jody

We just booked the Golden Princess for Eastern Carib in April and the port charges are $352 for the two of us. We only stop at St. Thomas and St. Martin. It sounds high to me and I can't find any information on the web about how much they are. Does this sound right???

Starfish

I looked at another cruise line and the Port and taxes were around $168.79 per person. This cruise went to St.Thomas, St. Martin and a private island.

Your price is close.

Paul Therault

Hi Jodi,

The industry is going to do away with the term "port charges." Some have done so already. They are going to be called taxes or non-commissionable charges.

There doesn't seem to be any standard and the cruise lines are all taking the heat. Most officials will not even address the question.

Paul

Jason

The term "port charges" originally was intended to reflect the actual costs and fees imposed by the various port authorities on the cruise ships which docked in their "domain", according to the CLIA.However,after the proliferation of cruising particularly in the Caribbean aned particularly out of Florida,it appears that port charges began to include other fees the cruise lines chose to include in the payment of port charges in addition to the cruise fare itself.In 1997,the State Attorney General of Florida obtained an aggreement with some of the cruise lines to include the "port charges" within the figure quoted as the cruise fare.But like Paul said,there is no clear cut industry initiative to establish a standard.It would be ice to know exactly how much each port charged each ship to call at any given time.
Jason

BILL

Port charges are what you pay BEFORE you sail & if you don't stop at all the ports ,TOUGH!!. They keep your money anyway! We missed FIVE ports on last two cruises (Princess & Celebrity) due to weather & received NO compensation of any kind!!
BILL

Starfish

Bill,

Missed a port and arrived late at a port a couple of years ago on Hal and we were given onboard credit.
The ship had an engine out.

Bob

Excellent post and great replys. My concern regarding this is how travel agents and internet cruise sellers choose to include these OR not include these at their discretion when they post prices for cruises. They will all eventually tell you how much, but it makes it VERY difficult to compare apples with apples. For example, if you look at the web pages of cruise.com and Icruise.com it looks like Icruise.com is much cheaper. This is because they do not include the port charges in the prices they post up front whereas cruise.com does. After you've clicked thru a couple of questions you finally get the full price with port on Icruise. In reality both agencies are normally very close in price.
If nothing else can be done I wish that they would follow that court ruling the earlier poster mentioned and all quote prices "up-front" of the cruise AND port charges in their advertising. Thanks again. I learned a lot about this in this chain. Bob

ThankYou

Bravo. It drives me crazy trying to compare prices with everyone following different rules. I think everything should be included in the prices that are advertised and stop the non-sense of fine print that's buried down at the bottom of the ad that says "port charges included/not included", etc.

Jason

Exactly.The cruise is "X" amount of dollars per person,period.Includes blah blah blah.Nothing Extra!