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Tag: Repositioning Cruise

  • Discover the Perks of a Repositioning Cruise

    Discover the Perks of a Repositioning Cruise

    Did you ever wonder what happens to the cruise ships that sail around Alaska in the summertime when winter rolls around? If you checked into that question, you would have learned about a somewhat unknown event called a repositioning cruise. This is how cruise lines move a ship to a new home port without the huge expense of sailing with an empty boat. The repositioning can be due to a routine seasonal change, the ship going to a new home port or even the ship traveling to a new port for a retrofit or service. But the result is a unique opportunity for passengers as well as a reduced fare.

    A Unique Voyage

    If you are looking for a way to try something other than the typical Caribbean cruise, then check out the ships that are repositioning from Europe to the Caribbean or the United States. Another regular repositioning destination is Alaska as those ships only tour during the summer and then in the winter they set sail for Hawaii, California or even the Caribbean. In some cases, the voyage will last for several weeks and can result in longer periods of time at sea between ports. But during that time at sea, passengers can enjoy all of the features and the amenities of the ship including the spa, movies, shows, athletic facilities and the fabulous dining.

    Being an Off Season Tourist

    Booking a repositioning cruise can be very similar to booking a trip to a resort in the off season. Rarely are the repositioning cruises full as many people can’t spend several weeks at sea. So those who are enjoying the more leisurely pace of the long haul get more personal service, there is far less waiting in line for activities and there are no crowds to contend with in popular parts of the ship like at the pool and in the dining room.

    Check Out the High Seas

    Because a big draw for most cruise tourists is getting the opportunity to visit exotic ports of call, cruise ships rarely venture too far from land. So getting to experience the vastness of the open seas is not always a part of the average cruise. But repositioning cruises almost always require a long stint on the open sea. So if that taste of life on ocean is what you desire, then a repositioning cruise is tailor made for you.

    Experiencing a unique voyage at an affordable cost is only the beginning of the benefits of taking a cruise that is scheduled to relocate a ship. The relaxed atmosphere and no crowded decks or dining rooms are certain to increase your enjoyment of the cruise as you take in the new and exciting sites. And with the greatly reduced cabin prices, you might even find that a room with a view or even a private balcony is right within your budget. Two cruise lines that make finding their repositioning cruises easy are Royal Caribbean and Norwegian.

     

  • How to Find a Repositioning Cruise

    How to Find a Repositioning Cruise

    Finding a repositioning cruise (or “repo cruise” or “transitional cruise”) is harder than you might imagine (if you have ever even imagined finding repositioning cruises at all – they are often overlooked). Why exactly it is difficult to find a repositioning cruise is a bit strange – they are basically a win-win for cruise lines and passengers alike – but the world doesn’t always make sense. What matters is that they are a little hard to track down, so we’ve decided to outline exactly how to find a repositioning cruise below.

    First, we should point out that we’ve been rather aggressively covering repositioning cruises lately, so we have a lot of good information on this site about them if you need to get caught up. If you have no idea what a repositioning cruise is, check out our article Repositioning Cruises: The Basics, and if you like the concept of these cruises and think you might want to take one, you should look at the cruise lines that offer repositioning cruises and also confirm that you are the type of person who can take a repositioning cruise. You’ll also want to look into the precise types of discounts and deals you can get with a repositioning cruise. If reading all of this convinces you that you want to take a repositioning cruise, continue to read this article, and then move on to the final stage, booking a repositioning cruise. (There is some inevitable overlap between these articles, but they all explore different angels that demand separate treatment.)

    The first reason repositioning cruises can be hard to track down is that they are often not explicitly billed as “repositioning cruises.” The fact that they are also called “repo cruises” and “transitional cruises” isn’t really a problem because searching for any of these terms will bring up the same information. Rather, the problem resides in the fact if you are booking a cruise through a deal website (e.g., CruiseDeals.com) or through a cruise line website (e.g., Carnival’s), there is rarely an option to search for “repositioning cruises.” Along with the standard cruise destinations, you’ll only find options for transatlantic or transpacific cruises, which may or may not be repositioning cruises, and in any case these two options don’t exhaust the range of repositioning cruises that are available. This isn’t to say that the websites have no listing of whatever repositioning cruises they offer, but only that you can’t search for them in a straightforward way by using the “search for a cruise” tools on the site.

    Why is this the case? In truth, we aren’t entirely sure, and as we said above, we think it is strange that it isn’t easier to find repositioning cruises. Passengers like them because they are relatively cheap, and cruise lines like them because they allow them to fill ships with paying customers when they are simply relocating vessels to another region of the globe. One possible reason that they are a little harder to find is that there aren’t that many of them in any given year. Generally, a ship only needs to move twice a year, so even a big cruise line might only have a dozen repositioning cruises a year. This theory is supported by the fact that the one major cruise line we’ve been able to find that makes it easy to locate repositioning cruises is Norwegian, which happens to offer a disproportionate number of these cruise per year. (They actually offer far more than Carnival, despite the fact that the latter is a much bigger cruise line.)

