Costco Cruises to the South Pacific

The geographical region known as the “South Pacific” is somewhat ill-defined – the term is used differently depending on its context, and it isn’t always clear exactly what countries constitute the South Pacific. However, in the context of Costco Cruises, a division of Costco Travel, the South Pacific has a concrete meaning, and thus it is possible to provide an overview of Costco’s cruises to the South Pacific, which is precisely what we have done below. We also explain how to book Costco cruises to the South Pacific, which the Costco Travel website makes needlessly confusing.

In some ways, this article must be read as a companion to the piece we wrote about Costco cruises to Hawaii. Presumably because of their somewhat close proximity, Costco decided to group Hawaii and the South Pacific together in the “destinations” section of their website. This page isn’t especially important, but it does list any “featured deals” for cruises to either destination, so it is worth checking out. Despite being grouped this way on one section of the website, however, Hawaii and the South Pacific are listed as separate destinations when you use the search tool on the Costco Travel website. Neither of these aspects of the Costco Travel website is particularly confusing, even if the organizational scheme seems a bit bizarre – why not give each destination their own “featured deals” page? – but what is confusing is that when you search for Costco cruises to Hawaii, a list is generated that not only includes Hawaiian cruises, but also a bunch of South Pacific cruises. When you search for South Pacific cruises, the problem isn’t reciprocal – you are only given South Pacific cruises. (Technically, there is one Hawaiian cruise listed when you search for cruises to the South Pacific, but it is a Hawaiian cruise to the South Pacific, so everything is in order.)

Fortunately, despite the organizational shortcomings of the Costco Travel website, you don’t actually have to search through both the cruises to Hawaii and the cruises to the South Pacific to find all of Costco’s South Pacific cruises. Even though several South Pacific cruises are listed when you search for Hawaiian cruises, the former are also listed when you search for South Pacific cruises. In other words, when you search for South Pacific cruises on the Costco Travel website, you get the full array of South Pacific cruises, regardless of the fact that these cruises are inexplicably cross-listed when you search for Hawaiian cruises. So, the organization of Costco’s site, such as it is, really only leads to one problem: when you search for Hawaiian cruises, your results are cluttered with a bunch of South Pacific cruises. (Mind you, to determine that the relative chaos of Costco’s site amounts to one problem was fairly hard to figure out – just be glad that we tediously compared search results so that you didn’t have to.)

As for what cruises Costco actually offers to the South Pacific, the majority involve Australia or New Zealand. By “involve,” we mean these cruises begin and end in Australia or New Zealand, although occasionally Australia is the destination of a cruise instead of its starting- and stopping-point. (There are a couple of longer cruises that go from Papeete to Sydney, for instance.) What is true of Australia is also true of the other destinations in the South Pacific – e.g., French Polynesia and Indonesia (if you count Indonesia as part of the South Pacific) – although, again, there are exceptions. There is a cruise that goes from Fort Lauderdale to Papeete, for instance, and several cruises start in parts of Asia (Singapore seems especially popular), sail to the South Pacific, and then return to the port of embarkation. Thus, Costco cruises either begin and end in the South Pacific region or sail in and out of it. There are more of the former because there are so many cruises to and from Australia, but there are a decent number of cruises for which the South Pacific is the destination.

With this information in mind, you are now equipped to look into Costco cruises to the South Pacific. Check out the featured deals to see if anything catches your eye, and then you can move onto regular searches. You can safely ignore all searches involving Hawaii as a destination because any South Pacific cruise listed as “Hawaiian cruises” will also be (properly) listed as a “South Pacific cruise.” If you need more general information before moving forward, check out our guide and overview of Costco cruises.