Anyone who is into cruising has probably used the website CruiseCritic.com. With their vast community of members, this is a great site for obtaining knowledge about cruising. I, personally, have been a member for about 5 years. I’ve noticed that every post I make on the forum about getting deep cruise deals gets deleted, including my most recent post on how to take advantage of cruise prices when there is an outburst of some illness on a particular cruise line that gets a lot of attention. If you’re a frugal traveller and want to save big on cruises, here are some tips to help you stretch your travel dollar (that you won’t find on CruiseCritic).
Illness Outbreaks: Illness outbreaks are very unfortunate for the travellers involved. But it also represents a buying opportunity. Typically when you see a cruise ship outbreak on the front page of CNN.com or making headlines elsewhere, get ready to pounce. Cruise lines will hold their prices for a bit, hoping that the mishap will be soon forgotten about. Sometimes it is, but other times there are follow on stories (like the Tim and Jody Carlson whose honeymoon was cut short) that continue to hurt the reputation of cruise lines. In the following weeks, cruise likes will feel the hurt and reluctantly drop prices. Theyt tend to drop from 10 to 20%. If you were previously on the fence about a cruise, this is a time to say ‘yes’ while everyone else is saying ‘no’.
Memories are short, and prices will eventually spring back to normal. If you see a price drop, strike while the iron is hot.
Repositioning Cruises: Cruise ships migrate with the seasons. For example, Alaska cruise ships end their Alaska run in mid to late September and head south. This is an ideal time to buy a cruise: either late or early in the season, or during a transition period. Cruise ships that leave Alaska have to head south, and along the way, they usually have what are called ‘repositioning cruises’ which go from, say, Vancouver or Seattle to Long Beach California. The only drawback with these cruises is that they are one way cruises so you will need to make your way back home from Long Beach, and not your departure city.
During the repositioning phases, its also possible to get 2 or 3 night cruises, and sometimes 1 night cruises that are short jaunts. These cruises are often quite inexpensive.
Sort by price to reveal cheapest cruises.
Search By Price Per Night: Travelocity is one of my least favorite websites, except for cruise searches. They have a feature that allows you to search cruises and sort them by “Price Per Night”. This is awesome. It means you easily find the cheapest cruise available (on a nightly basis) anywhere in the world, anytime. It’s fairly easy to find cruises for less than the price of a budget hotel. I often see cruises for between $30 and $50 per night which is absolutely incredible. Its worth pointing out that the prices on Travelocity are no cheaper than elsewhere, just that Travelocity is the site I know that makes it easy to access these prices with their sort by price per night feature.
Cruise Port Hotel Deals
Changes are that after you find your cruise deal, you’re going to need a hotel the evening before or after your cruise. A great choice for those who are not picky about the hotel they get is Hotwire or Priceline. These sites probably offer the cheapest hotel deals available for cruisers, and are worth checking out. Here are some helpful resources for cruise port hotels:
- Priceline Rebidding: If you are familiar with Priceline, you know that you can only ‘bid’ on hotels once every 24 hours unless you use this technique to circumvent their rules.
- Hotwire Hotels Revealed: Bidding travellers often share their Hotwire (and Priceline) hotel wins on this site. We collect this information and put it into a list for you to use before you bid to help you figure out which hotel you are likely to get.