Looking for a late deal, you could be too late

We are entering that time of year again that people in the travel industry tend to call ‘lates season’.  Typically, this is where the trend for customers when calling is that they are looking to get away within the next 8 weeks over the peak summer period and are looking for last minute availability that the cruise lines have reduced in price in order to quickly sell off their excess cabins.

Some people who work in travel do dread the arrival of this period, as you do get some customers who call up saying that they will go anywhere, any place, any time and just want a good deal, and you try to question them to narrow down their expectations but they are open to whatever you have.  This may seem great at first but when you make suggestions you generally then start to get responses of ‘no, I don’t want that’ or ‘no I can’t do those dates as my cat is getting married’, which can be frustrating on this side of the conversation.  I must admit though this is one of my favourite times of the year in this job, as I love a challenge and I love getting my teeth into something and really getting to the bottom of what the customer wants.

I will say though, even for myself this lates period is going to be a challenging one.  Simply down to the fact that there is very little availability left for June, July and August.  Usually when a customer calls at this point in the year for a holiday in August, I can give them multiple options to choose from, and they usually have a short while to think about these and select the right one for them.  They can then come back a few days later and very little has changed.  This year is a total flip on this.  Availability is so tight that I am having to ask customers at the start of the call if they are looking to book today.  Demand is massively outstripping the remaining capacity and things are changing by the minute.  This is going to mean, those people who typically wait until the last minute to grab a bargain are going to be very disappointed.

A lot of this reasoning is down to the cruise lines response to the American cruise market which is the largest cruise market in the world.  Currently the Americans aren’t travelling outside of their own country as much as they used to with the current situations in the world.  In response to this the cruise lines put their offers on a lot earlier than they usually do to encourage more bookings in Europe and the success of this has meant that there is very little for me to sell you now for this summer.

If you are still looking for that last minute bargain and want to get away, the time to act is now before you miss out.  There are still some deals to be had but these won’t be there for long.  Call me on 0333 300 2457 and let’s get your perfect cruise found today.