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cruise using club points

A

arnolds8903

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has anyone booked a cruise with club points? Is it a good value? Please share your experiences and/or recommendations.
 
arnolds8903 said:
has anyone booked a cruise with club points? Is it a good value? Please share your experiences and/or recommendations.
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Of all the cruise excahgne options, this has been the most reasonable value in exchange but, it's still not a great or even a good deal. A lot of the value is going to depend on your skill in shopping cruise prices, finding discount TA sites and your comfort in taking care of the details yourself.

After taking 7 cruises and having 2 more booked plus all the reading I do on different websites, including http://www.cruisecritic.com , I'm pretty comfortable making my own reservations, finding my deals and arranging our accomadations and flights. Still, I own to many timeshares and sometimes I have to give a little to be able to accomadate the fact we like to cruise and mix that in with all our timeshare vacations and ownerships (ie: we own to many timeshares).

Generally speaking, discount TA's will often offer to take a cut in their comission to offer you a lower price, hoping to make up the difference in volume and referals. When you book through HGVC, you don't have a choice in TA's. Your stuck with Cruises Only, who isn't a bad TA but, since you have no choice, they don't have to offer discounts for your business. It's best to call and get their price (those on the website are only estimates) and then start shopping the same cruise/staterooms with other TA's and get their cash price. Once you have HGVC/Cruises Only's price and the cash price from two or three TA's or even direct from the cruise line, then you have a good comparison as to whether or not the particular cruise you want to take is a good deal if you exchange your HGVC points for the cruise.

In our case, our cruise line of choice for all of our cruises has been Royal Caribbean. A couple of years ago, Royal Caribbean and it's sister line Celebrity instituted a "no cash rebate/discount" policy that forbid TA's from discounting a portion of their comission in order to gain a competitive edge over another agency. Essentially, this meant that the cash price you pay at one TA should be identical with all other TA's or reserving direct from Royal Caribbean or Celebrity. Royal Caribbean will allow TA's to give "added value" benefits such as free hotel nights, wine service onboard, airport transfers, trip insurance and other benefits as an added benefit for booking with them. So if you use any of those services, you can factor that into your equation as well.

What I've found is that when booking by utilizing HGVC's exchange service, I'm getting a discount that's just a little less than what my yearly MF's are, paing a $39 transaction fee and having to use a TA which, I normally don't do (I prefer to handle transactions myself). I find it to be a good deal only if I don't want to take a timeshare vacation with Hilton that year, can't use my points that year or just prefer to take a cruise rather than another timeshare vacation. In the past we've done this twice and we have one future cruise using our HGVC points. It's not a great deal or even a good deal but, it is convenient.

Our next cruise booked using HGVC points is on Royal Caribbean's Voyager of the Sea's for a 7 night W. Med cruise out of Barcelona in early Oct. Currently we have a Catagory Junior Suite stateroom reserved and have used 14,000 HGVC points plus $1,440 cash for the booking. Total cash price for this cabin would have been just shy of $3,000 had we paid cash. Total MF's for the 14,000 points was close to $1,700. So without getting all my stuff out of my files, our approx saving on the cruise was $1,560 but our MF's were approx. $1,700. By using HGVC points I'm somewhere around $150 in the hole for the exchange vs paying cash but, we REALLY wanted to take this cruise and our vacation plans using timeshare wouldn't allow us the time to take the cruise. It was better for us to burn 2 years of timeshare vacations with Hilton to take the 7 night cruise.

Now some may point out I'm trading 2 weeks of vacation in timeshares for 1 week on a cruise ship. That's true enough but, I'd also point out that we're visiting 3 countries and 6 cities plus, all our meals onboard are included in the main dining room, the buffet and the cafe onboard (specialty restaurants are not included in the cruise price). Coffee and tea are also included in the cruise price but soft drinks and alcoholic beverages are not.

It's not a wise thing to buy a timeshare an use it mostly for cruise discounts but, I don't see an issue with occasionally exchanging HGVC points for a cruise discount when a cruise vacation is more appealing to us than a timeshare vacation. Like I said in the begining, it's not a great deal, it's not necessarily a good deal but, it's an option and, of all the timeshare to cruise exchange options I've seen, it's pretty much the best deal going.
 
We have cruised several times with HGVC points. Sometimes we would rather cruise than stay at a TS. We also participate in HHonors and have an HHonors AmEX. We enjoy the flexibility HGVC offers. One year all we did was HHonors redemptions at the Caribe Hilton in Puerto Rico, Embassy Suites Lake Tahoe, and Embassy Suites San Diego without needing to convert HGVC points to HHonors. The reason we did that is because we cruised with HGVC points the previous year. However, a good discount cruise can be real bargain. You may consider www.vacationstogo.com. We have found that website very helpful.
 
thank you all, your input is very helpful. Although it may not be the best value, i am leaning toward using the points to try a cruise as i have never been on one and i think i may want to try something different. that will probably be my only trip with clubpoints. If i take another trip it will probably be open season or banked rci points. why pay for the cruise if i've got the points available right?
 
a couple of friends of mine have recommended Royal Caribbean as well. Looking through availability, Norwegian has a cruise on the Norwegian Dawn to Grand Cayman and Cozumel. Carnival has this same trip on the Carnival Inspiration. Royal Caribbean has a trip to Costa Maya and Cozumel. Although Royal Caribbean seems to be the Cruise Line of choice, I would like to make the stop in Grand Cayman. So I guess it would then come down to Norwegian vs. Carnival. Anyone have any advice on this?
 
per Cruises.com, 5,000 points = $500 towards a cruise booking.

This means anyone that exercises this option is taking a significant loss on the MF paid and not taking into consideration the capital cost.
 
i get it and i appreciate the info very much. i'm somewhere between the philosophy of most bang for the buck and what a time share is all about. in this case this year, i probably realistically have time for only one big vacation, spring break, and given the option and flexibility i'm going to do the cruise because i don't really have the extra time nor do i want to spring the extra cash out of pocket for the full price of cruising. so yeah, ultimately i'm paying more for the cruise, but i'm going to do something i wouldn't otherwise do, which is what i like about what timesharing is doing for me and my family. different experiences, top-shelf amenities, and life-long memories. thanks again everyone for your input.
 
OnMedic said:
per Cruises.com, 5,000 points = $500 towards a cruise booking.

This means anyone that exercises this option is taking a significant loss on the MF paid and not taking into consideration the capital cost.
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Cruises Only is the agency the HGVC uses and, what you see on the web site is only an estimate. It's not exact. The discount we've been offered/recieved has always been pretty close to the annual MF's we pay. It's been close enough that we haven't felt it was such a significant loss but, it was less than our MF's. We just wanted to take a cruise more than we wanted to do another timeshare exchange.

You really can't judge the cost/benefit until you decide which cruises fits your needs and you do some research. First, find out what you can book the cruise for by paying cash. Then call the HGVC advisor with Cruises Only and see what sort of price after discount they can give you. Only then can you say definitively if it's a significant loss or not. Otherwise, you're just guessing.
 
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