Repositioning Cruise Tool: Fly vs. Cruise Showdown (FREE Spreadsheet!)

[@tendegreeswarmer]

Do you use spreadsheets to compare your travel options? This spreadsheet was made in Google Sheets. To get your copy, make sure you are logged in to your Google account (like Gmail) and click the link below to make your own copy. GET YOUR SPREADSHEET COPY HERE: bit.ly/RepositioningCruise

[@michaelsd284]

Thanks for the review and pointing out the various cost options. I'm planning a trip to Europe in the Fall with the intent of taking a re-position cruise back home instead of a return flight. For me this will definitely be more expensive by far but that's not incorporating the joy the trip, relaxing from traveling around Europe, and the people and experience I will be gaining on the ship rather them squeezing into a seat for 8+ hours and all the hassles that come with post COVID flying.

[@tendegreeswarmer]

I agree completely, that sometimes an experience is worth paying for. 🙂

[@elnamayberry]

I love that now the prices include the taxes and port fees - the price still isn't the final amount you'll pay, but it gives a more realistic starting price. I'm not a long-term traveler, but am using a TA cruise as an excuse to visit Barcelona for a couple of days, a 3-port Spain/Portugal cruise, and a 1-week resort for the trip to Fla., so it works out as a great deal!

[@tendegreeswarmer]

It depends on the line and which country you are looking from, but yes we support all inclusive pricing instead of breaking everything into pieces to make it appear cheaper than it is. Hope you love your cruises, they can (sometimes) be a very affordable way to travel! 😀

[@pjcline8878]

Oh wait! Your video dedicated to re-positions just popped up. I'll watch it now!

[@sandieinatlanta9587]

While I think your idea of a spreadsheet is wonderful, I am not sure how you can budget $20 a day for food anywhere, either in Europe or in USA. I just had lunch at my local Chinese restaurant and the base price was $15 for a meal, plus tax and tip. Last week, a platter of Paella in Barcelona was 20 Euros, plus a drink, cover charge etc. I love respositioning cruises. It is a beach vacation with no sand to get into the bed sheets. I just did a Rio to Lisbon trip and have booked a NCL from Iceland to NYC which will cost me a bit more than a comfort class airline ticket but I get 10 days of additional vacation. And I will be treated like the Queen. No dishes. No cleaning.

[@tendegreeswarmer]

Fair question, and you're right, that would be a very tight budget in the US or in Europe/Australia. For the spreadsheet, I was trying to show that even for those with a very small budget, a Repositioning Cruise can still make financial sense. If you budget more for food, or accommodation, or fly first class, then a Repositioning Cruise is going to make even more sense from a cost perspective. For the bigger picture, we spend a lot of time traveling in Asia or Central/South America, where our food budget is often under $20 a day. Over time though, balancing those low and high cost destinations, that is about the average, even though we pay more when we are in Europe or the USA. Did you enjoy the Rio to Lisbon trip? We have friends trying to talk us into doing that in reverse this fall, but I think we are going to be on the wrong side of the world to make it work. 🙁

[@joethetravelguy6943]

Well done Gents and thank you for the spread sheet. I do repositionings all the time on Celebrity I have one going to Lisbon in April, this will be my 4th. Just subscribed to you channel. Safe travels !!

[@tendegreeswarmer]

Thanks for stopping by, we definitely enjoy a good spreadsheet, as well as a good Repositioning Cruise - enjoy your crossing!

[@slowmads]

Okay, I’m sold. I am going to use the template to figure out our net spend on our 4-month World Cruise!

[@tendegreeswarmer]

We've never done a world cruise, our longest was 2 B2B cruises, so 30 days from Barcelona to Santiago Chile. 4 months is hard core, I look forward to hearing more about your adventure!

[@latreashduvall8636]

Brilliant - love this! Thanks for sharing.

[@tendegreeswarmer]

Thanks, I hope you find it useful!

[@davidmayeranderson1291]

Thanks for the spreadsheet! Looks like a great tool. I don't know anywhere you can stay for $25 a day or have 2 people eat for $20/day. That would be really interesting to see how you would do that in Rio or Lisbon.

[@tendegreeswarmer]

Some cities are much harder than others, but we use that as our average goal. (We also tend to stay places for a month at at time, which gets us a lower rate.) Europe is more expensive, but in Indonesia we were finding accommodation for $11 a night. Hopefully over the year it balances out. The good news though is that if your budget is bigger - awesome! The higher your budget, the more likely a Repositioning Cruise is going to work out as a very affordable option.

[@365vacay]

Great Tool Robb! Love It!

[@tendegreeswarmer]

Thank you, I hope you find it useful!

[@alanfernandes4056]

This was the first time a stumbled across your channel. Loved this, my first video of yours. Great presentation, pace, and graphics. Well done! Thank you for the sheet too! I'll use it to also compare all inclusive vacations to cruises.

