World Cruise Insurance

I have just spent the last few days trying to help a customer arrange insurance for a World Cruise on Queen Elizabeth. In my ignorance I thought I could just type it into Google and have a choice of companies to quote me, how wrong could I be.


I tried all the main players - Saga, Age Concern, Staysure, World-first.co.uk, Covermore etc and no one could quote me. The main problem being, that the cruise is 107 days long and costing over £30,000.

Only 1 of these companies could quote for more than 100 days duration, which was Covermore but they could only offer cancellation cover of £25k

Finally though, I was able to find a company that could quote for me for exactly what I wanted. http://www.insuretocruise.com/ offer world cruise insurance for the full duration and with the cost tailored to the level of cancellation cover that you require. Plus not only could they quote me but they were extremely helpful - I was having trouble with the phone lines so I e-mailed them and they called me back to go through the quote. Sarah was very courteous and friendly.

Insure to Cruise offer cover for world cruises for P&O, Cunard, Princess, Seabourn and Holland America Line and can be contacted on 0845 230 7136.

Alternatively for Fred Olsen World cruises you can contact 0845 260 1542 or www.247cruiseinsurance.com/fo

I hope you find this useful and if anyone knows of any other insurance companies that are good could you let me know for future reference.

Celebrity drinks prices set to increase

Now as I am sure you are all aware drinks are not cheap on cruise ships, with the American cruise lines being the most expensive. Plus not only do they charge a high price but many cruise lines also add a 15% service charge on to your bar bill, this can be a major shock at the end of your cruise if you haven't budgeted for it.

Celebrity cruises however this week announced a range of changes on board their Celebrity Eclipse ship, which sails from Southampton and attracts a large proprtion of British passengers. Within these changes Celebrity have decided to display drinks prices including the service charge in their bars.

Now this changes is as a result of listening to customer feedback, which is great news, but I feel that they haven't quite understood what the customer is saying. The main feedback that I hear is that drinks are too expensive and there shouldn't be a service charge at all, not that we want to see a higher price from the start.

What are you thoughts - are you happy with paying a service charge? Do you think the drinks are priced OK. Let me know your thoughts?

P&O madness - upsets me and my single passengers

P&O have recently infuriated me. I had a single passenger wishing to join friends on an Azura cruise


He was realistic and aware that single passengers often end up paying a hefty supplement, so obviously he was after the cheapest option. Now on this cruise P&O had all grades of inside cabin available for 2 sharing passengers, and had two people been travelling his cabin would have cost £3252. However the lowest available cabin for a just one person was an obstructed view outside cabin at £3379.

I called those nice people at P&O to see if they would allow us to sell him inside cabin, he was willing to pay the price of two people. Or if I could book the inside cabin with a 'pretend friend,’ however I was told a definite no and that if my customer turned up at the port without a friend, he would be charged cancellation charges for the missing passenger and then a single supplement on top.

This seem ludicrous to me, I can see that they want they want as many people spending money on board as possible, but they have just gone and alienated a good customer and his friends. There is plenty of availability on this cruise and I am sure they will end up dropping this price of the inside cabins just to sell the cruise. I do understand the business reasons, but it just seems daft to sell an outside cabin to a single passenger but not an inside.

And again..

Thanks once more to Rob for carrying out his promise and displaying the Complete Cruise Brochure on hiscoffee table. It's a shame the dogs were just visiting and no longer able to guard it.

It looks great Rob - lets hope all the neighbours like it and want to book lots of cruises with me.