Finally Some Good News For Disabled Cruisers

Well I learned something new this week.  I have been speaking with a few clients this week regarding wheelchair accessible cabins, and I will say these are like gold dust on cruises.  There simply aren’t enough cabins to meet demand.  With accessible cabins as well, they aren’t on every grade of cabin, and you often find for obvious reasons that the lower grade of cabins sell out very quickly.  This means when customers who require these cabins come to me, they often must pay more than they expected as we have to go for a higher category of cabin to get them a wheelchair accessible one.

It can be quite a tough conversation for the customer and myself, as they may have seen an inside cabin at a price of £799pp but because they need this specific cabin, the only ones left may be a balcony cabin at a cost of £1399pp which is out of their budget.

What I have discovered this week, which in 10 years selling cruises is new to me, is that Thomson Cruises seem to be the friendliest cruise line when it comes to accommodating customers who require these cabins.  Thomson Cruises, like all cruise lines have the accessible cabins across inside, ocean view and balcony cabins, but what makes them brilliant is that the cost of these cabins is always the same price as the lowest grade of cabin.

What I mean by this is that if they have cruise advertised at £799pp for an inside cabin, I as the agent book the cabin for the customer at the £799pp price and then Thomson Cruises will allocate them a wheelchair accessible cabin without increasing the cost of the cruise.  So the customer will have paid for an inside cabin, and if they have an accessible cabin with an ocean view or a balcony available this is given to the customer free of charge.  This means that subject to there being accessible cabins available, people who require them will never pay more than the lead in price for their cruise.

This is brilliant news for customers and I will certainly be recommending Thomson Cruises a lot more when looking for accessible cabins.  I personally think all cruise lines should adopt this  policy, as I don’t see how people needing these cabins should have to pay more to cruise than anyone else.

What are your thoughts on this?