How to research cruise ship relocation trips properly?

Upvote:1

You will find such cruises marketed as one of Transatlantic, Transpacific, Repositioning and sometimes World. They are very popular.

They are often seasonal, meaning eastbound transatlantic in the spring and westbound in the fall.

The best search engine I've found is vacationstogo.com. You can make the above selections in the All Cruise Regions drop-down. You may have to make other criteria selections to limit the result.

Be aware, you will likely not find a cruise that matches your exact city pair. For example, you may have to embark in Ft. Lauderdale or Tampa and sail to Rotterdam.

Any travel agent can book these, or you can book directly with the cruise line. Transoceanic cruising is one of my favorite leisure activities.

Upvote:6

It is a sort of art.

On cruise search engines, you could use as "cruise region/destination": "transatlantic", "transpacific". One of the most used site is CruiseCritics, but you may have seen much more sites. i think I once saw also a site which were specialized on repositioning cruises, but I do not think I could find it again quickly.

In this manner, you will find most of cruises. On cruise lines you may find a PDF catalogue, and there you may find some other repositioning cruises (usually at the end of catalogue, but check where they display "transatlantic".

The art is about finding the other repositioning cruises (which in my opinion are the better: more exotic destinations). For these there is no easy way: look for a specific ship, and check when it change the home port(s). Check for November/December (and they you have an idea for the journey in the other direction).

So you may find some other kind of repositioning: Suez Canal, "North" (Caribbean/Alaska) to South America, Arabic peninsula to Pacific, etc., or also just the change of port, from northern ports in (US) East Coast to the more southern ports.

Sometime you discover that a cruise is a repositioning cruise just by seeing the lower prices (and that you cannot use standard promotions, perks, ...)

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