    Given that you largely can’t search for repositioning cruises through cruise line websites or deal sites, how can you find them? First, there are a few sites out there that are specifically dedicated to repositioning cruises. A helpful one that we make reference to in our article about booking repositioning cruises is RepositioningCruise.com, on which you can find hundreds of different vacation possibilities. Another good strategy is to simply work search engines for repositioning cruises that match your criteria. For example, if you are looking for a repositioning cruise with Disney, just search for “repositioning cruise Disney,” or something like that, and you’ll find what you are looking for.

    And so, as you can see, finding a repositioning cruise is not really difficult per se. The process can be like booking any sort of highly specific cruise, but you have to know what to expect going into the search. In particular, you have to realize that the process of booking a repositioning cruise isn’t always straightforward if you like to use deal sites or cruise line sites, and that as a consequence you might have to alter the way you normally find cruises.

  • How to Book Repositioning Cruises

    How to Book Repositioning Cruises

    Repositioning cruises are, as implied, cruises that reposition ships from one region of the globe to another. Cruise ships need to be relocated to fit the demands of the cruising seasons, and it is an added bonus that a cruise line can charge passengers to come along for the relocation. This much was covered in our article on the basics of repositioning cruises, which are also called “repo cruises” and “transitional cruises.” We also covered the discounts available for repositioning cruises, as well as explained the type of people who can take one of these unique vacations. But this still leaves a gap in our coverage: how can you actually book a repositioning cruise? You might know that you want to and can take a repositioning cruise, and you might even know which type you want to take, but still not know exactly how to book one. As a consequence, we have explained below how to book a repositioning cruise.

    First, we should briefly mention what has been implied by our other articles on this topic: if you are taking a repositioning cruise, booking the cruise itself is only one of several arrangements necessary to make. In addition to the regular preparations required by any cruise, you need to arrange a way to get home after your voyage, which will of course start in one region of the globe and end in another. Unless you live by a port, you always need to figure out a way to get home, but the problem is obviously amplified when taking a repositioning cruise. You can’t simply book a round-trip domestic flight to, say, Florida, supplying you with a way to and from the port of departure; rather, you’ll have to book (to continue the example) a one-way flight to Florida, and then a one-way ticket back home from wherever you end up. This is all obvious, but worth mentioning just the same. The cruise is not your only concern.

    That said, how do you book the cruise itself? As is the case with virtually any vacation, you can handle the matter yourself or outsource it to a travel agent. As we’ve mentioned many times before, travel agents are overlooked in the internet age, but partially without reason. To be sure, it is easier to book a vacation now than it was even 10 years ago, but this doesn’t mean you’ll always find the best prices. Moreover, despite the abundance of readily accessible information online, it still takes a considerable amount of time to arrange a vacation. These two considerations, combined with the fact that travel agents tend to charge relatively modest fees, may make the prospect of using an agent attractive. This is especially true if the repositioning cruise is part of a larger travel agenda, as is often the case. Don’t forget the old way of doing things just because there is a new way of doing things.

    But suppose you want to book the cruise yourself – what then? There are a couple different obvious places to start. One of the more helpful sites we’ve come across for repositioning cruises is the appropriately named RepositioningCruise.com. In addition to listing hundreds of upcoming repositioning cruises, which you can arrange by criteria like price and departure date, the site has a wealth of information related to this often overlooked slice of the cruise industry. It is definitely a great first place to look if you are considering repositioning cruises. At the very least, you’ll get a sense of what is available and how much it will cost, and if you feel like booking directly through them, you can call their toll-free number (which is never far from your field of vision on their website). The same advice applies, mutatis mutandis, to other cruise deal sites, although interestingly the biggest sites for booking vacations (e.g., Travelocity and Expedia) do not directly market “repositioning cruises.” This is actually true of the websites of the cruise line’s themselves. Rarely are there pages strictly dedicated to repositioning cruises and the discounts associated with them.

    As you can see, booking a repositioning cruise is slightly different from booking a regular cruise. Some of the same methods can be applied, but since repositioning cruises only constitute a small percentage of the total number of cruises per year, not a ton of light is shed on them. Certainly travel agents know all about them, and plenty of information can be found online, but setting one up might require slightly more effort than arranging your standard, week-long cruise to the Caribbean. However, the prices of repositioning cruises are hard to beat, so any extra effort required to book one is probably worth it.

    If you want to learn more about repositioning cruises, check out the rest of the articles (that are not already linked to above) in our series about them:

    How to Find a Repositioning Cruise
    Repositioning Cruises: Which Cruise Lines Offer Them?

