The great cruise price Mexican stand off. Are cruise prices too high currently?

Everyone has a time they book their cruise for the coming year or even the year after. People either do it nice and early to know they’ve got the coming holidays planned out and budgeted for, wait for a “deal” to come up but still book in good time to avoid missing out or finally just leave it to chance and see what last minute deal falls into their lap.

Working in travel as I do you notice the differences in things and I would have to say that the promotions and “deals” that have come out in the last couple of months haven‘t exactly inspired a “what an amazing price” reaction in me so far on the whole with a few exceptions. A lot of people suggest that they think prices have gone up quite a lot in the last 1-2 years so why is that and will the big cruise lines, the Royal Caribbeans and P&Os of this world fix that by bringing out some amazing discounted deals sometime soon? I definitely hope so, Could the answer to the fares and the per day price of cruises be that a lot of cabins will be going unsold, time will tell I guess?

The average price for a outside/balcony cabin on Royal Caribbean for a weeks package with drinks in the med at the moment is in most circumstances around £220 per person per night, which when a lot of people try and budget for around £100 a night for the same thing is quite a hike and where one cruise line leads a lot will follow NCL for the same thing are about the same so that appears to be the going rate at the moment.

There are  whole heap of challenges in the world, not just the UK at the moment which maybe makes people feel uncertain about travelling. Everything going on around the world like the current snow storms here, terrorism, the devalued pound and just the general earthquakes and cyclones that happen elsewhere regularly are concerns for a lot of people including me and it a challenge that the travel industry has to face and overcome and has always had to. These sort of things not to mention politics sometimes make people uneasy about planning things out too far in advance and spending a lot of money on what is after all a fun, luxury, once a year product like a holiday, especially when the price of the product is deemed higher than average.

So there may be in my opinion a big disconnect between what prices are and what people are prepared to pay at the moment and It could be that this year is the year that regular cruisers shift to last minute booking to get the deals they want. Here’s hoping for some amazing offer starting the next few months as a Mexican stand off is occurring between cruisers who want better deals and cruise operators who want to get the most money for their product. Who will come out best from the scenario? Probably only the cruisers (as ultimately they can just choose just not to go on a cruise). Over to you cruise lines!!