Did you know that cancelling your existing cruise vacation and rebooking it at current rates could be saving you money? Our cancellation calculator will help you identify these opportunities in 3 easy steps.
Cancellation Calculator
If you find a better deal on your cruise fare after booking, you may think that there’s no hope of saving the money already paid. However, according to a new analysis by leading digital cruise advisor Cruisewatch, there is still a potential to save a significant amount of money.
Recent research by Cruisewatch.com, a cruise advisor known for its innovative price prediction, has shown that prices on cruises can drop significantly as the departure date nears. “Most cruisers tend to book their trips four to six months in advance,” explains Markus Stumpe, CEO of Cruisewatch, “but it could be very beneficial for them to cancel and then rebook their cruise at fares reduced up to 71%.” This is particularly true if the chosen cruise offers less-strict fee structures.
Generally, cruise lines break down into three cancellation categories: soft, moderate, and strict.
Lines like Celebrity Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line, and Star Clippers, offer “softer” fees, and may charge only a 25% cancellation fee on average at least 30 days before departure.
Moderate lines, including Viking Cruises, Windstar Cruises, Royal Caribbean, Carnival, MSC Cruises, Costa Cruise Line, Hurtigruten Cruise Lines, Cunard, Crystal Cruises, SeaDream, Princess Cruises, and Disney Cruise Line, offer a little more wiggle room, though they also charge about 90% for cancellations occurring within 30 days of departure. However, cancellation fees average only 15% 90 days or more before departure.
Strict lines, on the other hand, like Oceania Cruises, Ponant, Azamara Club Cruises, Regent Seven Seas, Silversea Cruises, and Seabourn tend to offer little or no refunds unless you cancel at least 120 days in advance. Within the last 60 days you normally have to pay a 100% fee.
To illustrate the potential savings, take this possible real-world situation: Someone books his/her dream cruise on Celebrity Eclipse 150 days before departure and pays a total of $5,000. Forty days before departure, this person sees an offer on the same ship with a savings of 40%. At this time the cancellation fee on Celebrity is 20%, so the person opts to rebook and saves $1,000.
Cruise Cancellation Fee by cruisewatch.com
Cancellation fee structures for most cruise lines are often very strict and difficult to understand, and multiple factors influence each policy. The length of the cruise, how far in advance you’re able to cancel, destination, cabin type, or cruise category can all contribute to the final cancellation fee. Booking special deals may mean higher cancellation fees. In most cases, deposits paid are also non-refundable. Often you will also need to draft a formal written document in order to cancel the cruise.
If the cancellation fees are prohibitive, there may be alternatives for recouping the difference in prices. Some cruise lines offer onboard credit as reimbursement for price differences, or offer significant upgrades where available.
The best way to determine whether it’s worth it to cancel and rebook your cruise is to take a closer look at your cruise line’s cancellation policy. However, if you’re still in the planning stages, you are likely still comparing prices, policies, and packages. This time-consuming process is a must for those seeking the best deals, but using innovative new online tools can help save time in the short term, and money long-term.
Use this link www.cruisewatch.com/cancellation.php to see your fees and rebooking options at a glance.
When it comes to finding the best value on cruises, it can start to feel like you’re lost at sea when trying to navigate over a million prices that change from minute to minute. Fluctuating prices, thousands of destinations, hundreds of cruise lines with thousands of reviews — it’s enough to make you seasick!
Luckily, we keeps your head above the waves by providing a simple, easy overview of everything you need to know — from cabin type to reviews — with an added bonus thrown in. How do we do it? We’re glad you asked.
What you can find in this article:
We’ve made it our business to become industry leaders when it comes to pricing, and the price of a cruise plays a big part of its value. We’ve spent years researching price information on every sailing in order to say with considerable certainty whether a particular cruise price is a good value or not. We check our extensive log of data to present a clear, simple summary of price changes. This means you get an honest, accurate, and real-time quote on every cruise you find on CruiseWatch — something you won’t find anywhere else.
