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Over the past couple of years, I’ve written pretty extensively about casino status matching for “free” or deeply discounted cruises (See: How to get free cruises by gaming casino status matches). That has led me to cruise far more over the past two years than I ever would have imagined cruising over the course of my entire life (which is to say that having cruised once a decade ago, I didn’t see myself doing it again, so certainly not 7 or 8 times in the course of two years). Family members are going to join us on a couple of cruises next year, so I recently had occasion to shop for a paid cruise for the first time as I assisted them in booking their cruises. I picked up some great tips from readers along the way. In the end, my family members will save a ton over what they would have originally paid if not for shopping around for a good cruise agent.
The short story
- I’ve often heard that booking a cruise via a travel agent can save you money. If my recent experience is any indication, this is true.
- Finding an agent might seem difficult if you don’t know someone who cruises regularly. CruiseCompete.com is a website readers shared that helped me connect with numerous agents. (Note: We do not have any business relationship with CruiseCompete or any other cruise booking website, I’m just reporting on my experience)
- In the end, I was able to stack a discounted cruise with discounted cruise line gift cards to save almost a thousand dollars in total over paying “full price”
Can a travel agent actually save you money?
While I imagine that there will always be a need for good travel agents to manage travel for those who simply don’t have the time to do it for themselves, I think most folks probably find travel agents unnecessary. Flights and hotels are easy enough to book for oneself. I’d certainly consider using a Hyatt Prive or Marriott STARS agent (or one from the other similar services out there) in some scenarios for extra benefits, but in general I’ve always figured that putting someone (and their commission) between me and a travel provider is probably increasing my cost and decreasing my ability to handle any unexpected problems for myself. During the height of the COVID pandemic, we all saw how messy things could become for those booking flights and hotels through third parties.
However, many people who have cruised numerous times before assured me that yes, you a travel agent can save you money when you’re booking a cruise. It turns out that they were right.
Direct booking: Shouldn’t this be the cheapest?
If you’re primarily an award traveler (as we are here at Frequent Miler), you’ve probably become conditioned to the concept of booking direct for the best deal.
That’s because if you’re booking a hotel room, your best bet is usually to book direct or perhaps to shop around for a better deal elsewhere and then make a best price guarantee claim. Most chains will meet or beat a better price on the same room with the same conditions (like the same deposit / cancellation policies, etc). You’ll usually be able to get the best price and then also earn valuable hotel points and credit toward elite status while also enjoying elite benefits if you book direct with your chosen hotel. And it’s common for hotels to offer some of their worst rooms to customers who book through online travel agencies since those customers aren’t loyal to the chain anyway.
If you book an airline ticket or hotel room through an online travel agency and something goes wrong with your trip (like a cancelled flight), the hotel or airline is going to tell you to call your travel agency as it is their job to service your booking.
In fact, hotels and airlines generally work to discourage customers from booking via online travel agencies (surely because they don’t want to have to give them a commission).
Based on all of that knowledge, I would have assumed cruise lines to operate similarly. Why would a cruise line want to pay a commission if they could get the customer to book directly with the cruise line?
The best answer I’ve found to that question was from someone on a message board or in an article who said that the major cruise lines simply don’t employ that many sales reps and they would actually rather that someone else service your booking. That’s an interesting strategy, but it makes some sense. I bet a lot of people booking cruises want some guidance about which cruise is best and have questions about ship features and ports and room layouts (and that’s to say nothing about figuring out which cruise line is best for them). Outsourcing all of that to someone else makes some sense as I imagine the average cruise customer requires more time to service than the average hotel customer. And I wouldn’t be surprised if someone who chose to become a cruise agent is actually more familiar with many cruises and ships and ports than many of the cruise line employees. A good cruise agent has probably sailed on many of the different ships whereas a phone support agent is probably just looking in the computer for an answer to a question. It makes some sense to me that it is probably worth the cost of commission to the cruise lines to incentivize good agents.
Of course, booking via a cruise agent still potentially carries some risk. More on that to come.
In this post, I’m not going to supply exact numbers and details because the quotes I received were said to be confidential. However, I wanted to provide some approximate context for folks wondering how much they can save. While the numbers in this post aren’t exact, they are a good representation based on the two cruises I helped a family member book.
For my example cruise, let’s say that the price for the cabin type and sailing if booking directly through the cruise line was about $4,000.
