Dave Savard has gone on 10 cruise vacations, but he has never got a deal like he had in late March on a voyage out of San Juan.
"Our family booked inside cabins for $650 each on Celebrity Cruises, and that was a 40-per-cent saving from the list price," he says.
But when they got to the ship, the check-in agent asked if they would like to upgrade to balcony cabins for an extra $250 each. "For $900 each, we ended up getting top cabins that the brochure quotes for about $2,300. I call that a deal," the Toronto software developer says.
And he wasn't the only one getting unheard-of deals in the past few weeks. Many lines are discounting fares by more than 50 per cent off the list price, and a number are dangling extra carrots like upgrades or shipboard credits and perks such as free airfare or shore excursions.
Cruise lines say this is an unprecedented time. Discounts have not been this dramatic since a drop in travel bookings after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but that drop was short-lived. Now, the economic slump has seen many people putting vacation plans on indefinite hold.
It could not have come at a more delicate time for cruise companies. Passenger capacity is about to expand significantly. Over the next few months, a dozen new ships are coming into service, including two of the biggest ever built: the Carnival Dream and Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas, which between them will add 9,000 more cabins.
Add the other new arrivals and the cruise lines will have to find about 24,000 extra passengers a week, on top of more than 300,000 passengers in the existing fleet, according to the Cruise Lines International Association.
To lure customers, many lines have been doing aggressive price chopping, says Criz Punsalan, marketing specialist for Vancouver agency Cruise Connections Canada. An example this month is a 15-night South America trip on Royal Caribbean's Radiance of the Seas, which Cruise Connections quotes at a starting price of $719, or $48 a day. Typically, the lowest sale price you would ever find on a cruise is $60 a day, she says.
Such prices are called "flashes" by the cruise line, Punsalan says, and are given only to agencies and not advertised publicly.
Such last-minute fare slashing has passengers booking a lot closer to the departure date than in the past, waiting for better pricing, says Lexa Djoleto, director of marketing at the Mississauga travel agency The Cruise Professionals.
But don't count on prices going much lower, because cruise lines are already selling at or below their cost. In the short term, lines are taking a hit in profits to keep their ships and crews sailing and generate revenue from what the passengers spend in bars, shops, the casino and on-shore excursions.
Even if prices do continue to fall, because the sale space on many ships is limited, Djoleto says it's smart to book now to lock in the type of accommodation and sailing date you want. Once the sale quota is reached, prices go up.
And where are the best deals? Prices are particularly attractive to Alaska. Cruises there have always sold at a premium to Caribbean cruises, but this year fares are as much as 40 per cent lower than last year, Djoleto says. Europe is also a bargain because even with the loonie weak against the euro, the per-day prices of staying and dining aboard a ship are well below the price of staying in even modest hotels and eating at restaurants ashore.
And if prices do fall, lines have been promising to protect existing bookings by giving a rebate to those who have already booked earlier at a higher price.
However, it's best to book through a travel agency that gets regular updates on fares, because you may not find out about them if you have booked online.
Cruise agencies can also help find unadvertised bargains, says Carol James of Toronto, a frequent cruiser since 1993, who has asked the Cruise Professionals to keep an eye out for her for selloffs of balcony staterooms for a summer trip to Europe.
She and husband Roger have been doing one or more cruises on Princess or Holland America each year since 1993 and they tend to book six months or more in advance because the best suites usually book up early. However, this year there are many cancellations when the deadline for final payment comes, generally two or three months before the departure date. At that point, the cruise lines notify agencies of reduced rates to fill those cabins.