  • Repositioning Cruises: Which Cruise Lines Offer Them?

    Repositioning Cruises: Which Cruise Lines Offer Them?

    Repositioning cruises serve a crucial function in the global cruise industry, but they are often overlooked. This is at least partially understandable, given that only certain people can take advantage of the discounts and deals offered by a repositioning cruise, and also that cruise lines often don’t explicitly advertise these voyages as “repositioning cruises.” This latter point is important, as it can cause people to operate on the mistaken assumption that not many cruise lines actually offer repositioning cruises. In fact, almost all the major cruise lines, and a number of smaller cruise lines as well, operate repositioning cruises. They have to relocate their ships somehow, and they may as well transport their vessels with lots of paying customers on board.

    First, let’s take a look at the list of cruise lines (listed in alphabetical order) that offer respositioning cruises. It is possible that we missed a cruise line – there are scores of them – and of course it is not guaranteed that every one of these companies is advertising a repositioning cruise at any given time of the year, but the list should be close to comprehensive, and all the cruise lines should offer at least one respositioning cruise a year.

    Azamara Club Cruises
    Carnival
    Celebrity
    Costa
    Croisières de France (CDF)
    Crystal
    Cunard
    Disney
    Fred. Olsen
    Holland America
    MSC Cruises
    Norwegian
    Oceania
    P&O Cruises
    Paul Gauguin Cruises
    Princess
    Pullmantur
    Regent
    Royal Caribbean
    Seabourn
    SeaDream
    Silversea
    Swan Hellenic
    Windstar

    The list is fairly self-explanatory – you can book repositioning cruises with these cruise lines – but we’ll note a couple of things about it. First, this is a very diverse list. The huge cruise lines are of course represented (Carnival, Royal Caribbean, etc.), but so are lots of small lines, which tend to be the companies that attempt to fill specific niches of the market. You have companies like Seabourn and Silversea offering luxury cruises, and cruise lines like CDF that primarily cater to french-speaking passengers, to give a couple of examples. The variety one finds in the larger cruise industry is reflected in the world of repositioning cruises. Second, and obviously, the number of repositioning cruises offered by each of these cruise lines in any given year varies widely. For example, a fairly small line like Fred. Olson only offers one repositioning cruise in the next year – from Santiago, Chile to Sydney, Australia – whereas some of the larger lines offer dozens. However, the number of repositioning cruises offered is not only a function of a cruise line’s size. Carnival is the largest cruise line in the world, yet it offers far fewer repositioning cruises than, for instance, Norwegian. (To be sure, Norwegian is still a large cruise line, but it is not nearly the size of Carnival.) The number of repositioning cruises is of course partially tied to the size of a cruise line, but the needs of a company are more relevant. Some cruise lines shift ships around a lot more, which necessitates more repositioning cruises.

    Clearly, there is no shortage of cruise lines that offer repositioning cruises. If you are interested in taking one of these cruises, this is a good thing, as you’ll have more options to choose from as you deliberate about your vacation. You might even get to sail with your favorite cruise line, or in any case you should be able to find one that suits your needs, whatever those needs may be.

    If you want to learn more about repositioning cruises, check out the rest of the articles (that are not already linked to above) in our series about them:

    Repositioning Cruises: The Basics
    How to Find a Repositioning Cruise
    Repositioning Cruises: Who Can Take Them?
    How to Book Repositioning Cruises

  • Repositioning Cruises: What Kinds of Discounts and Deals are Available?

    Repositioning Cruises: What Kinds of Discounts and Deals are Available?

    Having explained the basics of repositioning cruises and described the sort of people who can take transitional cruises (as repositioning cruises are sometimes known), we figured we should now delve into the specific types of cruises you can take. After all, even if you gathered that you like the idea of repositioning cruises and have determined you are able to take one after reading these first two articles, this still doesn’t tell you much about what possibilities actually await you when you start looking into taking a repositioning cruise. Where and when exactly can you take a repositioning cruise? What kinds of deals or discounts can you get by taking a repositioning cruise? To these and similar questions we now turn our attention.

    First, we should mention that the vast majority of repositioning cruises are in some sense discounted, so asking about the availability of discounted repositioning cruises often amounts to simply asking about the availability of repositioning cruises in general. Of course, some repositioning cruises are cheaper than others (in terms of both total cost and percentage saved), but most of them are substantially marked down from the per-diem cost of a regular cruise. Indeed, a repositioning cruise is often subject to even more discounts, as you can frequently find a deal for a repositioning cruise that is less than the cruise line’s brochure price. (Look at the deals on, say, RepositioningCruise.com, and you’ll see that almost every fare is steeply discounted from the cruise line’s official starting price for the cruise.) You are therefore able to find some incredibly cheap cruises. Cruises that might normally cost thousands of dollars can be had for hundreds, and very long cruises that would normally cost a significant portion of one’s yearly salary can be had for a thousand dollars or so. So, basically all repositioning cruises are discounted cruises, and often verily heavily discounted ones at that.