Major cruise sites: CruiseDirect, Cruises.com, Expedia, Costco, etc
When Googling for cruise agencies, you’re likely to first stumble on some large ones that you have likely heard of before. A few that come to mind are CruiseDirect, iCruise.com, Cruises.com, Expedia, and most of the other major online travel agencies. Most of the major US Airlines also offer their own cruise booking platforms where you can earn miles for cruise bookings.
Most of the “major” sites I checked had identical pricing to the cruise line, but there were a couple of key differences:
- Most online booking sites offered some sort of a rebate (often in the form of a Visa gift card) or on-board credit. The amount in our case ranged from around $75-$150 through most of the major sites.
- Many online booking sites are on shopping portals! While prices matched booking via the cruise line directly, we could earn 3-4% back ($120-$160) by clicking through a portal to book via a site like CruiseDirect. However . . .
- Many of the major cruise websites blast you with repeated messaging to “call for the best deal”.
After having been through the process of booking a cruise, I better understand that last bullet point. Before my recent experience, I’d have expected that these websites wanted to encourage calling in order to have a salesperson who could pressure you into booking and who could try to upsell in any way possible.
In hindsight, I think the main push to call is because booking agents (including these major players) probably all have to agree not to publicly advertise their lowest rates. If you call, they probably have more flexibility to quote a lower price. This same sort of thing used to happen with many types of major electronics — while official retailers couldn’t publicly offer better prices, prices could privately be negotiated more often than I’d have thought.
At the same time, I didn’t want to get on the phone to play chess over the best price / deal only to have to say no so I could hunt around elsewhere.
I should note that if I ended up booking with one of these major sites, Costco Travel may have been my best bet. While they similarly had pricing that was almost identical to the cruise line, they offered a Costco Shop card worth about the same amount as the best combination of rebate and portal cash back ($250+ in this case). I would feel pretty confident in Costco’s customer service if I needed help with my booking in the future.
Either way, booking through Costco Travel or one of the many other major cruise sites was a better deal than booking directly with the cruise line thanks to rebates and/or portal cash.
Googling for a travel agent
I am still a novice at cruise shopping, but I spent a good deal of time clicking around on Internet message boards like CruiseCritic.com to get a sense for how to get the best deal. Most message boards prohibit listing individual agent names (which I understand).
One concept that I found repeated in articles about cruising is that you’ll get the best deal by booking through a “reputable high-volume agent”.
That sounds like solid advice, but if you don’t already have an agent, it can be hard to know where to find one. Obviously you can check with friends and family who cruise often, but since I don’t have friends or family who are frequent cruisers, that didn’t work for me.
Instead, I started with Google looking specifically for cruise agents specializing in the cruise line we were booking. I came across one that claimed they were highly rated and they had a nice-looking website. Google suggested that they had decent reviews. I was skeptical, but I went through the steps on their website to request a quote. I explained that we were ready to book, knew the ship and sailing, and requested the best all-in quote they could provide for a specific cabin category.
About 24 hours later, I got a response providing the “starting from” price for each of the main cabin categories before taxes & fees — not an all-in price and not for the specific sub-category of cabin I had asked about. Thankfully, by that point, I had already booked the cruise for significantly less than their “starting from” price.
Using CruiseCompete.com to find agents
Since I am new to cruise booking (apart from those “free” casino status match cruises), I went to Frequent Miler Insiders on Facebook to ask readers for advice about cruise-booking / stacking. I’m really glad I did.
A reader or two mentioned the website CruiseCompete.com. I had read about CruiseCompete on the CruiseCritic boards, but I didn’t think the cruise I wanted was listed on CruiseCompete. I later found it, but I probably wouldn’t have if I hadn’t asked in Frequent Miler Insiders.
The gist of CruiseCompete is that it is a website where you can request quotes for a specific cruise and receive confidential quotes from many different travel agents. You enter your information, including the cruise you want and cabin type if you know it. You can also add notes that you’d like to be passed on to agents. I loved that feature because I could make it clear that we were serious and ready to book rather than just kicking the tires and I could be clear about exactly the type of cabin desired and reiterate that the quote should include all costs. I fully intended to ignore any responses that I could tell hadn’t read my message.
Then, you get notified via email when you receive a new quote and you check the details on the CruiseCompete site. The nice thing is that none of your contact information gets shared with travel agents. Instead, I imagine that agents who are registered with CruiseCompete receive a notification that a new lead is looking for a quote and they send the quote directly through CruiseCompete. CruiseCompete then sends you an email with a link to the CruiseCompete site, where you can review the price and cabin information and any message that the travel agent included. CruiseCompete also passes along the travel agent’s contact information so that you can follow up directly with the agent if you want to. There is also usually a link to request the cabin be held or a link to the agent’s website to book.
