This article is Princess Strict Cancellation Policy. It is about Princess Cruises changing the cancellation policy to make it much stricter and more penalties for guests that cancel close to departure.
Cruise Lines have traditionally had strict cancellation policies in order to protect their revenue and prevent the ships from sailing at low capacity.
Covid changed all that and the cruise lines made it easy to cancel a cruise and get credit for a future vacation.
Post covid, cruise lines have been clawing back those customer friendly policies and returning to the normal strict policies.
Princess
Princess Cruises announced this week that their cancellation policy is changing.
The new cancellation policy makes sailings become 100% non-refundable at 30 days prior to sailings on cruises up to 24 days. This is a change from the current policy of 14 days prior to sailing.
Longer sailings will have a 100% non-refundable policy at 60 days.
The policy is effective on new bookings after March 4, 2024. Existing bookings will continue under the previous policy.
The new cancellation policy has the following terms for sailings up to 24 days:
- No fee for cancellations made 90 days or more before the sailing date.
- A 25% fee applies if cancelled 75 to 89 days prior.
- A 50% fee is levied for cancellations made 61 to 74 days before departure.
- Those cancelling 31 to 60 days prior will incur a 75% fee.
- A 100% fee is charged for cancellations made 30 days or less before the departure.
Sailings 25 days and longer have the following new cancellation policy:
- No fee if cancelled 120 days or more in advance.
- Cancelling between 113 and 119 days before departure incurs a fee equivalent to the amount of the deposit or 30% of total charges for World Cruises.
- A 50% fee applies for cancellations made 61 to 112 days prior.
- A 100% cancellation fee is enforced for cancellations 60 days or less before the cruise begins.
Changes
When one cruise line changes policies, the others in the industry also follow along. This potentially could impact more people.
With cruise demand at the highest that it has even been, it makes sense that the cruise lines are capatalizing on it to keep the ships full.
Many cruise lines have bene making non-customer friendly policies like increasing the daily charges for gratuities while cutting services.
In addition, Princess even made its popular Pizza restaurant a paid experience instead of complimentary. Guests now need to have Princess Plus or Premier in order to dine at the sit down pizza restaurant without having to pay a per-person charge.
Princess Cruises
I sailed on Discovery Princess in 2023 and had a good time. My sailing took place prior to when some of the changes took place.
You can read about my experience here.
I am looking forward to sailing on Sun Princess in December, 2024 but am a bit concerned over the changes that have been taking place.
Travel Insurance
With the new cancellation policy taking effect soon, it is a good reason to consider travel insurance prior to your cruise.
I recommend booking an individual policy outside of the cruise line since those plans are designed to benefit the cruise lines more than the passengers.
If you travel often like I do, I recommend an annual travel insurance policy over an individual one for cost savings.
Individually travel insurance policies for a single trip have higher coverage but they can cost about 20% of the cruise fare so that can add up. If you go on more than one cruise in a year, the annual plan makes sense.
Do you use travel insurance for your cruises?
Princess Changes
Princess Strict Cancellation Policy is definitely negative news.
I had to cancel a cruise or two in the past and it was nice that I at least got credit for a future trip or a refund. Now all that is changing and definitely makes having travel insurance more and more appealing.
What do you think about the new policy?