Travel Agent Talk

The Wave!!!!

2010-01-08T21:48:00.000-05:00

The wave is a term used in the cruising industry as a time when the cruise lines making their largest amount of bookings for the year. The period lasts until about the end of March and during this time tens of thousands of Americans will book a cruise with one of these cruise lines. To help motivate these bookings, the cruise lines will pull out all the stops with promotion after promotion. Some of those promotions include:

Princess Cruises' Balcony Bonanza
Cunard's Queens Three Day Sale
NCL's Year of Freestyle
Holland America's View and Verandah Sale
MSC's Wave Sale

The cheap cabins will not stay around long because the consumers are starting to come out hibernation. The stock market is up and the job losses are down. I have seen some summer cruise prices spike drastically in the last few weeks as consumers start putting their money to work. For the last year, many cruisers have been able to snag last minute deals for fire sale prices, but those may not be as frequent in the future. Today I had one person contact me about Christmas river cruises for next year, and I found out they are all sold out. We just put out the Christmas tree for this year and people have already booked all the cabins for Christmas next year.

The cruise lines are calling, are you going to catch the wave?

Carnival Announces They Will Build Carnival Dream II

2009-12-02T20:19:00.000-05:00

Today Carnival announced that they will be building a second edition of their new big ship Carnival Dream. Wonder if it is to keep up with Royal Caribbean who will be debuting the Allure of the Seas, the sister ship of the recently lauched Oasis of the Seas. I feel this is the direction the cruising industry is going with this ship, the Allure, and NCL's Epic all coming out in the near future. I am not a big fan of the big mega ships and enjoy the small ships out there. I feel you get a better, more personal experience with these smaller ships and these ships can get to a wider range of ports. I feel these ships are being built for the person who needs to be constantly stimulated with some sort of activity. My ideal day on the ship is a nice lounge chair by the pool watching the sea and sky go by.

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN0149784320091201

Upgrd Podcast

2009-11-09T23:10:00.000-05:00

The guys of upgrd.com are very experienced flyers who like to share their tips and travels of the aviation world. They have a weekly podcast that discuss the current events of the aviation world and a couple of topics related to airlines and getting upgraded.

I highly recommend any flyers out there take a listen to the podcast because you will gain some great information.

The website is upgrd.com

Save 15% on Your Next Southwest Roundtrip

2009-11-04T22:52:00.000-05:00

Paypal is sponsoring 15% off a roundtrip airplane ticket on Southwest
http://luv.southwest.com/servlet/formlink/f?kOHpjQSRDW

Terms and Conditions
Limited number of promotion codes available for this offer.

15% discount valid for one-time use at southwest.com off the total amount of any roundtrip purchase before taxes and fees.

Purchase must be made between November 3, 2009 and December 1, 2009 for travel November 3, 2009 through January 31, 2010.

Blackout dates apply November 20, 2009 through December 1, 2009 and December 18, 2009 through January 4, 2010. If any portion of travel falls on a blackout date the discount will not apply.

The discount is only valid with the provided Promotion Code and is not combinable with other Promotion Codes or fares available exclusively through the web tool “DING!”.

This promotion does not include Senior fares.

This promotion includes all Business Select, Anytime, and Wanna Get Away fares.

Discount does not include taxes and fees.

Roundtrip purchase required.

Changes made to the itinerary after purchase may eliminate qualifications for this promotion.

Youth, Child, Infant, Military, and Government Fares are not available for purchase at southwest.com.

Reservations made through southwestvacations.com or swabiz.com are not eligible for this promotion.

Some People Give Travel Agents A Bad Name

2009-11-04T22:30:00.001-05:00

It make me really mad when these large online agencies that undercut the travel agents just to make a quick sale without providing any additional services. This leaves the client possible on clueless on what to do in the ports, what goes on during a cruise, what do you need to do before you leave on a cruise, or any other questions that come up. After you save a couple of bucks with these agencies, they try to charge you to ask any questions because you are taking away from their call center sales.