I loved that my contact information didn’t get shared with anyone unless I chose to email them. One of the worst things about shopping around for a car or real estate is knowing that you’ll get spam email forever. With CruiseCompete, it was easy to ignore all the folks who had high prices or who didn’t provide what I requested.
I ended up being quite surprised by the variance from one agent to another. I got quotes like:
- $4,000K with $275 in onboard credit
- $4,100 with $175 in onboard credit
- $3,850 with $125 in onboard credit
- $3,400 with $50 in onboard credit
Those aren’t all the quotes I received — several others were in between levels above.
I was pretty surprised by the variance – I wouldn’t have expected there to be enough wiggle room within prices to save as much as about 15% over the cruise line price!
That would have been a very nice savings on its own. However, thanks to Frequent Miler Insiders members, it got a bit better yet.
Stacking an agent + discounted gift cards
At some point in this process, my wife asked me if it were possible to purchase discounted gift cards for the cruise line. That was a great question because you can buy some cruise line gift cards online at a discount.
There are several ways to save money on cruise line gift cards:
- AARP sells discounted gift cards for Carnival Cruise Lines (10% off face value with cards in $100 or $500 denominations available)
- AARP sells discounted gift cards for Holland America Line (8% off face value with cards in $100 or $500 denominations)
- GCX (formerly Raise) sells Celebrity Cruises gift cards with 10% back in rewards
- GCX (formerly Raise) sells Royal Caribbean gift cards with 9% back in rewards
GCX (formerly Raise) sells Princess gift cards with 5.5% backReader Paul points out that AARP also sells Princess gift cards but with an 8% discount.- Newegg periodically sells cruise line gift cards at a discount and we have seen some card-linked offers for Newegg
I’m sure there are other ways to score a discount on a cruise line gift card. Note that there are different limits that apply. For instance, AARP only allows members to buy up to 5 gift cards a month with most brands, but they allow more with Carnival. There are various rules to know.
I initially assumed that this would be an either/or situation where I might be able to use the discounted gift cards if I booked directly, but not if I booked via a travel agent.
Much to my surprise, members of Frequent Miler Insiders corrected my assumption on that. As it turns out, even when you book via an agent, you’re paying all or most of the price quoted directly to the cruise line — so it is possible to (for example) hold your cruise with a credit card and then provide the gift card numbers to your agent. The agent then needs to call the cruise line to apply the gift cards for you.
Once I learned that, I emailed the agent with the best price quote and asked whether I could pay using cruise line gift cards and how much I could pay with cruise line gift cards. The agent wrote me back pretty quickly to confirm that they could accept the gift cards, though not quite for the entire purchase amount (though it was fine for approximately 90% of the total price).
In my case, I had to pay about 10% ($340 based on my example numbers) directly to the travel agent and I could pay the rest (~$3160) with gift cards. Assuming I saved 10% by purchasing the gift cards online, that means my “net” price for the cruise was $340 + $2844 (the cost of $3160 in gift cards at 10% off face value). In other words, the all-in price ended up around $3184. That’s a savings of more than $800 over the price we initially expected to pay booking direct — and it even includes $50 in onboard credit.
Keep in mind that we could have used the gift card technique if booking direct, so some of that savings could be had either way. Still, the agent saved us several hundred dollars.
What’s the catch?
Based on what I’ve read, it seems like the main “catch” in booking a cruise via a travel agent is that if something goes wrong, the cruise line will not help you directly. You’ll need to talk to your travel agent. In some ways, that may not be bad. Rather than me waiting on hold for hours waiting to speak to a human at the cruise line, I now have a point of contact I can email who can spend those hours on hold for us.
On the other hand, I imagine one could be in for an unpleasant surprise in the event of a cruise cancellation or other major problem.
For instance, we sometimes see cruises get cancelled or we see events onboard (like the outbreak of a virus) that lead the cruise line to refund all passengers or provide a future cruise credit of 100% of the fare paid to the individual.
My strong suspicion is that some agents are buying multiple cabins at a discount far in advance and then reselling those to individual consumers at a small profit. In other words, maybe my travel agent negotiated a deal to buy 20 cabins at $3,000 each and they are now quoting me $3400 for the cabin. To be clear, I think that’s probably not how sites like Costco and CruiseDirect operate, but I think some agents might operate that way.
