RSVP Cruises

RSVP Cruises is one of the more confusing companies (or rather phrases) that you might encounter. By “RSVP Cruises,” one might mean one of the cruise vacations offered through RSVP Vacations, which organizes gay cruises (or actually gay and lesbian cruises, but most of their clients are men). However, “RSVP Cruises” could just as easily lead you (for reasons that will become clear below) to Jerry and David’s Cruises and Tours, a company distinct from RSVP Vacations (but they have a partnership of sorts because Jerry and David’s, a travel agency, can book RSVP Vacations’ cruises for their clients) that also specializes in gay and lesbian cruise vacations (along with gay and lesbian tours, but they emphasize cruises). Still further, one might search for “RSVP cruises” merely to find out something about booking a cruise, and nothing about gay cruises specifically. So, there is nothing straightforward about “RSVP Cruises,” but below we sort it out for you.

It is of course impossible to directly discern the intention behind an anonymous search query, but seemingly most people who are looking for RSVP Cruises are looking for the cruises that are organized through RSVP Vacations. RSVP Vacations has been offering these cruises for nearly 30 years, and they declare themselves “the originator of the gay and lesbian cruise concept” on their website (RSVPVacations.com). Although in the early 90s the company operated their own ship, Sea Spirit, they now offer cruises using only cruise ships belonging to different cruise lines. For instance, an upcoming cruise to Alaska will utilize a Holland America Line ship. You can directly book your cruise through the company, or you can book through a travel agent. (These are the only two options, as we explore in some depth in our article “How to Book an RSVP Cruise.”)

Booking your cruise through a travel agent brings us to Jerry and David’s Cruises and Tours, a travel agency that specifically caters to the gay and lesbian community. Through this company, you can book the cruises organised by RSVP Vacations, as well as any number of other types of vacations. The complication involving “RSVP Cruises” is merely this: Jerry and David’s uses the URL RSVPCruises.com for their company. So, there is technically no entity (for lack of a better word) known as “RSVP Cruises.” This is either part of the URL that leads you to the travel agency Jerry and David’s, or else it is merely the short way to refer to the cruises arranged by RSVP Vacations. It is just confusing that there are two companies – one a travel agency, the other an organizer of cruises – that both serve the gay and lesbian community in a linked fields, and while the company names are distinct, their URLs are not.

Finally, as we briefly mentioned above, one might search for “RSVP Cruises” with no interest in taking a gay and lesbian cruise. One might associate “RSVP” with “booking” or “reservation” (technically, “RSVP” is short for “répondez, s’il vous plaît,” a French phrase that means “reply, if you please” or more simply “please reply”) and then on the quest to book a cruise one might further search for “RSVP Cruises,” which will only lead them into a confusing world of gay and lesbian cruising.

By now we hope you have a firm grasp of “RSVP cruises.” It took a little work, and we became vastly more acquainted with the gay and lesbian cruise world than we anticipated, but the clarity of mind feels good.