[@tendegreeswarmer]

Thanks for stopping by, I'm glad you enjoyed the video. We use this spreadsheet ourselves, so I hope you find it useful as well! 😀

[@fastdraw101]

Great spreadsheet, Robb! Thanks.

[@tendegreeswarmer]

Glad you like it, hope it helps!

[@dawnturner8735]

Thank you so much. That was really interesting and I’m going to download that asap! P.S. I love Norwegian for cruising.

[@tendegreeswarmer]

I hope it helps you in your planning. We definitely love NCL! 😃

[@os.diletantes]

Thank you for the resource!

[@tendegreeswarmer]

You're welcome, I hope you find it useful! 😀

[@ttqueenie]

I keep shaking my head on writing scraps to find out if the cruise is worth it for my group..lol.. I do that.. now I write in an exercise book...we also do price per day also. We have a price in our head and work around that.

[@tendegreeswarmer]

Daily price works out well for my brain too 😀

[@gregneil612]

Hi Robb. Interesting cost analysis. Something that I’ve been meaning to ask and is pertinent to this video. Do you guys have travel insurance when you travel? If so, do you just use included credit card insurance or separate company travel insurance? Just for fun I looked at the NCL Australia page. It doesn’t give you a tipping separately option as this is always included in the cost as are port charges. There are also no separate taxes as this is included in the upfront cost as well.

[@tendegreeswarmer]

I'm sure we'll end up doing a separate video on Travel Insurance eventually. We use World Nomads, which we've barely had any claims on but has been good for us. I don't actually know if they cover cruises specifically though, I've never thought about it. And that is very interesting (and awesome!) that all costs are included from Australia - I've heard the laws are different in different countries, but since I have a loyalty account with NCL they know I'm US based no matter where I physically am booking from.

[@pjcline8878]

We've never cruised but your presentation makes it almost a no-brainer. Yes, our hotel and food budgets are markedly higher than yours, so the cruise is even more cost-effective. Question: is there a dedicated website specifically for re- position cruises?

[@tendegreeswarmer]

There are LOTS of options to search for cruises, and we go through a few of them in the other video, but one of the easiest is Vacations To Go and use their "Repositioning" filter to search. And yes, the higher your normal budget the more likely a repositioning cruise is going to be cost effective and potentially even save you money over flying (even more so if you prefer business or first class tickets for those long-haul flights!)

[@ak-k3985]

You mentioned you are going to Europe in November, which is the opposite of the direction the repositioning cruises are going right now. Which direction do they go in in which season? I’m curious!

[@tendegreeswarmer]

Generally speaking, Transatlantic cruises head from Europe to the Caribbean/South America in Oct/Nov, and then back again in April/May. There are exceptions though, and different routes, so doing a little detective work can be helpful.

[@salliestewart4713]

My ncl mediterranean. I had 7 ncl excursions and only paid 306. I had great time. Some were dollars cause they paid

[@tendegreeswarmer]

Sounds like you got a great deal!

[@erinaustin9968]

Oh my gosh you did all the work for me! We’re on that same cruise going from Rio to Lisbon on NCL in March. Did you go on this cruise? If so, what excursions or alternative land tours do you recommend?

[@tendegreeswarmer]

We have been looking at that cruise for two years, but have yet to make the timing work out for us. You'll have to let us know how you like it!

[@erinaustin9968]

@@tendegreeswarmer absolutely. The price going from Rio to Lisbon has bounced around a little so we got a good deal.

[@tendegreeswarmer]

@@erinaustin9968 Getting a good deal is the best feeling! Hopefully we'll make that sailing before too long. Cape Verde!!!

[@agasque]

Thank you for the great spreadsheet! I was just about to sit down today to make this exact same thing since we are considering our first cruise/first repositioning cruise, but your sheet is so much more advanced than I could have made! I am also interested in a spreadsheet to compare various options (particularly cruise deals).

[@tendegreeswarmer]

I'm so glad you find it helpful! I'll have to think about a spreadsheet comparing cruises. I have one for accommodation, but a cruise would have much different data inputs. But I'll mull that one over, thanks for the idea!

[@PjSmith]

I’m wondering if you have a spreadsheet for planning purposes I want to figure out how I can cruise hop without all the expenses of flying from one port to another I’ve been looking at the repositioning cruises (I live in Arizona, so not many cruises out of Los Angeles) And I want to take advantage of these 12 +day cruises but once I get off the ship at my first port then I want to hop onto another boat without the huge expense of flying Hope that makes sense and hope you have a great planning tool?