That’s all well and good until you have an irregular occurrence. For instance, let’s fast-forward to next year and imagine that my cruise ship breaks down halfway through our cruise and the cruise line has to cancel the rest of the cruise for everyone. They may offer a future cruise credit for all passengers equal to the amount they paid in cruise fare. While we’ll have paid about $3400, if the cruise line has only received $3,000, I suspect that the future cruise credit would only be about $3,000. A resolution over the other $400 would likely be between me and the travel agent. Personally, that won’t be a big deal for me since I recognize and am prepared for that, but it’s worth knowing what you might be getting into.
I’m also sure that there are some bad actors in the world who may be out to scam you. I pretty thoroughly checked through reviews before choosing my agent and was satisfied enough, but I’d certainly recommend that step.
Bottom line
Much to my surprise, booking a cruise via a travel agent saved about $600 over the cost of booking a cruise directly with the cruise line and it added some on-board credit. Better yet, it is possible to stack cruise agent savings with the ability to use discounted gift cards to pay for all or most of the cruise. Taken together, the savings can be very significant. If you’re looking to book a full-fare cruise, it is definitely worth seeking out a reputable agent. I found CruiseCompete to be a great way to receive quotes from multiple agents and in the end I helped a family member save more than $800 over what they would have paid directly. That was well worth a few extra clicks of the mouse and an email or two.
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[…] There is some good info in this post if you are interested in cruises: Saving big on a cruise by stacking an agent with discounted gift cards. […]
Read the Gift Card terms and conditions carefully.
Royal Caribbean states:
“Certificate may be used only as a form of payment toward a new reservation made directly with Royal Caribbean International. After the gift certificate has been applied to a new reservation, the reservation may be transferred to a travel agent. “
The same is true for Celebrity.
Nick is now gaga for cruises. It’s so rare to follow someone on their journey of changing their mind.
Not at all gaga for cruises. They work well for family travel at our current stage because we can visit a lot of places without having to pack up and move stuff frequently. I’m sure we won’t cruise forever and if I were going to take one vacation trip per year, I probably wouldn’t choose a cruise. But I can nonetheless certainly enjoy a cruise even if I wouldn’t call myself “gaga” for them in the same way that I can enjoy a live baseball game even though I can’t tell you the last time I watched a full inning of baseball on TV. And I do believe in striking while the iron is hot, and there is no doubt that the iron has been white-hot these past couple of years for free/extremely cheap cruising.
I wrote this post because I know that plenty of other folks have done the matching and might find themselves in similar circumstances helping others book a cruise who aren’t doing the status matching. This had been completely out of my wheelhouse, so I found the process interesting (and we usually write about what we’re interested in!).
I imagine my “cruise era” won’t last forever, but I definitely will say that my perspective on cruising certainly has changed these past two years. I don’t see myself becoming a long-term regular, but neither will I be surprised if we take a few more (and I certainly wouldn’t turn down another match to do one for “free”).
As someone new to cruising and who just booked two cruises in the past couple months, this article was helpful! My research led me to CruiseCompete and travel agents, but the discounted gift cards are new to me. Apparently, Norwegian discontinued their gift card program years ago, but they have something called CruiseFirst certificates now.
I’m also monitoring when prices drop so I can inform my agent to reprice accordingly. So far, price adjustments have saved me several hundred dollars on my cruise!
Can you get a refund of the difference if booking through the cruise line itself? If so, how do you receive the adjustment?
If you booked through the cruise and paid the full balance, I would ask them how price drops work.
When I book through my agent, I just pay the deposit at booking. Until final payment, I can ask him to price match any drops in price from the cruise line itself. That will reflect in the final balance due. I’m not sure about other agencies, but my agency only price matches the cruise line. But I get a lot of perks compared to other agencies who quoted me, so I’m happy with what I’m getting.
Thanks Nick. Great post, great insight
You have missed the biggest savings which are TAs who share some of their commission with you. Mine shares at least a 19% rebate which comes just before leaving for the cruise. This can be combined with your discount gift cards and better to have your ta working for you if problems rather than dealing with cruise line employees who only do what their bosses say
How do you find those TAs?
Contact Shari at Pavlus shari@pavlustravel .come. Tell her David Weiman referred you. They give about 10% off the cruise price in the firm of a rebate just before you travel. The are one of the biggest TAs snd pride themselves in being the lowest price with wonderful service.
