What are the best cruise booking hacks to save money? — featuring Life Well Cruised

0:00 if you're planning a cruise and want to save money even before you get on board your cruise ship these Cruise booking hacks can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars on your cruise hi there I'm Ilana from the website lifepwellcruise.com welcome or welcome back to my channel now I know a lot of

0:20 people are trying to save a little bit of money on their cruises this year the prices of Cruises have increased and we kind of need to do everything we can to save a hundred here fifty dollars there maybe even much more now in this video I'm going to be sharing with you 10 Cruise booking hacks that I guarantee

0:38 are going to save you money now some of them you may have heard before but others will be completely new now before I get started I did want to mention that if you like this video if you find it helpful informative or enjoyable in any way then please do give this video a big thumbs up I really do appreciate it and

0:51 please subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already let's get started number one when possible book your cruise on board and or book a future Cruise deposit now not all cruise lines are created equal on this one some of them have better programs than others and better savings and advantages than

1:08 others and to be honest sometimes you may not get the lowest price so why would you do this well first of all as long as you book with a refundable deposit then you really have nothing to lose but you are going to get an extra bonus of either onboard credits to use on your next Cruise or you may be able

1:26 to apply them to the cruise you're on now that onboard credit can really add up it can range anywhere from about fifty dollars as an onboard credit all the way up to 200 300 and more per cabin now something that you might find is that may not actually be the lowest price so in that case you could do a

1:43 couple of things either you can still book it and I'm going to tell you what to do next or you can make a future Cruise deposit that does allow you flexibility number two book on board and then transfer that booking to an agent now when you transfer your booking to an agent and it can be an individual travel

1:59 agent it can be an online travel agency but you're going to also benefit from any of the extra advantages that they have so they may have a group on board which means you're going to get an additional onboard credit they may be running a promotion with cruise lines a lot of the big travel agencies that

2:16 specialize in cruises do this they're able to offer sometimes free gratuities or an upgrade in one of the packages and you could benefit from that by switching your booking over to a travel agent now something to be aware of is that you may have a limited amount of time to do this

2:32 so you can contact your travel agent when you do get off the cruise to ask about that and by the way if you're already dealing with a travel agent that you like and you've booked that particular cruise with them the cruise line will usually automatically apply that booking to your travel agent so

2:47 they will continue to help you and to service that booking after your cruise number three look for refer a friend promotions now different cruise lines have this and something that I've been seeing is sometimes they have this through the different travel agencies that they are working with so that is

3:03 something to look out for princess for instance has a refer a friend program so you could take a look at that but other cruise lines have this as well and then you would get an additional onboard credit or an additional benefit and your friend who is booking would get one too number four check out the lowest price

3:19 options so there has been a trend over the last few years of quite a few Cruise Lines going towards those perks packages or all-inclusive options now personally I really like them I see the value in them for my vacation however I have heard of people as the prices of these promotions kind of have increased I've

3:37 heard of people saying they've re-looked at that lowest price and they've really calculated how much do they drink do they need the drink package on their particular sailing how many days are they going to be spending in Port if they're spending those days in Port they're not going to be on the cruise

3:52 ship drinking really is that beverage package that perk as valuable for them also take a look at the other perks if it includes specialty dining is that something important to you or is it not that important to you and maybe you might find that if you go with that lowest price fare that that might be the

4:07 best value even if you do add on some of the extras separately now by the way please let me know what you think about the all-inclusive perks options do you like them do you prefer the lowest fare options do you still think they're as good a value as they once were please let me know down in the comments below

4:22 bid for cabin upgrades now this one is not for everybody but if you are not particularly picky about the cruise ship cabin that you have consider booking the lowest category cabin that you are going to be happy with so the lowest price in an interior cabin or the lowest price in an Ocean View cabin balcony Etc and then

4:42 bid for an upgrade for something that is better now this is not for everybody because if you end up getting a cabin in a location that you won't be happy with well then you're going to be very disappointed but if you're not particular about the cabin that you're in why book a balcony cabin and pay the

4:57 full price when you can book an interior cabin and you can bid for that balcony upgrade and maybe be able to get that for only about 200 or 250 dollars per person which might be significantly less than you would have paid on the overall booking if you booked that at the beginning and by by the way I say this

5:13 at least partially based on a personal experience a few months ago we were on a Norwegian cruise and we had booked a balcony cabin that was absolutely fine we knew what we wanted but we met several people on embarkation day the elevators and walking through this ship who told us they were so happy they

5:27 booked interior cabins they bid for an upgrade not a huge amount and they were very happy that they did get them now this Cruise booking tip isn't a big secret but it is something that I think a lot of people underestimate that it makes that big a difference so be flexible if you can with your dates even

5:46 just a little bit so for instance if you wanted to cruise at the beginning of February always take a look at the week before the week after if you can be flexible even with the cruise lines you might be able to find that a similar Cruise a similar itinerary just by moving it one week forward one week back

6:04 or even to a similar cruise line or even on a ship on the same cruise line that it can make a huge difference it can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars on that cruise always always always check for Price drops now I think a lot of experienced Cruisers know this one already but if you're a new Cruiser

6:23 this might not be something that you think about you want to check for Price drops now in particular ideally book out as early as possible and then from that point on you'll want to keep checking to see if the price has dropped for the category of cabin that you are in now something to keep in mind is always look

6:41 not only at the price dropping but what are the perks that you did get at the time that you booked are those the same perks that would be available now if you had an onboard credit that was a promotion at the time check to see if that same onboard credit either more or less is available now now sometimes

6:58 people ask how do you do that so you can do a simple check just on your cruise line website I probably would do that before you call the cruise line or your travel agents and you could basically make a mock booking and just check what the final price is going to be and you also do have different websites that

7:12 will allow you to set up sort of a price drop alert so you can use those as well now I haven't seen any that have been 100 reliable because they don't always take into account the different things like those promotions but if you do have a really good one please let me know down in the comments below now I am

7:29 saving the best for last and I know it's one that even experienced Cruisers don't often do it's a new tip that I've just learned in the past few months so I haven't really shared it very often so that one is coming up but the next tip is to use a travel agent now I know a lot of people wonder about this what are

7:48 the perks of using a travel agent well many travel agents as long as they specialize in cruises and they do work within an agency that books a lot of cruises they really do have access to some of the very best prices in particular if you are booking early now beyond the prices they'll have extra

8:03 offers that they could usually give you and they are there to answer any questions that you have along the way okay so this next tip actually saved me me almost a thousand dollars on one of the cabins that I booked for an upcoming cruise and basically what it is is book a refundable deposit early on when you

8:22 book your cruise if you want that flexibility if you don't care about that and you know what you want to book then book a non-refundable deposit but I like to book refundable deposits and oftentimes they are a little bit higher than a refundable booking so do that but as you get a little bit closer to the

8:37 final payment and you know that you are going to be going on that cruise maybe you've booked your air you booked your insurance so you are getting close to your final payments and the decision really has been made at that point check what the non-refundable rate is you can usually switch your refundable rate to

8:53 the non-refundable rate now of course just like always you want to check that you're not losing out on any promotions that you have value but that rate can still be a lot lower and then you can make that switch and you can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars now please let me know what are some of

9:10 your favorite Cruise booking tip tips and hacks that have worked for you please let me know down in the comments below if you enjoyed this video please do give it a big thumbs up I really do appreciate it and please subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already bye for now and happy cruising