Bermuda Adds More Costs
Besides all the extra costs of taking a cruise, such as flights and other transportation methods, hotel overnights, gratuities, and port fees, Bermuda has added another cost.
Although guests already pay a lot of money in port fees, guests visiting the island will also be required to fill in and pay the Travel Authorization at $40 per person.
This applies for sailings onboard Carnival Legend on May 22 and Carnival Magic on May 26. According to brand ambassador John Heald, failure to complete the Travel Authorization for Bermuda could result in a disappointing visit to the island for guests:
If you are going ashore in Bermuda you must please complete this. If you dont and you try and go off the ship the authorities will not allow it. I am so sorry and this is of course beyond the control of the cruise industry at the moment. Please then make sure that every guest on these cruises completes the form.
Bermudas port fees are set at $60 per person per day. If guests want to go ashore, this could run up to $100 per person. Guests are encouraged to applyfor their Travel Authorization at least 24hrs before the day of departure but no more than one month before traveling.
Even in Bermuda, the Travel Authorisation is receiving a lot of negative feedback, with some calling it a stealth tax.
And while Bermuda is adding costs to the cruise, Spain is clearing up some measures, with COVID-19 requirements continuing to change nearly constantly in Europe.
Port Charges: Which River Cruise Companies Include Them In The Fare
January 23, 2015 By Lauri Wakefield
With all-inclusive river cruise fares, its fairly standard practice to include port charges in the package. Some companies bundles these fees in the fare even when its not an all-inclusive river cruise. One thing to note about port charges, however, is that they are not set by the river cruise companies. Each port establishes its own fees, and these charges are then passed on to the travelers who purchase the cruise. That said, companies may inflate their port charges to include expenses other than fees levied by the ports.
Three New Small Ships
In 2023, American Cruise Lines will introduce three new small ships. A 6th modern riverboat will debut on the Mississippi River in April, American Serenade. The 175-passenger vessel is sister ship to American Symphony, which launched this year.
The line will also debut two new 109-passenger Coastal Cats next year the first two vessels in the 12-ship Project Blue fleet: American Eagle and American Glory. They will sail east coast itineraries starting in August and October.
MORE: Cruise Line Rolls Taxes, Port Fees, & Gratuities Into Base Guest Fare
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Specialty Restaurants On The Cruise Ship
If spending every meal in the buffet or main dining room sounds like a little too much, or if you simply want to experience some world-class cuisine, specialty restaurants are a great option. Theyre also one of the many places on the ship where its easy to overspend.
As cruise ships expand their culinary repertoire to include tastes from around the world, cruisers have the chance to try adventurous, delectable dishes they might not otherwise encounter. Budgeting for these indulgences means you dont have to miss out on anything, so check out what your cruise ship has on offer before tallying up the final costs for your vacation.
How much do specialty restaurants usually cost?
Depending on how often youd like to frequent them, specialty restaurants can cost from $35 and upwards per person.
Who Is Being Paid
In the United States, most ports are operated by county governments, but there are some exceptions where special arrangements are made so that ports directly serving multiple areas can share the operational responsibility. Where Miami-Dade County runs PortMiami, many of the ports in New Jersey and New York are controlled by the New Jersey & New York Port Authority. While governments operate ports to generate revenue, much of the port fees cover operational costs. Last year, Port Everglades in Ft Lauderdale took in more revenue than any port in the state, but that was less than $163 million. The bigger financial incentive to running these ports is the benefit to communities in the form of jobs, tourism, and other revenue streams which the port helps to facilitate.
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Carnival Cruise Line Update On Sailings For Bermuda And Spain
Carnival Cruise Line provides another update for guests booked on select Bermuda sailings and cruise departures from Spain.
As if a cruise was not expensive enough in this day and age, the Government of Bermuda has added a new charge for guests that would like to get off the ship during a cruise ship call at the island.
Although guests already pay significant amounts of money in port fees, guests will now also be required to pay for a Travel Authorization to access the island.
On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Carnival has cleared up the confusion regarding testing for fully vaccinated travelers, saying there is no need to be tested twice if fully vaccinated.
Benefits Of An Online Agent
- Youre in control. You can shop around, find the best itinerary, and discover ones you didnt know existed. You can also book the cruise whenever you want to.
- You have 24/7 phone support through most of the online agencies. When something goes wrong, someone should always be there for you.
- Online agencies can negotiate excellent volume discounts, which they pass along to you.
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Where Youll Spend Money On Your Cruise
Head to any cruise website and youll see plenty of cheap headline prices. Cruises starting at a few hundred dollars for a week are common. At first glance, it seems like living on a cruise ship would be amazingly affordable.
After all, a cruise for $500 a week would cost only $26,000 to sail for a year. For many people, that would be cheaper than living on land!
