As we explained in a previous article about Hawaii cruises, Hawaii, despite being a major tourist destination, isn’t necessarily known for its cruises, at least compared to some of the major cruise destinations. Hawaii’s relatively small role in the cruise industry is also reflected by the number of cruises that sail there. This can be seen when looking at the total number of cruises that sail to and from Hawaii every year, and it can also be seen when looking at the Costco cruises to Hawaii, which is the focus of the present article. Since there aren’t an overwhelming number of Costco cruises to Hawaii, which can’t be said about Costco’s Caribbean or Mediterranean offerings, for example, it is actually possible to provide a fairly thorough overview of what exactly is available. Below we do exactly this, outlining Costco’s Hawaiian cruises and explaining how you can go about booking one, which Costco makes slightly more complicated than you might hope.
When looking into Costco’s cruises to Hawaii, you’ll probably want to start on the Costco Travel page dedicated to Hawaiian cruises. This page lists Costco’s “featured deals” for cruises to Hawaii, which are always worth checking out in case one of these discounted cruises fits with whatever vacation plans you might have. This page also has the standard search tool for Costco cruises, so you can move right on to researching other cruises after you’ve reviewed the featured deals.
One thing you’ll notice about Costco’s Hawaiian cruises page is that it isn’t exclusively for Hawaii, but rather for Hawaii and the South Pacific. In general, this is fine and makes a certain amount of sense given Hawaii’s relatively close proximity to the South Pacific, but what is confusing is that Costco lists “Hawaii” and the “South Pacific” as different destinations on their search tool, but then blends the results. Thus, if you search for cruises to Hawaii in January of 2015 (by selecting “Hawaii” as the destination and “January 2015” as the departure month using the search tool), to pick a random date, you’ll get a list of results for cruises to Hawaii and the South Pacific (like Australia and New Zealand). This is annoying because you aren’t able to only target Hawaiian cruises even when you explicitly list “Hawaii” as your cruise destination, but it isn’t too much of a problem to overcome because there aren’t that many Hawaiian or South Pacific cruises to look through. Even more importantly, while there are South Pacific cruises listed when you search for Hawaiian cruises, the reverse doesn’t appear to be the case. Thus, to find Hawaiian cruises, you only have to list “Hawaii” as your search destination, and you don’t also need to search through the South Pacific cruises, as no Hawaiian cruises come up when you search for South Pacific cruises. (The one exception is a cruise from Hawaii to Syndey, but this isn’t really a Hawaiian cruise; it is a South Pacific cruise that happens to depart from Honolulu.)
So, all that said, what are the Costco cruises to Hawaii? As we emphasized above, there really aren’t that many, but what Hawaiian cruises are available in general can for the most part be booked through Costco. We recommend reading our guide to Hawaiian cruises to get a sense of the different types of Hawaiian cruises that are out there, but the bottom line is that there are cruises that depart from and return to Hawaii, and there are cruises that depart from a non-Hawaiian port, stop by Hawaii, then return to the non-Hawaiian port. The first type of cruises are seven-day voyages offered only by Norwegian’s Pride of America, and second type of cruises are generally longer, depart from ports in California, and are offered by multiple cruise lines. Costco sells both types of cruises, and these are the only ways to sail to Hawaii if you book with Costco (unless you book a multi-month world cruise through Costco, which often stop in Hawaii).
So, to recap, Costco could make finding their Hawaiian cruises easier, but since there aren’t that many of them, they are easy enough to track down. You simply have to select “Hawaii” as your cruises destination using the search tool on the Costco Travel website, and then ignore the random South Pacific cruises that are mixed into your search results. If you are looking for more general information about Costco Travel, check out our guide and overview of Costco cruises.
