TripCruises.com
- TripCruises.com is a new cruise booking website owned by El Corte Inglés, the biggest department store group in Europe
- TripCruises.com offers cruises with Norwegian Cruise Line, Costa Cruises, Carnival Cruise Lines, Azamara Club Cruises, Celebrity Cruises, Pullmantur , Caribbean International
- Passengers have ability to select the exact cabin and dinner schedule while booking a cruise online
Our Editor’s Review
The TripCruises website is easy to navigate, and we like the clickable cruise destination map on the homepage. We simply clicked on a worldwide destination, and it showed us a link to the cheapest cruise available for booking. A couple more clicks and we were on the booking screen. The TripCruises.com website is not cluttered with small print everywhere, so we didn’t feel like we were missing anything. We were able to easily select the exact cruise cabin we wanted within our desired price range with their handy ship map (the available cabins flash on the screen). One of the best features of TripCruises, is the ability to pay for your cruise in installments (payment plan). With the exception of taxes, the prices we saw advertised on the TripCruises.com homepage were the same price on the final booking screen, so it appears there are no Bait-n-Switch tactics employed here! Kudos for that!
TripCruises.com does not sell cruises for as many cruise lines as CruiseDirect.com, however they do highlight cruise deals from little-known cruise companies such as Azamara Club and Pullmantur. We’ve never heard of Azamara Club, but the reviews that we found online for Azamara were outstanding. We found that Azamara Club Cruises are targeted toward active older travelers, who are not new to cruising. Those who are well-traveled and are looking for something a bit different would be happy taking an Azamara cruise. That being said, you may want to stay away from Pullmantur Cruise Line, as it’s reputation well below our standards. TripCruises also offers some “long hual” around the world cruises, for the really adventurous. We found a 160 night World Tour cruise (whoa!) for $78 a night. Now, that is how we’d like to retire!
To complete our review, we compared the pricing for an exact cruise that we found on the TripCruises.com website, with the pricing on the cruise-line’s own website. We chose the same cruise dates and stateroom. This is what we found:
Royal Caribbean, Gradeur of the Seas, April 15, 2012, 3 nights, 3 travelers
- TripCruises.com $467 + $205 (taxes) + $30 (handling fee*) = $702
- RoyalCaribbean.com $467 + $205 (taxes) = $672
So, the prices were identical, but TripCruises.com charges a $30 “Handling Fee*“. We preferred the booking experience on TripCruises.com website because the Royal Caribbean website is infiltrated with annoying pop-ups and small print. Overall, the TripCruises website is definitely worth checking out when booking a cruise. It will only take you a few minutes, as their website is designed so well and their pricing is on point.
* UPDATE MARCH 2012: TripCruises.com informed me that they no longer charge the $30 handling fee! Great news.
TripCruises.com’s Small Print*
- Additional taxes that may be added to your cruise include Embarkment taxes to the Port Authorities, Government taxes by the Local Authorities, Fuel taxes charged by the shipping company.
- $30+ Handling Fee additional on cruise bookings
- Cancellation fees are set by the cruise line and can sometimes be the entire cost of the cruise (ie. no refund).
*Based solely on research done by TravelSiteCritic.com, these figures may be inaccurate and are subject to change.Verify policies with the website before you book. Please be aware of airfare taxes & fees, applicable to any booking that includes airfare.
TripCruises.com User Reviews:
Have you used TripCruises.com and have an experience to share? We want to hear it! Add your own review of TripCruises.com in the customer comment box below. All user reviews and comments are moderated by a human being and will be posted LIVE on TravelSiteCritic.com as soon as they have been reviewed by a moderation team member. Thank you for contributing to our great community!
TripCruises.com User Ratings:
Cast your vote for the Best Rated Travel Sites by clicking one of the dynamic rating stars for TripCruises.com below, or on any of our travel website reviews. Cast a vote of 1-star, 5-star, or anything in between. A user rating of 1-star indicates you had a horrible experience (its the lowest you can go and brings down the total rating), while a user rating of 5-stars indicates you had the best experience. The travel websites with the most 5-star votes end up on our Top 10 List.
TripCruises.com Coupons:
Cruise deals UNDER $500 per person!
Destinations in Panama, Bahamas, Cancun, Cozumel, Brazil, France, Italy, Amsterdam and more!
Thanks for your critique. Just a quick line to inform you that we are no longer charging any handling fees.