But anyone who has been on a cruise knows those headline prices are just the start of what you pay. In fact, in our opinion, its a bit disingenuous of the cruise lines to advertise those prices. After all, what youll actually pay is much, much more.
Double Occupancy Cruise Fare: Apart from a few sailings that offer solo cabins, any headline price you find is actually only half of what you will pay for cruise fare. Thats because cabins are typically sold based on double occupancy, but prices are shown per person.
So for a fare thats $599, it will actually cost $1,198 based on double occupancy. Even if you are sailing solo , you will still have to pay this double charge.
In other words, whenever you see a cruise price, double it right away for what youll really pay in fare.
Port Fees & Taxes: We all expect to pay taxes on things that we buy. Its no different for a cruise. However, the taxes arent included in the headline cruise fare. As well, cruise fares will also have port fees tacked on. These are per-passenger fees paid to ports of call for the privilege of docking.
Heres How Much It Costs To Live On A Cruise Ship
So how much does it cost to sail on the Carnival Horizon for a year? We estimate it to cost around $145,000 for two people, although that number can vary from person to person, depending on their spending habits.
Heres an overview of where youll spend, and we breakdown each expense below:
Cruise Fare: The largest expense by far is cruise fare. Pricing a balcony room for each of the dozens of cruises the ship sails in 2023, it totaled $82,048. Factored out, that’s about $1,600 a week or $6,800 per month. Keep in mind this is for two passengers on the ship and includes the bulk of what you’ll spend on a cruise, including your cabin, entertainment, and food.
Port Fees & Taxes: There’s no escaping taxes, even on a cruise out at sea. Pricing out our cruises, the taxes and port fees for two people totaled up to $15,718 for the year. That comes out to a little more than $1,300 a month.
Gratuities: One of the perks of being on a cruise is that you are waited on hand and foot. But it doesn’t come free. Carnival charges $14.50 per person, per day for automatic gratuities. Over the course of a year, that adds up to $10,556 in tips paid to staff.
While you can’t pinpoint exactly what you’ll spend, you can get a good estimate. As a public company, Carnival Corporation publishes detailed numbers about their business. For instance, in 2019 — the last full year before the pandemic — the company took in $14.1 billion in ticket revenue and $6.3 billion in onboard spending.
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Hidden Cruise Fees You Should Know About
Whenever you look up cruise fares, the prices are listed as inside cabins from $399 or balcony cabins from $649. The word from indicates that the price you see is the base rate, but youre going to pay more due to the type of cabin you pick and a multitude of hidden cruise fees.
Hidden fees on cruises run the gamut from mandatory taxes youll pay before your cruise sets sail to charges for onboard activities and amenities you assumed were included in your fare. To budget properly for your vacation, and not get caught out once youre onboard, youll need to know what costs extra on a cruise.
Assuming you know that shore excursions, spa treatments, and souvenirs cost extra, educate yourself about these these 11 common hidden cruise fees to avoid unpleasant surprises onboard.
Drawbacks Of An Agent
- If its a small shop, you may not have 24/7 support. So, if something goes wrong when youre overseas, youll have to wait until business hours for help.
- Agents are not free. You may be charged a fee to book airfare and make other arrangements, although there may not be a fee for booking the cruise itself .
- Agents are often incentivized by commissions and bonuses called overrides from cruise lines that reward them for booking a lot of itineraries with the same company. First and foremost, an ethical agent will make sure the cruise is the right one for you, but some agents, sadly, go straight for the highest commission. Travel agents can make 10 percent or more in commissions and overrides from your cruise. Ive heard of these kickbacks going as high as 14 percent.
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What Are My Rights As A Cruise Passenger
Your rights at sea are governed by maritime law, or the law of the sea. While some U.S. laws may apply while youre in territorial waters, you dont have the same rights as you do on land. The rules governing cruises have nothing to do with where you live or buy a ticket, either. Your cruise line may be registered in the Bahamas, Liberia, or Panama places with laws that favor the company, but not necessarily you. Your ticket contract, the legal contract between you and the cruise line, spells out your rights. You should read it before you leave. Here are some key provisions:
Expect To Pay Extra For Some Activities And Specialty Restaurants
Teppanyaki on Norwegian Dawn –
Visiting the spa or taking classes in the gym on a cruise ship will cost you. On some lines, aerobics classes and other sea day activities come with small additional fees. The cost of specialty restaurants and the myriad of options has also increased dramatically in the last decade.
Estimated Cost: $50 – $150 per person
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When Booking A Cruise How Can I Find A List Of All The Port Fees In Advance
Some cruise sellers say “port fees extra.” Sometimes those charges are more than the full retail cost, similar to marketing strategies that advertise a low product price paired with exorbitant “shipping and handling charges” that are really meant to cover the cost of the item as well.