[@tendegreeswarmer]

I don't have a spreadsheet for that, but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out. Once you find the cruise you want, say from Miami to Barcelona, then you just have to search for cruises from Barcelona. Back to back cruises can be fun too, just stay on the same ship, now that it has repositioned it will start doing Mediterranean cruises (or wherever) and depending on how you book it, you might be able to stay in the same room. We did back to back cruises from Barcelona to Miami and then Miami to Santiago over 30 days, it was excellent. If you wanted to get on a different ship, you might have to stay in your port city (Barcelona in this example) for a few days until the ship you want to take departs, but that is still better than flying. The only thing is this technique will rarely get you back to your home port, since the repositioning generally happens all in one direction and then doesn't go back until the end of the season (though there are exceptions!) Does that make sense?

[@papi8659]

Campinas is great fun - gayest city in Brazil , well worth 24 hour stopover 🙂

[@tendegreeswarmer]

Thank you for the recommendation, we’ll have to check it out!

[@slowmads]

I am so tied to my ruler, Sharpies and notebooks. You might turn me into a spreadsheet person. #olddognewtricks

[@tendegreeswarmer]

I can relate!!!! I have always been a paper person, I love the tactile stimulation of it. But as we've moved to carry on bags only, I just had to get rid of anything that wasn't crucial, and eventually I just couldn't justify carrying a big notebook and a folder with papers. While I will always miss my paper notes, I've also found a lot of great utility in online resources as I can easily duplicate sheets and use them over and over without having to reinvent the wheel, as well as having access to all of my old calculations for memory or for comparison. I will always miss my papers, but overall I think the pros in moving to digital have outweighed the cons, at least for me.

[@ingridfolkers1781]

OH BOY I challenge you to find a hotel room for 50. per night in Lisbon surrounding. I am a budget traveller, unless you stay in a hostel, your figures are not factual. I like the spreadsheet!

[@tendegreeswarmer]

We tried to use very budget numbers to prove the point. But yes, if your numbers for what you can find are higher, then it probably shows that the cruise is even more affordable! 😀

[@peterg3591]

I appreciate you are giving an example, but did you mean to quote per person costs in section 1 and costs per couple in section 2? Perhaps I am wrong but this is how it appears. For example you quote $50 per night hotel cost but only use a figure of $25in the example yet quote total room cost in the cruise. Did I miss something?

[@tendegreeswarmer]

Good question. I'll have to re-listen and see if I misspoke - it happens! lol - but the intent is that both the upper and lower sections should be for the total party (in this case two people). The example budget I was using for the cost of NOT taking the cruise was $50 a day for two people to include hotel ($25/day), food ($20/day), and entertainment ($5/day) - and of course, you would substitute those numbers with whatever your own budget is. (Hint: the higher your normal budget, the more affordable a cruise is likely to be.) For the cost of the cruise, the cost of the room/basic food/basic entertainment is all wrapped up inside the cost of the cruise, though you can upgrade each in the form of room upgrades, specialty dining, and shore excursions/activities, which you would then want to account for. Does that make sense?

[@MaxGrey03]

@peterg3591 That caught my attention as well and I had to go back and relisten. As he mentions in his reply, it is stated that the $50/day was for hotel, food and entertainment, but first time through I also thought that the $50 per night was referring to only the hotel.

[@bernadettesaumierberger3933]

Where do you stay for $50 a night

[@tendegreeswarmer]

It depends on where we are, but we are usually looking for month-long rentals of apartments, usually on booking or airbnb. If we had a bigger budget this is the first thing I would upgrade, but we've had great luck in finding some really nice places for under $25 a night. (In Bali we found some terrific short-term guesthouse for under $15 a night, Vietnam was about $20, Malaysia or Ecuador were right at $25 a night, but in Australia/Singapore we were closer to $75 a night for some basic hotels.)

[@lauramarierivera3235]

I can't open the sheet!

[@tendegreeswarmer]

It is a Google Sheet, so you have to have an account with them (generally like Gmail) and be logged in when you click the link. Does that help?

[@markstapleton951]

I think your numbers are screwed up. You start the cost of not taking the cruise with airfare for 2 people, then you do the other expenses for one person. You’re comparing apples and oranges. If you were consistent, then you would find it cheaper to take the cruise.

[@tendegreeswarmer]

I agree it is important to compare apples to apples. The examples we use are all costs for two people, but we recognize many people will have budgets larger than ours - the beauty of the spreadsheet is that it works with whatever budget you are working with. The higher your budget, the more likely the cruise is going to be cheaper than flying.

[@LawyerCalhoun1]

Yes, you put zero in for cruise line port excursions, but nowhere did you put anything in for self directed port excursions. Are you just going to stay on the boar every day in every port and spend nothing at all

[@tendegreeswarmer]

Great question - I made the example very simple just as a way to show how the spreadsheet works, without getting complicated with different circumstances - everyone spends differently! You of course would want to put in whatever numbers you would actually spend. Whether you have a very low budget or a very high budget, the spreadsheet works the same. Generally speaking, the higher your budget, the better chance the cruise will work out to be affordable, but the specifics of how you like to travel will make all the difference.