct. Thirdly, I always do a comparison with independent providers and I've seen excursions
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cost as much as 40% lower from sites like Shore Excursions Group.com, venture at Shore.com, and
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viator.com. Some like short excursionsgroup.com say they've never had anyone miss a ship
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but if they get me back late, they will arrange and pay for accommodation for me, meals
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they will get me to the next port and they will give me up to $1,000 US dollars compensation on top
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So never book an excursion on a cruise line with at least looking at your options because you
12:02
could save a lot of money and potentially have a better experience because they also tend
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to have smaller groups versus the line. I have some other ideas and how to be. I have some other ideas and
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how you can get more from your cruise based on what seasoned cruises do that not many other passengers know about
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And it's across here in this video where I start with the one that I use all the time
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See you over there
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