Vacations to Go www.vacationstogo.com Review

Overall Rating

Best priced cruises you will find. (remember the price is for the cruise only and does not include transfers or flights). You also have to add on US Taxes and Fuel surcharges though which can add another $100 -$200 to the price you see. We have had several cruises with them and have been generally impressed. You book over the phone on their freephone number with your credit card and only once you have completed the booking and your credit card decides the exchange rate they are going to apply do you know the actual price you will pay but we have still saved hundreds of pounds on each cruise against what you would pay for the same cruise in the UK. WWW.iglu.com or WWW.cruise.co.uk appear to be the cheapest UK sites and both usually include flights transfers and fuel surcharges unless they otherwise. They are still alot more expensive than VTG.

They are a big concern in the USA and they see UK customers as no different to their US ones. So just as they would in the US they only send and acknowledgement of your booking several days after you have made it. For people friom the UK who are worried about their booking this can be too long. But they do eventually acknowledge by e-mail and you will get your tickets or other joining instructions. The first cruise we just took an e-mail with us to the ship and all was fine, to our surprise.

Also if we were US customers and had any problems with the cruise company, (like we have Platinum Membership or other issues that for some reason are only recognised by the UK branch of the cruise company), then VTG would expect us to ring the cruise company direct as we would if we were in the US. The UK branches of these cruise companies have been told not to help customers who book with VTG in any way so once you have booked if you ring Holland America or Princess or Cunard in the UK they will not give you any help at all as some kind of punishment. We wanted to know what pier our ship was leaving from but they would not tell us on one cruise. Similarly if anything goes wrong on a cruise the offices in the UK will not help you. You have to deal with the US office which can be challenging and quite expensive in phone calls. If VTG understood this I am sure they would be more helpful to UK customers and would grow their market here as a consequence. On balance though the savings are so good, especially at the moment so it is worth accepting this problem.

We had our first major problem with them this year in that we booked a specific cabin on a Princess Ship to Norway. Princess decided to, (so called), upgrade us without letting us know. They just sent a fax to VTG. VTG did not pick this up and we did not find out until we reached the ship. This spoiled our holiday as we had booked the cabin for a specific purpose. Apparently this upgrading happens quite often. We had never experienced this before and have learned a valid lesson. IF YOU BOOK A SPECIFIC CABIN TELL THEM NO UPGRADES OR OTHER CABIN ALTERATIONS. We will be doing this in the future. Having said that Princess did nothing for us but VTG did give us $100 each of a future cruise which they did not have to do.

So I would generally recomend VTG as long as you realise they will treat you as a US customer then you will not go wrong. The savings make it worth it.

The wesbite is one of the easist to use and the advance search facility makes it really easy to find cruises at any time of year to any place.