Joining a standby list is the best trick for bagging a cruise for a lower cost during peak-season, a travel expert revealed.
But the hack isn’t without risk, as your trip isn’t promised.
It’s becoming harder and harder to find discounts as cruise lines have been succeeding at selling tickets months in advance – ultimately giving the companies less of an incentive to offer steep deals.
In an attempt to find a hack for an affordable last-minute voyage, Dawn Gilbertson, a travel columnist for the Wall Street Journal, found the art – and the ugly – of standby lists.
‘I took a flier on Holland America’s standby program in a bid to score a cheap, spontaneous deal to fun in the sun,’ Gilbertson wrote in the article. ‘It tested my nerves, patience and back-up plan skills, but I would do it again for the price.’
The hack begins with Holland America, a popular premium cruise line, which publish a list of eligible standby cruises that all leave from various US ports over the course of the next following months.
The prices are fixed – $99 a day for an inside or ocean-view cabin and $129 for a room with a balcony, both of which include port charges and taxes.
Once your date is picked, the next step is calling Holland America reservations to have them put you on the standby list. From then on, you already have ‘skin in the game’ as the cruise must be prepaid.
Gilbertson, who was a latecomer to the list for a recent sailing on the Nieuw Statendam out of Fort Lauderdale, paid only $693 a person on January 16 – a mere 10 days before the ship’s departure.
Dawn Gilbertson, a travel expert and columnist for the WSJ, revealed that the last remaining way to get your hands on a cut-price cruise during peak-season is to join the standby list
Gilbertson found a published list of eligible standby cruises with Holland America, but the catch is that you don’t know until the last minute whether you secured a spot
The price already was a deal. A majority of the week-long cruises departing out of the sunshine state at the time were starting at more than $1,000 for a trip that same week.
Although the deal is said to work the best for solo travelers – they don’t have to pay double for having only one person in the room like most cruise lines require – Gilbertson invited her 82-year-old mother along for a much-needed break away from the rigid Connecticut cold.
Her mother had a question that we are probably all asking ourselves at this point: ‘Do you get advance notice you can go on the cruise or is it like a flight, and you have to be there?’
This is where the dreadful and anxiety-inducing gamble comes to play.
Those on the standby list won’t find out whether or not they have a room on the ship until seven to two days before sailing. Although you get your money back if you don’t get on the cruise, you don’t get anything back if you do get a spot and fail to show up.
Living near a port may solve that issue. But those who don’t, including Gilbertson, have to book a flight to the port with no definite spot to claim on arrival.
‘I used points to book round-trip flights for my mom as I could get them back if the trip didn’t happen,’ Gilbertson said.
She ended up purchasing a refundable one-way ticket from Phoenix to Fort Lauderdale for herself.
Just two days before setting sail – also the deadline day for finding out if you made it on the ship – Gilbertson finally got confirmation that only three of seven standby passengers grabbed a spot, and she was luckily one of them
The January 25 Saturday sailing of the 2,666-passenger ship she had booked was completely sold out online which only elevated the stress of being in the unknown.
‘From the moment I booked, I obsessively checked my email like a helicopter parent waiting to see if their kid got into that Ivy League school,’ she wrote. ‘Nothing, nothing and more nothing.’
There was a sense of false hope when the cruise line requested that Gilbertson check in with her flight information, booking and passport. In the end, it also meant nothing.
With five days left until the cruise and no word on an available spot, Gilbertson called Holland’s reservation line – but again, got nowhere.
‘I was in cruise limbo and it was frustrating,’ Gilbertson wrote. ‘If I was rejected by Wednesday, I was just going to cancel the entire trip. If I didn’t find out until Thursday, we had to fly to Fort Lauderdale that morning on our prearranged flights, in case we got a yes that night.’
Time was ticking and Gilbertson felt as though she needed a backup plan. She scoured the internet for other cruises in Florida. But even if she did find another deal, she couldn’t book anything without hearing from Holland first.
Just two days before setting sail – also the deadline day for finding out if you made it on the ship – Gilbertson finally got confirmation on her trip.
Confused that it wasn’t through an email as promised and instead through an alert on the app informing her of an assigned stateroom number, she called the cruise line to question whether it was a fluke.
In great news – it wasn’t. In better news, only three of seven standby passengers snagged a spot, and Gilbertson was one of them.
