On board Credit after booking with an Agent

[PaulG]

Question,

Question,

We recently booked two cruises through our travel agent MEI and while on board Symphony on a previously booked cruise we noticed all the potential onboard credit you get from prebooking on board.

My question is since the sailings are both months away and we’ve only paid the initial deposit, what is the best way to get the onboard credit while we’re on board the ship for the future cruises we’ve already booked with an agent.  Can anybody help with that?

Thanks.

[Ogilthorpe]

From my experience, the NextCruise promotions require new bookings. The good news is that you can reprice your existing  reservations until final payment If better prices or promotions , including on board credits, are available.

[AshleyDillo]

The only way I can see doing this to take advantage of the OBC you get from NextCruise from booking is to book the cruise you want with NextCruise and then have it transferred to MEI.  This really only works to your benefit if you can get the same category cabin at the exact same price that you locked in when booking your future cruises with MEI.  You also would need those future bookings you already have with MEI to be refundable since you would be canceling those to replace them with the NextCruise booking, otherwise you are also out part of the deposit. 

There is a lot of fine print with the NextCruise bookings so the massive amounts of OBC you see are limited to certain length sailings, cabin categories, and sometimes even certain sailings.  They are also for non-refundable deposits.  So the net effect of rebooking through NextCruise may not result in any significant savings as it really will come down to the current pricing.

If you want to take advantage of NextCruise in the future, just find a new booking to make while you are onboard on a cruise and then have it transferred over to MEI so they can provide their TA services for that sailing.  You can also bookmark the current NextCruise offer page (http://www.royalonboardsales.com/) and check it right before you sail so you have an idea of what the offer is and can price out a cruise quote with MEI right before you sail to take into your NextCruise appointment with an idea of what you want.