Where can one find out what those costs actually are, for any given port/route, especially those in the northwest quarter of the globe?An ideal answer would cite information from whomever it is that charges the port fee, such as a governmental port authority. A board where other passengers post what they were charged would be useful as well.
Edit: Some answers say that certain cruise lines include it in the cost of their fares while others don’t. For the ones that don’t list it separately on their websites, are there ways to get this information for someone who’s considering purchasing through a reseller ?
Expanding on @pnuts answer, ShermansTravel covered this in an article by Donna Tunney, Cruise Taxes, Explained
You Can’t
Unfortunately you just can’t find a single place to get all these fees. The fees are imposed by governments, businesses, and just random people. As you state much in the same way as “Shipping and Handling”. Sure I could tell you the shipping rate, but you still have to pay the handling fee which is a number I just made up.
It’s up to you to decide if those kinds of fees are worth it.
How To Book A Cruise
Not so long ago, you had to pick up a phone and call your local travel agent to book a cruise. No longer.
Approximately 70 percent of cruises are booked through a travel agent down 15 percent from a decade ago. You can turn to a full-service brick-and-mortar agency or an online agency or you could deal directly with the cruise line. But which one is right for you?
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Centers For Disease Control Inspection Fees
Any cruise ship carrying 13 or more passengers operating an international itinerary calling at a U.S. port must participate in the CDCs vessel sanitation program.
The unannounced United States Public Health inspections are conducted twice a year and help manage and control the spread of any illnesses on ships.
Vessels are scored and evaluated in a variety of areas, including proper food handling and storage, as well as galley cleanliness.
Every time a ship undergoes a USPH inspection the cruise line has to pay a fee based on the ships gross registered tonnage.
For example, any ship in the range of 120,001 to 140,000 gross registered tons is charged a fee of $17,940.
Ships with greater than 140,0001 tons have to pay a fee of $23,920.
Now that weve looked at all of the various fees involved in a general sense, lets get more specific. We can do so by looking at the various fees the Carnival Vista pays when it visits PortMiami.
Note, these fees wont be exact because every ship requires a different amount of manpower, and port agreements vary by cruise line, but youll get a pretty good idea of whats involved.
Pilotage Fee For Carnival Vista in PortMiami:
The below figures are based on the published pilot rates in PortMiami and do not include any discounts or negotiated rates the cruise line has with the Miami Pilots.
- Length Charge: $1,104.27
TOTAL: $4,880.85 x 2 = $9,761.70
Docking Fees and Taxes For Carnival Vista at Port Miami
TOTAL: $26,757.75
Soda And Bottled Water
Despite the fact that most iced tea, lemonade, milk, coffee, tea, hot chocolate and breakfast juices are complimentary on cruise ships, soda and bottles of water are not. One can of soda costs roughly $3, and a large bottle of water closer to $4.
The best way to combat these prices is by purchasing a soft drink package, which average $7 to $13 per day for an adult with a reduced rate for children, or by bringing your own soda and water onboard.
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Benefits Of A Direct Booking
- Youll probably get the deepest discounts, and in some cases, a price protection that assures you that if the fare drops, youll get a refund. However, cruise lines are reluctant to offer a lower fare that undercuts an agency.
- Youre dealing directly with the cruise line, so the company cant blame an intermediary for anything that goes wrong.
- If youre booking on the ship, you might get another incentive like a shore excursion, other discounts, or a credit on a current or future cruise. Cruise lines are sometimes creative with their offers.
Read Your Cruise Contract
Heres one section from Carnival Cruise Lines cruise contract:
Cruise Fare does not include Cruise Taxes, Fees, and Port Expenses. may include any and all fees, charges, tolls and taxes imposed on Carnival, by governmental or quasi-governmental authorities, as well as third party fees and charges arising from a vessels presence in a harbor or port.
Cruise Taxes, Fees and Port Expenses may include U.S. Customs fees, head taxes, Panama Canal tolls, dockage fees, wharfage fees, inspection fees, pilotage, immigration and naturalization fees, and Internal Revenue Service fees, environmental fees, as well as fees associated with navigation, berthing, stevedoring, baggage handling/storage, and security services.
FACT CHECK: Do Cruise Lines Pay U.S. Taxes
Cruise Taxes, Fees, and Port Expenses may be assessed per passenger, per berth, per ton or per vessel. Assessments calculated on a per ton or per vessel basis will be spread over the number of passengers on the Vessel. Subject to applicable laws, Cruise Taxes, Fees and Port Expenses are subject to change and Carnival reserves the right to collect any increases in effect at the time of sailing even if the fare has already been paid in full.
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