While the norovirus outbreak on my recent cruise about the Holland America Eurodam was a bit of a bummer, I was really intrigued with one aspect of the cruise that was new for me: Holland America’s Luggage Direct service. The night before disembarkation at select ports (possibly only Fort Lauderdale and Seattle), Holland America will collect your luggage and deliver it directly to the airport and check it with your airline for your flight. When I read about this service, I was really intrigued and I looked forward to taking it for a test drive to see if it was as smooth and convenient as we’d hoped.
How does Holland America Luggage Direct work?
The basic gist of this service is that you provide your flight information a couple of days before the cruise ends (including passenger info and confirmation number(s) and number of bags to be checked). Then, Holland America delivers paper boarding passes and luggage tags to your cabin the day before disembarkation. You simply tag your checked luggage and leave it outside your door the night before the cruise ends and Holland America handles it from there. Your luggage is collected, taken off the ship at arrival, transported to the airport, and checked with your airline without any further effort from the passenger. The service costs $25 per passenger requiring services.
Do you need to buy Luggage Direct service for all passengers in your cabin?
No, you do not need to buy the service for all passengers in your cabin. We were traveling as a family of five under two flight reservations: My wife and I and one of our sons along with another family member from a different cabin were on a single flight reservation (PNR). Our 7yr old son was under a separate PNR as my wife’s companion (with the Southwest Companion Pass). The son on a separate PNR did not get Luggage Direct service, but everyone else did.
In hindsight, we only should have paid for the service for the two passengers checking bags since I was going to get our boarding passes on my phone anyway. Since Southwest allows 2 checked bags per passenger for free and we had 3 total checked bags for 5 people, we should have paid for the service for 2 passengers and checked 2 bags in one passenger’s name and 1 bag in the other passenger’s name. We paid for four passengers but really only needed two.
As it turned out, while Holland America advertises that they’ll print your boarding passes, that’s not really what happened. Instead, we were delivered a “security document” that would presumably have gotten us through airport security, but it said on the document “This is not a boarding pass” and that we should head to our gate to collect our boarding passes. I had wondered whether using this service would somehow get us early position Southwest boarding passes, but it didn’t since those security documents arrived more than 24 hours before our flight (before check-in opened). I ended up forgetting to check in at the 24hr mark, checking in a couple minutes late and getting “C” boarding group positions (which wasn’t a big deal as we had access to family boarding anyway).
The Luggage Direct service was smooth! I’d totally pay for it again.
Just as advertised, we left our bags out the night before our cruise ended and the next time we saw them was when our flight landed at home, completely bypassing the check-in counter at the airport and the hassle of lugging our stuff off the ship or out of the port, loading it in an Uber, etc.
I had half expected something to go wrong and for a bag to get lost or damaged or arrive late. Much to my pleasant surprise, nothing like that happened.
When we arrived at the airport in Fort Lauderdale, I was really glad that we had taken advantage of this service. The airport was unbelievably busy when we arrived, with long lines in every direction. My wife immediately looked at me when we walked through the airport doors and said, “They have CLEAR here, right?”. While we arrived at the airport with hours to go before our flight anyway, it was nice to bypass the long lines for bag drop (and thankfully, we also skipped the long security line thanks to having CLEAR).
But beyond that, it was just nice not needing to lug our bags around at the end of the cruise. While we’ve become reasonably good at managing all of our stuff, it certainly was nice to pretend to be “Team Carry-on” for a day!
I would definitely consider this again in the future if it were available.
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“While the norovirus outbreak on my recent cruise about the Holland America Eurodam was a bit of a bummer.”
I love your talent for understatement. Next up: “While there was quite the surge of Black Death during our visit to XYZ we really had a nice time” ? Lol.
We used this service on Princess Cruise Lines, disembarking at FLL on February 9th. It was a breeze. I’m guessing all CCL brands offer this service now.
We used it as well with Princess in Alaska. It’s called Port Valet in Seattle and was a seamless experience.
Thanks for the post, Nick. I assume this service might not be available if your flight departs more than X hours after disembarking? Or maybe doesn’t matter as long as it’s the same day?
Correct — it had to be departing the same day and it couldn’t be leaving earlier than a certain time. I thought I had taken a picture of the detailed description, but then I looked through my photos and unfortunately couldn’t find it.