The Case of the Phantom Cruise
Mystery solved!
One of our readers wrote “I lost my Steal! Please help me get it back.”
He was referring to our Panama Canal-Seattle Double Steal that featured a 16 night cruise for the truly amazing price of $503 per person for an Inside cabin. When he checked Vacation Steal the price was $803, an excellent price but not what we published.
“💵 Pay $1,006 for 2 at Vacation Steal ($62/night) …. $1,354 on Retail sites like CruiseDirect … and $3,868 on the brochure. A savings of $348 or 25% off retail and $2,862 or 74% off the brochure.”
In fact the search listing still had the lower price, while the booking had the higher one. Regrettably we can’t help the reader to get the bargain rate. It was an example of phantom travel pricing. There was a price change but the search and booking databases were not synchronized.
The cruise lines employ dynamic pricing and aren’t afraid to use it. Large jumps and drops in cruise fare before the sailing are common - like this one. You can get whiplash trying to keep up sometimes.
But there seemed to be something more to the story. So we grabbed our pipe, trusty dog, and magnifying glass to dig further. It was a case for our Cruise fare tracking and analysis case file.
We checked other cruise sites and confirmed that they too had the price difference. Oceanview cabins had a similar pattern - $698 on search, but $998 on booking.
The CruisePlum fare history below gave us more clues.
The inside cabin price actually has always been $800+.
Balconies experienced limited availability a month ago. Prices shot up like this and then the class sold out.
Our analysis
The price hike is typical. Fares can be unstable when cabin classes are nearly sold out as cabins are sold, reserved, canceled, or freed up. The Balconies for the same sailing show that perfectly as they rise $600, sell out 2 days later, open up $600 lower for a day, jump back up $300 for a day, sell out for 2 days, open for a day, and finally stay sold out.
The interesting part is the price chart doesn’t show the liquidation sale. CruisePlum gets its pricing from cruise line web sites. Carnival’s recent promotions have included 3rd and 4th person free, OBC, and free upgrade. So it’s possible they provided a big discount not in cash, but through those programs, which cost them far less.
Instead, Carnival Cruise Line promoted the bargain basement fare only with its distributors to move the inventory. The promotion worked and was ended.
The moral of the story: When you see a big drop like this, especially when you see instability in another cabin class - BUY!
