A better way to buy a cruise

Carol Scott and her husband, Jeffrey, wanted to get out of town for a few days last Thanksgiving. A Caribbean cruise sounded like a great idea. She checked with a travel agent but didn’t like any of the prices she was offered.

“I knew I could find a better deal online,” says Scott, of Carson City, Nev.

So she clicked on the Internet and found a Web site called Cruise411.com. Within a few minutes, Scott says, she’d tracked down the right itinerary: a trip on the Royal Caribbean Voyager of the Seas that included stops in Haiti, Jamaica and Mexico for $2,400. That price was $2,500 less than what her agent had offered for the same vacation, so she snapped up tickets.

Beverly Nichols, in her quest for the perfect cruise vacation, did everything but search the seven seas. The Decorah, Iowa, homemaker studied brochures, called tour operators, visited a local travel agency and researched trips online. “But I wasn’t getting what I wanted,” she says.

Then she found a cruise specialist in nearby Cedar Rapids. The agent helped her find a 12-day Princess Alaskan cruise/land vacation package. The cost: $3,700 per person for her and her husband, Paul.

“Even though the Internet is a great way to access information about travel, I didn’t feel comfortable booking a cruise online,” Nichols says.

This month, which is the busiest of the year for booking cruises, more and more people will be logging on to the Net in search of a good seafaring deal. (The Cruise Lines International Association estimates about twice as many as two years ago.) You might start your trip on the Internet if you’re planning to sail.

Whether you should seal the deal online is a different story. Even if you’re a veteran at booking other travel arrangements on the Net, such as airline tickets and hotels rooms, it’s important to know that cruises are more complicated. You have to specify meal arrangements, decide if you want to make onshore excursions and how you’re getting to the port, and pick your accommodations – some ships have as many as 30 cabin types.

What’s certain is that shopping for a cruise online is easier and more intuitive than ever, and that if you don’t at least look online, you might miss a good deal.

Frank Walters, a sales representative for a steel company in McConnellsville, N.Y., browsed for a cruise deal at Bid4Vacations.com. The site lets you bid on a variety of travel products, and even allows you to see a bid history for the trip that interests you. (You can also buy a trip without bidding.) At first Walters didn’t trust the deals he found there because they looked too good to be true.

“Then I saw an 800 number on the Web site, and when I called it, I felt more comfortable,” he says. Walters won a $1,200 bid each for himself and his wife, Crystal, to take a seven-day cruise from Boston to Bermuda on Norwegian’s Majesty last fall. The price was about half of what he would have paid if he’d bought it directly through a traditional agency. When he called to change part of the reservation, he found Bid4Vacations.com was more than helpful.

If good prices and service are available online, why doesn’t the Internet float more travelers’ boats? It’s more than mistrust, according to experts. Ido Ganor, chairman of the consumer advice site ShopServe.com, says the cruise industry itself is to blame. “They’ve been loudly touting the benefits of using travel agents to hold consumers’ hands through the planning process,” he says. “But the reality is that cruises can be a lot cheaper and offer a lot more value than people think, especially this time of year, and there are many Internet resources for finding and booking very good deals.”

Anne Campbell, who edits the Web site CruiseMates, says the unprecedented number of new cruise ships has led to aggressive pricing by cruise lines. “The smart shoppers look around on the Internet and call four or five different agencies in order to get the best price,” she says.

Last May, cruise consultant Allan Jordan of Roslyn, N.Y., caught wind of an online special on a 10-day Lisbon-to-Copenhagen Holland America cruise that was “well below” the published rate. He checked with an American Express-affiliated agency to compare prices, and the agency’s didn’t come close to the online deal.

But not all travel-business observers are keen on buying a cruise through a company whose name ends in “.com.”

Marc Mancini, a cruise consultant based in Los Angeles, cautions that cruise Web sites have “a different culture and a different level of accountability” than what are commonly called “brick-and-mortar” agents. “They never see the customer, and I think that’s one of the reasons why people are very afraid of buying a cruise on the Internet,” he says.

Indeed, as with anything else online, it’s possible to get burned by a Web cruise. Suzanne Rosenblum, an accountant in Lawrenceville, N.J., recalls the first – and last – time she booked a boat trip online. She’d arranged a cruise for herself and three friends. Her Norwegian voyage to the southern Caribbean ran into snags even though she’d bought it with plenty of time to spare. Among the problems: Her seating reservations for dinner didn’t coincide with what she had asked for, a problem the cruise line didn’t fix.

After that experience, Rosenblum decided to use a travel agent. She chose a boutique cruise agency in Hightstown, N.J., called Diamond Cruise & Travel. “My agent knows the kinds of things I like and the kinds of things that I don’t like,” she says. For her next cruise in April, “she made sure I got the seating I wanted, and that the cabins that I reserved were right there.”

Ultimately, shopping for a cruise comes down to a question of whether you should book online – or just look. Cruise experts generally agree that if you’re less than comfortable buying a big-ticket item on the Internet, you’re probably better off visiting a travel agent.

But it’s still a good idea to check the Internet before you set sail. And if saving money is more important to you than controlling all the cruise details, buying online may be the best way to go.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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