More Web sites seek cruisers who want to book, not just look

A growing number of cruise sellers are trolling the waters of the Internet, hoping to hook visitors into booking, not just looking, online.

Dozens of travel Web sites, including www.expedia.com and www.travelocity.com, sell ship cabins. In the last few months, discounter www.hotwire.com has begun marketing cabins with partner CruisesOnly; www.orbitz.com has streamlined its cruise-booking engine; and a new booking site, www.7blueseas.com, was launched by a Pasadena company.

More of us are taking the bait and booking online, but the numbers remain minnow-sized. Despite advances, the Internet is still a better place to research a cruise than to book one, most experts say.

“I wouldn’t do it,” Anne Campbell, co-owner of www.cruisemates.com, an information Web site for cruisers, says of online booking. “I would want to talk to someone if I was plunking down thousands and thousands of dollars.”

Mike Driscoll, editor of the weekly trade newsletter Cruise Week, agrees that booking by mouse is a bad idea “unless you’re really a veteran cruiser who knows all the pricing.”

Despite recent discounting, a cruise is a big investment. It typically runs at least $2,000 per couple per week in the Caribbean, including airfare, Driscoll notes. Booking can be complicated.

Besides sorting through a dozen or more cabin categories, you may need to book airfare, pre- or post-cruise hotel stays, shore excursions, dinner seating and more. Each line attracts a different crowd and has different rules.

All this can be intimidating, especially for first-time cruisers, who make up about half the people sailing today. It helps to consult a travel agent or cruise representative. So it’s not surprising that online bookings provided only 4% of cruise lines’ revenue in the U.S. market last year, according to PhoCusWright Inc., a travel industry research company. Still, that was twice as much as in 2001, and the figure will increase to 10% by 2005, the company projects.

Why go online?

There’s an incredible amount of information on the Internet to help evaluate cruise lines and ships, advocates say. It’s great for comparison shopping; some sites sort ships by price or compare itineraries. It’s a fine way to reserve a cabin too, some say.

“It’s possible not to talk to a travel agent ever and get enough information online to book,” says Sharon Dodd, editor of www.cruisecritic.com, another cruise information site.

Nearly everyone agrees that Internet travel sellers can have great deals on cruises. That’s especially true of the mega-sites such as www.travelocity.com and www.orbitz.com. On the other hand, a bricks-and-mortar agent who deals regularly with a line will get good prices too.

One tactic some travelers use is to find a good price on the Internet, then challenge their travel agent to match it. That way they get Internet pricing along with the personal touch.

Here are some useful cruise sites for looking or booking:

* Looking: Many Web sites offer reviews of lines and ships. But quality varies. Reviews on www.smarterliving.com, for instance, depend heavily on the lines’ own Web sites and press releases, features editor Anne Banas says. Not surprisingly, they tend to be glowing.

Among well-regarded sites for more critical reviews are www.cruisecritic.com and www.cruisemates.com, which dispatch writers to check out the ships. The evaluators are often hosted by cruise lines, but while aboard, CruiseMates’ Campbell says, she collects feedback from paying guests too.

“I wouldn’t exactly call the meals on Amsterdam ‘cuisine,’ ” she writes of the Holland America ship. Its spa, on the other hand, gets a thumbs-up.

Lively reader reviews and chat rooms on these two sites are even more blunt and a good source of gossip on the latest cruise adventures and misadventures. Take it all with a grain of salt, but take it, experts say.

* Booking: I recently test-drove some better-known Web sites that sell cruises. I found booking online could be cumbersome and saved me little or nothing over booking with an agent or directly with the line. But it was far from a complete survey.

The paucity of discounts probably was because I chose a holiday cruise: a July 4 sail of Carnival’s Ecstasy from Los Angeles to Ensenada, Mexico, and back. Another date might have produced more deals.

Booking on Carnival’s own Web site, www.carnival.com, was an ordeal. There were seven steps; for most, I waited a minute or more for the system to retrieve data. Carnival’s Terry Thornton, vice president of marketing planning, agrees the system is flawed. He says the line is developing a new booking engine.

Booking on www.travelocity.com, www.orbitz.com and specialists www.cruise411.com and www.7blueseas.com was easier and faster. Each site provided deck diagrams, plus photos and descriptions of cabins, at convenient stages in the process.

But fares were listed differently on different sites, and even on the same site.

On the Carnival site, the fare was first stated as $479 per person, double occupancy. But the final price was $537.88: a $390 “modified cruise rate” (basic fare), $89 “non-commissionable fare” (port charges, I was told), $19.88 “miscellaneous charges” (government-related fees and taxes) and $39 “insurance” (various coverage; automatically added unless I removed it).

On most of the sites, the initial fare listed was the basic fare plus port charges, but on www.cruise411.com it was just the basic fare.

Most sites matched the price for my cabin that Carnival posted or took off $10; www.7blueseas.com took off $24.07, or a bit more than 5%. (Prices may have changed since I did my research.)

I called a travel agent specializing in cruises and was quoted Carnival’s price.

In the end, it seemed like a long walk around the deck to save 5%. Besides, a good travel agent could tell me what none of the Web sites did: Is the show lounge above my cabin?

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Jane Engle welcomes comments and suggestions but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or e-mail jane.engle@latimes.com.