The caveat with gift cards is that only with Carnival can you get a true 10% savings. Carnival gift cards can be used for everything including cruise fare, paying port taxes & fees, gratuities, excursions, on board dining and speciality drinks, etc. Royal and Celebrity have large limitations in that AARP & Raise gift cards can only be used to pay the cruise fare and not for port taxes & fees, gratuities, the initial deposit, or anything on board. Celebrity has become way more lax with gift card use in recent months because prior to earlier this year, only $500 in gift card use was allowed per person with a max of $1000 per stateroom. Now, there’s no limit but still, it can only be used for cruise fare. Celebrity also has weird language in their T&C stating that should a cruise that was paid using 3rd party gift cards be cancelled, you will not receive a refund back to your gift cards but not sure how true that is. You may also get some pushback booking a Celebrity cruise through a big travel agent and stacking with gift card use because Celebrity oddly applies gift cards as a “discount” to the base cruise fare, thus lowering the commission the agent receives. Shouldn’t be a huge issue when booking with a small agency, but with large agencies that thrive off volume and are already giving you the cheapest price, that’s something to consider.
I’m in the middle of booking a Celebrity cruise. To make my first payment, I bought a $500 Celebrity gift card via Fluz (7.5% savings) using a CFU that still getting the “2x points for a year” bonus (so, roughly 4.5% back if you value UR points at 1.5 cents). When my travel agent (who saved me about $800 off the widely quoted rate for the cruise) emailed Celebrity to apply the gift card, the Celebrity agent emailed my travel agent back to specifically tell him that the gift card funds were NON-REFUNDABLE once applied to my cruise fare. So, it sounds like what is stated in the T&Cs about gift cards IS true. I put the $900 deposit for the cruise on my Ritz card. I hope the travel protections will cover the non-refundable portion of the fare should something go sideways with the cruise.
You might not be able to use Princess gift card for pre-cruise purchases (e.g,, activities, cruise fare, etc), which is different than Carnival gift cards which are more liberally applied. Also, cruise agent often can utilize the Amex Plat’s cruise benefits too, e.g., for balconies, $200-300 + dinners, which also stacks with agent’s credits.
For future reference, do you need to pay the entire cruise cost with the Platinum card to get Platinum cruise benefits?
I am not sure about that. I have always paid for the cruise using the Amex Plat card when the benefits apply and apply the gift card to the account to cover other things (e.g., excursions, gratuities). Also, there was one time (NCL) when agent was not able to apply the Amex Plat benefits (they had a special blocked rate, basally, they bought a block of rooms and then sell it to customers), but most of times this benefits worked well for me and it could only be applied by an agent (to your point, another benefit of using an agent for cruises).
Yes, I believe you do. My travel agent offered me Amex Plat benefits on top of agency credits and he said I have to pay the entire cruise cost with the Platinum.
Unlike Nick, my wife and I are “gaga” for cruising. We have taken 75 cruises, almost all of them on the major Carnival Corporation cruise lines (Carnival, Holland America, and Princess). Purchased hundreds of discounted GCs on these three cruise lines. And I can say unequivocally that you can use your Princess GCs to pay for your cruise fare as we always do. We don’t usually pay for anything else pre cruise, so won’t comment on that.
When I sailed with carnival before, I saw an option to pay with gift card. I currently have a Princess reservation and I don’t see an option (online) to pay with gift cards. I’m surprised by the difference as they are same company.
AARP also sells Princess gift cards at an 8% discount. This is better than the 5.5% discount from Raise that you list above.
I didn’t realize! Thanks!
I’ve been on 20+ cruises and always use an agent for on board credit, free specialty dinners, spa treatments and bar tabs. Why not get the best deal you can as cruises are no longer the bargain they once were. I also use an agent who participates on the Amex plat program which gives onboard credit if you pay with that card. Also use a credit card that coded cruises as travel (Amex green for example).
If you use a credit card that earns extra points for travel purchases make sure that cruising is included in that card’s travel category. Cards issued be Chase (e.g., Chase Sapphire and IHG Premier) have broad definitions of travel that cruise related purchases. Citi cards (e.g., the Citi Premier), however, generally do not include cruises in their travel related bonus category.
I definitely know that Amex Green does – as I have used them for Viking, Celebrity, Virgin and Holland America.
