Guaranteed rooms

[Belaboard]

Hi I am travelling from Australia and was wondering what people thought of booking guaranteed rooms vs opting to let royal allocate with current occupancy rates?

[Traveling Mike]

I currently have 5 cruises booked and 3 of them are booked GTY.  I am saving a lot of money and I do not care where I sleep.  I am one of the people that do not care if I am inside or balcony.  I book based on price.  If I can save decent money, I will let the cruise line put me anywhere they want.  If there is not much of a price difference, I will pick my room to make sure I am not on a connecting room or next to a bad location.  I do the same for type of room.  If I can move from inside to Oceanview or Balcony for a couple hundred dollars I will move but if it is $400 or more, I save the money and spend it on something else.  The way I look at my cabins is, it's a place to sleep and take a shower.  If I can save $400 or more, I am closer to paying for my next cruise or I can get the unlimited dining package with that money.

[SPS]

A "Guaranteed" (GTY) booking is the same this as letting "Royal Caribbean allocate" your room. You are guaranteed a room that is at least the cabin class that you have selected and the cruise line chooses what room you will get.

(You may possibly even get a better room depending on availability. i.e. Score a balcony room even though your GTY booking was for an interior or ocean view cabin.)

By Guaranteed, do you possibly mean you have chosen the room and are, therefore, "guaranteed" to have the room you have selected?

Anyway, I'm much in the same camp on this as @Traveling Mike is. If I can save a good deal of money that I can spend on other cruise vacation items (Drinks, Dining, Excursions, etc.) by booking GTY or with lesser cabin class, I will go that in a heartbeat! Just get me on the ship!

[teddy]

We book Guaranteed cabins on cruises when we absolutely do not care where our cabin is.  When we want a specific location, we choose our own cabin.  Booking this way ensures we don’t have buyers remorse.  If you have any concerns where your cabin might be, avoid a Guarantee.

We’ve found a couple ways to choose our cabin and pay the same (or less) than the guaranteed price.  

First, every time we’ve booked onboard at Next Cruise, we’ve been able to choose our cabin for the same price shown online for a guarantee.

Second, on every cruise we’ve booked far out (think 2 years), the choose your own cabin has been cheaper than the guarantee price.   We have a couple cruises in late 2023 and early 2024 that we were able to book aft balconies on cheaper than letting Royal choose for us.

I don’t claim these two ways to be absolute.  Other factors come in to play…C&A discount, military discount, etc.  In addition, we don’t book suites, so I am not sure if the same works for them either.

 

An interesting thing we’ve found when booking so far out is the prices have never dropped no matter how many times we’ve made mock bookings to check.  I believe we first learned about this on one of Matt’s podcasts, and it’s held true.

 

 

[SPS]

53 minutes ago, teddy said:

choose your own price

 Boy, I misread this and got excited at the prospect of choosing my own price! 

[teddy]

13 minutes ago, SPS said:

 Boy, I misread this and got excited at the prospect of choosing my own price! 

Lol  Wouldn’t that be nice.

I fixed it. Thanks for letting me know.

[Reigert2008]

We typically book Inside GTY cabins, but it depends on the ship.  some ships (looking at you Liberty) have inside rooms on Deck 2 which is too low on the ship for us, so we picked our own room on deck 8 (and it was actually the cheaper option).  However on an Oasis class ship, even the lowest inside cabins are well above where we would feel comfortable, so it works out for us.

We are in the camp of barely being in the room, so any room is good for us.

[dr martini]

if you can save a lot of money, great, but a lot of times its only $100, and everybody and every budget is different. i wish we could cruise more and then maybe that kind of savings would add up (totally get it for anyone retired or on fixed income, etc), but only going once every couple years....$100 is not very much in the big picture. 

i mean, we're not talking about top end suite type room vs inside room that differ in costs by thousands of dollars....ask your travel agent if they have a recommendation or do your own research and pick the room you want.  divide it by 36 months or 30 years like a home mortgage or car payment or whatever you want to compare it to.  if you want to splurge on vacation, i would strongly advise you to splurge on your vacation.  

[steverk]

One factor I haven't seen mentioned.  When I've looked at a GTY stateroom,  non refundable was the only option.  It's your choice,  but giving up refundable deposit and choice of cabins,  just hasn't been worth the little bit I'd save