What makes me even more mad is when these agencies steal from people and then go out of business to get away from all the problems they caused. Take in point the most recent example Ecruisestore.com which went out of business last week. Ecruisestore was taking credit card payments for vacations themselves and in most cases not passing the payment onto the supplier for the vacation. This kind of tactic is wrong and has left a lot of people who thought they had their dream vacation with nothing but a charge on their credit card. I feel bad for these people because a lot of them take a lot a time, effort, and money to make a vacation happen. Now these people have to scramble to fix the problems this agency has made.

I want to give anyone who is reading this one tip when booking a vacation with a travel agent. Make sure the agent is charging your credit directly with the cruise line or supplier and not taking the payment themselves. What I always tell clients is that they can go on the travel suppliers website right after they get off the phone and see their reservation their with their payment. If you can't see that, then that is a big red flag and should be handled with your travel agent right away.

Carnival Triumph Visit

2009-11-01T22:04:00.001-05:00

One of the great things the cruise lines do is allow their travel partners to tour cruise ships when they are in port. This allows the travel agent community to experience the product they are selling and allows them to give the the client a first hand experience without having to pay for a cruise. Living in New England, the number of cruise ships that pass through Boston is limited to cruises stopping on their way to Canada and cruises that leave Boston going to Bermuda. I recently went on my first ship inspection with Carnival when the Carnival Triumph came into town on a port day during her 7 day New England and Canada cruise.

The Carnival Triumph is a beautiful ship that is kept together very well. I was able to view all of her public rooms on a self-guided tour of the ship. Then we met back in the lounge where our regional business development manager gave us an update on Carnival.

The best part of the tour was I got to have my most favorite cruise ship dessert, Carnival's warm chocolate melting cake. If you have ever been on a Carnival cruise, you know what I mean!!!

The Triumph is currently cruising out of my favorite cruise port New Orleans.

To see some pictures I took, click here: Carnival Triumph

Cheap Holiday Travel

2009-10-29T20:17:00.000-04:00

The headlines out there are all saying that the airlines have been adding fees to their holiday flights so the prices have been going up. On the other side, the cruise lines have had some of the lowest rates for holiday travel in years.

Thanksgiving and Christmas cruises are the one of the few times each year that cruises are usually two to three times the normal rate. The usual reason is the basic supply and demand, where everyone wants to travel and cruise lines have limited inventory. Over the past couple of years that has changed with cruise lines adding bigger and bigger ships and cruise demand slightly declining with the economy.

This year I have seen some of the best cruise rates for cruises to all destinantions in years especially for Christmas. I have seen most a good number selling at less than $100 per day which is good for holiday season.

If you can stay away from the airport and take a cruise from a local homeport, you will be very pleased in what you can find out there.

Happy Cruising!!

Welcome to My Blog

2009-10-27T21:57:00.000-04:00

Hello out there.

My name is Kevin and I have recently created a blog that is here to provide information to my clients anyone interested in the travel world.

My love of travel started at a young age with my family was constantly traveling to different places all over the country. Through that I loved when we would explore new places and see the sites across the US, Canada, and the Caribbean. Over the years, I have tried to learn all that there is about travel from companies, sites, people, and everything else involved. People have come to know me as someone to come to when they want to plan a trip or give them suggestions about where to look to go.

With all this I thought to turn my love of travel into a part time business, which gave birth to Ocean State of Mind Travel. I came up with the name in that I live in Rhode Island, the Ocean State, and when you go on a cruise, you fall into a ocean state of mind. I affiliated myself Cruises and Tours Unlimited who are able to handle my backoffice work while I service you with excellent customer service. I am also able to pass on those great prices the large agencies give you while giving you personalized service.

Why do a blog?
I read a few travel blogs everyday, which you can find to the right in my favorite links, and I thought that this would be a fun thing to do.

What am I going to do with this blog?
I am going to use this blog to share my love of travel. I will post info about travel specials, important travel new, give reviews on cruise companies, give insights on different destinations, and go over some different travel tips. Also if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know because I am open to anything.

Thanks for checking in and I will try to post something daily.