Citi Custom Cash definitely codes Cruises as travel (just did it 2 last months, $500 each) so strange the Premier doesn’t
Nick is correct in that some agencies have a block of cabins for some cruises. I got a great cabin location + a price that was about 1500 lower than the competition, for the April Eclipse cruise. (In shopping for that cruise Costco was almost 1,000 Higher than HAL itself so don’t take Costco for granted as being best deal ever – including car shopping – Costco offered about 1500 off, I negotiated 8k off)
YMMV
If a cruise is booked relatively far in advance, be sure to keep checking when there are sales going on. I’ve saved even more money by rebooking at times.
How are you rebooking for the cheaper rate? Does your specific room go back into available inventory immediately once cancelled? I thought cruises were locked in once you paid the deposit or fully paid.
Once it is fully paid, it is locked in to my experience. When there is just a deposit – and I see lower prices or deals advertised, I call the TA to see if there is an option to change + save money. Any savings would depend on the difference in OBC, cabin + pricing.
I have been able to keep the same cabin – booking # may change – or not. In the past I saved maybe 800 on 1 cruise, maybe only 300 on another, and some it’s not worth changing because of OBC or other perks (lower price but loss of OBC for example). I have been sailing only on HAL the last couple of years because of the itineraries. Other cruise lines may handle it differently.
I’ve booked with a different/new TA for a 2025 HAL cruise + she told me about AARP OBC if I registered with HAL and also an OBC offer for teachers + retired teachers. You have to provide proof – but the combo increased my OBC by $300. I understand there is a military discount as well.
As a Travel Agent that specializes in cruises, you are spot on! The savings that the various Travel Agencies offer comes from either Group Bookings or special promotions negotiated with the cruise lines – For example, the consortium I’m with may hold 50 cabins at a pre negotiated rate – In addition usually those rates come with additional benefits (drinks/gratuities,etc)- The key is to book early – I’ve had clients on RCCL’s newest ships paying 20% less than what RCCL is offering – Another way to save – if booking NCL is a Cruisenext or Cruisefirst certificate – you can usually buy these direct from NCL and they offer a bonus – For example, pay 250 get $250 free.
Covid proved you wanted a travel agent on your side with cruises – I advocated for my customers and was really able to support them during the pandemic – That’s where companies such as Costco fails – Costco Travel is outsourced, their customer service is horrible – if you have an issue you are out of luck
100% agree with you about Costco. They use a third party that employs people to work in a phone room. Those phone room workers are not experienced travel agents, and in my experience they know absolutely nothing about the travel products they sell.
GREAT post! I am a travel agent who has spent the vast majority of his own life booking personal travel with points and miles and thoroughly enjoyed reading how my lives merged on this topic. Nick, your recap is largely spot on and I have told my friends and family many times to book certain products directly and bypass me, but never on a cruise. Worst case you’ll break even and in so many others cases you’ll end up with easy onboard credit while the agent is compensated by the cruise line with no net impact to you.
In the end the relationship you have with your travel agent is like one with your mechanic. Finding one you trust and have the ability to speak candidly with can make one more aspect of your life easier, more productive, and perhaps land you some unexpected benefits along the way!
I have found that of all the US airlines, earning United points is the hardest for me. Each airline also has a cruise arm, such as Delta cruises, AA cruises, and United Cruises. We often book through United Cruises and depending on cabin, we have gotten up to 10 United Airline points for every $ spent at United Cruises (base cruise cost). A recent cruise booked through United Cruises, and charged to my Reserve card at 3x points earned us about 70,000 United Airline points and about 20,000 Chase points. I did not have to put the spend on my United CC, but because I had the card, we got the bonus points. While you can save a few $’s at Costco, or other places, I think earning 90,000 points is worth a whole lot more than a few hundred $’s saved at Costco. We have a Galapogos trip planned for 16 days and the haul of points for that expensive trip will be over 300,000 Chase and United points.
I have used United cruises also and received miles + good pricing. Used the AARP gift cards + The United card for down payment only. Good OBC and the miles.
I did check UA cruises as another reader recommended it. The miles earning in this case wouldn’t have been worth more, but a good tip for those times when it is!
True – the 2 week eclipse cruise netted 18k and a 3 week Mediterranean cruise netted 28k for cheap cabins without airfare.
And cruise fares change depending on the deals the cruise lines offer. I have rebooked cruises when I save $300+ without losing perks. Usually applies during holiday booking deals, etc and an initial booking far in advance.
My recollection is that all the airlines have the same cruise arm, similar to the way that all the dining programs are operated by one company. A decade or more ago, when we booked a cheap cruise, one person was able to give us the current offers for each of the major US airlines.