    Because of the seasons of the cruise industry, repositioning cruises tend to fall into predictable patterns, with a large number of vessels heading the same direction more or less at once. The most common offerings tend to fit into two categories. First, there are transatlantic voyages, as when a vessel used for the Mediterranean heads to the Caribbean in the fall (or the opposite direction in the spring). Second, there are cruises that go from Alaska to Hawaii at about the same time as the transatlantic repositioning cruises. Once the summer season is over in Alaska, lots of ships head to Hawaii for the winter season (which then, of course, go back again to Alaska the following spring). (Places like “Alaska” and “Hawaii” are to be understood as cruising regions – there aren’t necessarily lots of cruises that go directly from a port in Alaska to a port in Hawaii; the point is that ships in the north start running totally different itineraries in the winter, and before this happens, the ships need to be repositioned.) Clearly, then, the fall and spring are the big repositioning seasons, and the most common cruises in this season head across the Atlantic Ocean or from Alaska to Hawaii (or vice versa). However, there are repositioning cruises throughout the year, and where you begin and where you end up varies widely. Some voyages are extended journeys across half the globe – e.g., Los Angeles to Japan, or Canada to Australia – whereas others are fairly short, like the ships that stay in Europe all year, but reposition to different ports at certain points of the year.

    So, to recap, the majority of repositioning cruises are discounted, often heavily so, giving rise to some incredible cruise deals. As we have pointed out in previous articles, this makes a certain amount of sense, as not a lot of people are willing to start a cruise in one part of the world and end in another. However, if you take some of the common repositioning cruises – like those across the Atlantic – it shouldn’t be too difficult to find reasonably affordable airfare home, or if you go for one of the longer repositioning cruises, you are likely on a larger journey anyway, one that doesn’t require an immediate flight home. So, by all means look into repositioning cruises – they are a great option for particular travel situations.

    If you want to learn more about repositioning cruises, check out the rest of the articles (that are not already linked to above) in our series about them:

    How to Find a Repositioning Cruise
    Repositioning Cruises: Which Cruise Lines Offer Them?
    How to Book Repositioning Cruises

  • Repositioning Cruises: Who Can Take Them?

    Repositioning Cruises: Who Can Take Them?

    Repositioning cruises are often overlooked as a vacation possibility. To an extent, this makes sense, as they are somewhat difficult to arrange. As we explained in our article about the basics of repositioning cruises, they tend to take longer than a regular cruise, and they are also one-way, so you end up far away from your port of embarkation, necessitating a long flight home (if you need to go home). Both characteristics of repositioning cruises nullify their viability for the majority of regular cruisers, which caused us to wonder exactly who can take a repositioning cruises. They are a bit complicated, so what type of person is even in a position to take one?

    To begin, a person generally must have considerable scheduling flexibility to take a repositioing cruise. They tend to take at least two or three weeks, and some of the longer trips (from, say, a remote European port to somewhere in the southern Caribbean, with a few stops in between) can take up to a month. So, if you have a relatively rigid work schedule or consistent obligations at home, it might be hard to get away for the amount of time required for a repositioning voyage. The fact that you’ll have to find a way home after the cruise only prolongs the experience, which brings us to our next point.

    Given that you start from one region of the globe and end up in another, those who take repositioning cruises often do so as part of a larger travel agenda. After all, they function as one-way tickets, so on a basic level they don’t differ from any other mode of transportation you might take when on an extended vacation with multiple stops. They are therefore popular among retirees, many of whom travel for significant periods of the year, but anybody who is taking a long journey could utilize them. Instead of taking a flight to Europe before a trip that will encompass more of the globe, for example, you might simply take a cruise that is repositioning itself in the Mediterranean for the coming season. You get to the same destination, but the travel method happens to be a relaxing cruise across the Atlantic, not a long flight that leaves you jet lagged.

    Clearly there are a few hurdles to taking a repositioning cruise, but at least some people can capitalize on them. You need flexibility, and it helps if you utilize a repositioning cruise as part of some larger vacation. In any case, though, you can find some great deals for repositioning cruises, so if they are at all a live option, definitely don’t overlook them when considering future cruise vacations.

    If you want to learn more about repositioning cruises, check out the rest of the articles (that are not already linked to above) in our series about them:

    How to Find a Repositioning Cruise
    Repositioning Cruises: What Kinds of Discounts and Deals are Available?
    Repositioning Cruises: Which Cruise Lines Offer Them?
    How to Book Repositioning Cruises

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