Hop on Hop off Cruises!

I am now wondering if hop on hop cruises may start to become more of a thing as quite often in this in my job you get asked a question from a customer and think to yourself there is no way a cruise line will agree to that. Now this is normally not due to the fact the the customer has asked a bizarre question it’s more a case of the cruise lines can be so black and white about things without flexibility and mention terms and conditions as if it is some code we shall all adopt and lives our lives by.

Now I had such a question a few days ago and again thought there is no way I can see a cruise line agreeing to that but said I would ask on my customers behalf. The question was on a sailing from the UK for two people could one get off mid cruise do there own thing for a few days whilst the the stayed on the cruise and then rejoin the cruise a 3 days later in a different port.

The cruise line in question was Royal Caribbean and I when I said where we wanted to leave the ship and get back on the initial answer was no and I thought I can understand that as we wanted to leave in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria and rejoin in Madeira 3 days later and both are not what you would class as main ports to start or finish a cruise they are more just ports of call on a typical Canaries/Atlantic Islands cruise.

Anyway it turns out a several phone calls and helpful staff ringing various departments they came back with the answer that yes they could do it and would make a small admin fee of just £65 for the one person who will be getting off and rejoining. It meant that the couple could book and join family who had booked the cruise the day before and the guest come come home for urgent business and still ave his holiday.

I was surprised that we were able to do this and spoke to a colleague who said he had done something similar for someone who needed to attend a funeral and had managed to arrange a similar thing. I’ve also managed to book a bit of an Epic European trip for a family before that do not fly but wanted to get to Greece so had 2 cruises each way to get from the UK and cut both short but were allowed to join and get off in major ports on the itinerary as long as they still paid the full cruise fare.

I’m now beginning to think that that this could be something that will be made more of a flexible option in the future so people can in effect use cruise as a hop on hop off service and hopefully cut out a lot of the red tape that we still have at the moment. After all not everybody wants or can fly.

Let me know if yo have ever tried to do anything similar or would like me to try and help you with future travel plans.