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P&O Cruises Restrict URLs

P&O Cruises have told agents selling their cruises not to use words such as P&O Cruises in their URL’s and the reason is obvious, P&O Cruises want to sell you their cruises themselves there by saving on paying out commission.

Technically this post would break their new rules on having the P&O Cruises brand names within the URL (what you see in the address bar) but as I no longer sell cheap cruises I guess it does not matter that much?

The likely outcome of all this is P&O Cruises ranking higher than any other website for terms associated with P&O Cruises.

Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) Investigates TripAdvisor

An interesting article on the BBC website today suggests that the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is to investigate TripAdvisor re the possibility of fake reviews on the website; the suggestion is that between 5 million and 10 million reviews could be fake.

There are many Search Engine Marketing companies out there that do spend a lot of time on sites that offer reviews and or forums; most of these companies will make up good reviews to help their clients. For obvious reasons I will not mention any.

That said I wonder if after the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has investigated TripAdvisor whether they will look at sites such as Cruise.co.uk? I am not saying they make up reviews at all; I am just thinking along the lines that TripAdvisor is a review site and reviews help ranking. Cruise.co.uk offers a massive reviews section and as such could be falling fowl to unscrupulous search engine marketing companies.

Saying that the only benefiter of the reviews on cruise.co.uk is cruise.co.uk themselves.

More Cruises from Southampton

Due to a mix up with redirects (my fault) I have started once more to make changes to the site beginning with Cruises from Southampton; the fault last time was I added a redirect to the Canada page instead of the main page. This has now been sorted.

One other change is that I shall be adding content to the internal pages from another site using an RSS feed; hopefully this will be in place by the end of the month and the site will have a fully functioning Cruises from Southampton section.

Are you looking to cruise with P&O Cruises in 2012 or 2013?

Are you looking to cruise with P&O Cruises in 2012 or 2013? If so here are a few things to bear in mind.

Did you know that P&O Cruises have cut their commission rates to 5% for every travel agent?

This means that there will little or no difference in price between all the travel agents and P&O Cruises themselves.

Do you know how much you will be charged should you change any details about your cruise once booked?

P&O Cruises like almost every other cruise line charges a fee for alterations; but did you know travel agents will now add there own expenses to these fees. In a recent survey on Cruisegle it was found that this ranged from £10 to £100. Don’t forget, this is on top of the charges that P&O Cruises would set.

Do you know how much you will be charged should you cancel your cruise once booked?

P&O Cruises like almost every other cruise line charges a fee for cancellations; these are clearly set out in the small print and rise the closer you get to travelling. If you cancel more than 91 days out, you loose your deposit; up to 57 days out it is 50% of the fare. There is a rising scale up to and including 100% of the fare. This is standard practise so do not be worried as travel insurance should cover cancellation fees if part of the terms. BUT travel agents will add their own fees to these charges and these may not be covered by an insurance policy. Should you cancel, the travel agent will charge anywhere from £80 up to a massive £300 as stated in the terms of Planet Cruise.

How many travel companies have gone bust recently?

Lets assume you have shopped around and saved £10 on the cost of your cruise; well done! How much has the travel agent discounted? Are they making any money? The more they discount the more chance they have of going belly up such as the likes of Gills Cruises in 2011 and previously Cruise Control. In the last two years I can count at least 12 companies who have gone under partly due to excessive discounting. Do you want to be abroad with that eternal nagging in the back of your brain “I wonder if I still have a flight home?”

If you are looking to book a cruise with P&O Cruises in 2012 or 2013 I would recommend booking directly with them; no extra fees to pay on top of their stated charges and a feeling of security that the cruise line is less likely to fall foul of the current economic climate than a travel agent.

To return to the Home Page of Cruisegle Click Here

We Cruise – Gills Cruises

Gills Cruises have sold their business to P&P Associates who own the We Holiday and We Fly brands; they now run We Cruise. If you check out the old Gills Cruises website, you will see it now redirects to We Cruise.

Looking at the site, not all cruise lines are set up yet; importantly the bigger brands like P&O Cruises and Royal Caribbean are not on-board so to speak! This may be something that is being worked on between We Cruise; P&P Associates and the cruise lines.

Whatever happens I wish the new company; We Cruises well and hope they employ some of the old Gills Cruises staff.

Cruises from Southampton

I have started to make changes to the site beginning with Cruises from Southampton; the main change here is the URL structure; it has changed from being Cheap Cruises from Southampton to just Southampton. That said the page title has been kept as it was!

Gills Cruises

It looks like Gills Cruises may be in trouble; P&O Cruises & Cunard are among the 4 cruise lines that will no longer allow Gills Cruises to sell their cruises.

Gills Cruises have been around for years however rather like Cruise Control they have always tried to undercut other companies and as such are struggling. There may be other reasons; I am only assuming in this post and apologise to Gills Cruises if I am wrong. Don’t forget Cruise Control went bust while the largest cruise agency.

When I was thinking of selling cruises myself I could not match Gills Cruises prices and they were one of the reasons why I decided not to carry on with my foray into creating a travel agency. With luck Gills Cruises will pull through and their clients will be unaffected by this shocking news; I wish them well.

Cruisegle Cruise Holidays

Rather than loose all the work done on this website I am creating a new Cruisegle called Cruise Holidays; this site is cruisegle.co.uk.

Overtime I will move all the posts from here to there however initially the new site will be treated as a separate cruise holidays entity.

Obviously the new site will be a lot faster than this one and will look different; hopefully there will be more functionality as well?

I hope you bear with me as I organise the move and will check back with cruisegle.co.uk for your future cruise holidays.

Cruise Deals Moved

I have finally got around to moving one of my websites; Oftheseas.org my Cruise Deals website has now moved to http://cruisedeals.uk.com/and is now hosted in the UK.

This move will enable me to set up Cruise Deals from a few agents so that people can view some amazing offers. This though is a little way off but I am working on the solution.

Holidays 2012

I know I have not been working much on Cruisegle lately; this will be changing soon. The reason is simple as I am building a website for Holidays 2012 and so have not had the time.

Holidays 2012 will be monetised by Adsense initially though once the holiday suppliers have finished finalising their 2012 holidays it will have a price comparison search box on it to find cheap holidays in 2012.

Holidays 2012 is already attracting 300 people a day, this should rise as we approach the autumn when people traditionally start looking for 2012 Holidays; or rather holidays in the following year.