Which type of cabin you choose will ultimately affect the price, but we make it easy to see which cabins currently offer the best value. Generally speaking, balcony cabins and suites will always be more expensive than interior or ocean view cabins, but even balcony staterooms saw a dip in price this year. We show you the current price of each cabin type, along with the difference in both amount and percentage, and give you our expert opinion on how good a deal that cabin is. We take the time and put in the effort so you don’t have to.
The importance of pricing to value is pretty self-explanatory, but a huge component of what determines whether we classify a cruise as a great value or not is the onboard experience — including how much space there is on the ship. Nobody likes to be packed in like sardines (even, we assume, the sardines), so we take into account the size and layout of each ship before we give it our CruiseWatch Best Deal seal of approval.
We admit we’ve enjoyed our share of Lido decks and unlimited buffets, but if that’s all a cruise has to offer, boredom can set in fast. That’s why we research the entertainment options available for each and every cruise on our site, and let you know how they measure up before you book. While we can’t vouch for the quality of each ship’s karaoke night, our best-value cruises will offer plenty of other options to escape your sister’s third Celine Dion rendition of the night.
Data, data everywhere — but what do people think? We know that analysis can only go so far, which is why past customer reviews of each ship contribute to its overall value rating. Our best-value cruises have thousands of reviews and have consistently provided top-quality service and experiences to cruise-goers in the past, which is why we feel comfortable recommending them to you now.
As if all this weren’t enough, CruiseWatch also offers real-time price prediction on every cruise, based on years of research and sophisticated artificial intelligence powered algorithms. The science may be tricky, but the outcome isn’t: on every cruise we let you know whether we think you should book now or expect a better price later. This incredible and innovative tool further simplifies your experience, saving you time and stress, and giving you even more value.
Sure, you could find all this information yourself, but why bother? Not only is CruiseWatch an industry leader when it comes to price analysis and prediction, our services are 100% FREE. That’s right — free price monitoring, free prediction analysis, free peace of mind.
We live up to our motto… RIGHT CRUISE. RIGHT TIME. RIGHT PRICE.
Did you ever wonder where the cruise ships are located right now? We did some research and created a handy google maps page that show the location of all know cruise ships today.
Our map is getting updated through two sources:
Check it out:
Show location of all cruise shipsT
he chart on the right hand side shows you the historic pricing for oceanview cabins on Celebrity Eclipse. You can see how the pricing changes over time with the left hand side of the graph showing 600 days before departure and the right hand side being departure day.
We have normalized all pricing at 100 so that you can see price drops and hikes. The orange line is the average pricing line with the other lines showing statistical boundaries.
In this example, the pricing trend is generally upwards in the beginning with moderate increases of about 3%. Price reductions start about 60 days before departure with the lowest pricing around 40 days.
Of course, this is just the average. Cruise pricing will always be impacted by individual demand and supply. As you can see, there are sailings that have significant price increases fairly early. Such sailings are typically in high demand seasons (such as public holidays). And there is also a very active last minute season with strong pricing drops about 90 to 25 days before departure (red line).
Keep this in mind when looking at current cruise prices and check out the pricing history of the ship you are interested in. To do this, browse through the cruise lines, pick a ship, click on “analytics” and then choose a cabin type. Happy savings!
Browse Cruise Lines
Our free monitoring engine keeps track of cruise pricing for thousands of sailings in the upcoming months. Now you can use that knowledge to your advantage.
Using our monitoring service is free and simple. All you need to do is sign up. There are two types of alerts that we sending out right now, and we will be adding more features soon. The easiest alert is our general daily price drop information email. It is just one email containing the most relevant price changes for the day (across all monitored cruises).
You can also select specific departures on our site and enable notifications for these. You will then only get an email when the price of your selected cruise has been changed.
You can view all price changes in the last 24 hours on our special cruise price drop page.