How to organize your own group cruise, Part 1
If you want to organize a group cruise and perhaps sail “free,”* it is possible! If you do it right, you may end up with several free cruise cabins! Over the next four weeks, I’ll be providing a series of tips for planning your own group cruise.
Do all your friends say, “gee, we’d just love to go on a cruise with you sometime,”? If so, and if you’re a natural planner and a bit of a shameless promoter, you could start organizing your own group cruises – either as small gay group cruises, or along other themes of your choosing…or just for a bunch of friends with no theme at all.
I’m about to give you my tips – my lessons learned – from a group cruise I tried to organize a few years ago. I’ll give you the pros and the cons from my own experience.
- If you can’t afford the trip without the group, don’t even start. My wallet and I learned this the veryhard way, the several thousand dollars way.
- I planned a trip I couldn’t afford thinking gay travelers would jump at the chance to sail round-trip from San Diego to Hawaii over the Christmas holidays.
- While plenty of people expressed a desire to join us, too few got out their credit cards (for reasons below); thus my partner and I were not able to qualify for the free or even discounted cabin we were planning on.
- I needed to sell 8 cabins for the 50% discount, or 16 cabins for my partner and me to “cruise free.” We sold 5. Ouch.
- How many people do you personally know who are likely to actually pay to travel with you? And would they be willing to pay for your trip—because in organizing group travel, that’s essentially what you’re asking them to do.
- In my case, I actually knew more-than enough people who wanted to go, my problem was timing (see the next point).
- Depending on several factors, it can take as few as 5 sold cabins to qualify for one person to cruise “free,” and 10 cabins in order to obtain a completely “free” cabin. The factors depend largely on demand for the itinerary and how motivated the cruise line’s sales agent is to work with your travel agent (and yes, you will need to use a travel agent, and s/he should be a group cruise expert).
- Timing is a huge factor in planning group travel. People have busy lives. It’s a crucial to make sure you’re planning a cruise during a period when the people in your dream-group will have time off from work and other obligations.
- This is where I made my biggest mistake. We chose the Christmas holidays for our 14-night cruise, because I knew my friends who teach school would be off work.
- Indeed, tons of people expressed a desire to go and everyone had the time, but the majority were unwilling to go because they wanted to be home for Christmas. As someone who hates the family drama at holiday time, I was shocked at the number of mature gay men who said they would happily leave on December 26, but they needed to be with their mom’s on Christmas Day.
- Lesson learned: I would not worry about the school schedule, and would simply plan a cruise for mid-winter when the majority of my friends (who are not in education) could take vacation time.
Next week: Choosing a good group itinerary, Choosing the right travel agent / cruise agent, How to work successfully with your agent.
Do you already have a group cruise planned? Be sure it’s listed in the gay cruise calendar!
*Note: nothing in life is truly free. A “free” cruise as the organizer of a group will have other costs associated, including onboard expenses, possibly port fees/taxes, and of course the cost of airfare, as applicable. You also have to weigh in the time you spend organizing…your time has a value, so keep in mind that there will be expenses associated with a group cruise even if your cabin is “free” or “comped.”
