What is a guarantee cabin?

I noticed a question on the www.cruise.co.uk  website about guarantee cabins and thought it would be good to clarify.

When booking a cruise you have a selection of different cabins that you can choose from. When the cruise lines have nearly sold out of a particular grade of cabin they will put them on a guarantee basis. This is normally to give them some flexibility when it comes to giving out upgrades nearer the sailing date.

If you decide to go for a guarantee cabin then the cruise lines promise to allocate you a cabin of the grade that you have paid for (they will never allocate you a lower grade) or they will upgrade you. Lots of my clients like to go for guarantee cabins as they know this can be a good way of getting an upgrade.

But remember guarantee cabins are not for everyone. I wouldn’t recommend them to clients who always like to be in a certain position on board e.g some of my passengers always like to be forward or midship. Also If I’m booking multiple cabins for a client I don’t normally recommend Guarantee cabins as they may be allocated cabins on different decks or one could be forward and back and with the size of some the ships nowadays you could have a lot of long walks in store.