Topic: Next challenge: booking a cruise with bitcoins (Read 1116 times)

Heading on a Caribbean cruise in the spring. The room I got is just over $3k for 2 people. So just over 10 bitcoins at today's rates.

I have the same second thoughts spending both fiat and bitcoins. It is the same thing.

If you were to buy the same cruise from your bank account, if in 2 years BTC is 10k each wouldn't you be kicking yourself for not spending that money on bitcoins instead?

I rarely spend money. When I do it is to enjoy life, I don't buy things.

As I am about 98% in Bitcoin, it is the main currency that I use.

people should use bitcoin so that bitcoin goes mainstream cruiseship companies should accept bitcoin and dutyfree shopping islands should accept bitcoin

If its not too much to ask where are you going and how much BTC do you expect to spend on this?
When you spend BTC don't you have second thoughts about it? say you spend 2 BTC now on on this and in 2 years BTC is 10K each... wouldn't that suck?

yes it would be great to be able to use bitcoin cruiseship vacations are the best and dutyfree shopping could be a huge market for bitcoin

I contacted Cheapair.com and Expedia and they both replied that they do not do cruises.

Ships and Trips travel works so that's good. At least there is one.

what about expedia or destinia?

don't they offer cruises?

Cheapair.com takes bitcoins and books cruises. I've used them for air travel quite a bit, but never for a cruise, so can't tell for sure.

So I found 2 places that could book my cruise for me in bitcoin.

The first http://www.southafrica.to was decent but they're based out of South Africa and I think the currency exchange added a few percent to the price so their price was a few hundred dollars higher.


The one I ended up using is http://shipsandtripstravel.com. After getting the cruise picked out they sent me the payment form and I chose "cash", then the agent wanted my credit card for the deposit and I told her I don't have one and I can only pay in Bitcoin. She talked to her manager then came back saying they don't accept bitcoin as payment.
So I replied to the e-mail with this link from their webpage: http://shipsandtripstravel.com/lagniappe/bitcoin-travel/
The post is from January 2014 so they obviously set up the payment a long time ago and haven't had people pay in bitcoin since. She contacted the IT guy and he sent me a BitPay link for the payment.

I contacted about 20 different local agents in Florida asking if they'd accept Bitcoin. The only ones that replied said that their franchise contract only allows them to accept credit cards or certified check/money order.

I did some research and found that I can pay cash for stuff on the cruise ship, you just deposit $500 or so for the week and pay at the end. I can use localbitcoins when I get back to the US to get cash, I can even use localbitcoins at the small islands so I can pay for things in the local currency (which is usually cheaper).

Now to start contacting companies about paying for excursions with bitcoins

I think this is the best route...individual agencies.

Here is the response I received from btctrip:

Thank you for contacting BtcTrip.

in america you could use the service "Magic" to pay for that. 

I sent an email to a Captain I know with Princess Cruise Lines. I suggested they look at accepting BTC thru Coinbase or similar service. I also mentioned that they should accept BTC for your on-board account. I am sure he will pass it on, but we will see what happens from there.

Yes, Word of mouth does work. I talked to a young man about Bitcoin and it turned out, his father owned a franchise selling computer gadgets and other strange things. He talked to his father and now they are very keen to adopt Bitcoin as a payment option. I cannot wait for that to happen, because they have very cool stuff in the shops. Eg. Power saving devices / Led lights / Spy stuff etc. etc. ^very proud^

A few years ago I suggested someone contact the CEO of Overstock because he seemed like someone that would be interested due to his open support of Ron Paul. Someone in the thread was able to get through to him and the rest is history.

You never know.

The best bet, is to send a email to Coinbase or Circle and to ask if they could approach a agency to get them to accept BTC as a payment method.

We as individuals will not have any luck with this, if we go at it alone. I send emails out daily and I get the same results. " We will hand this query to our finance department " and you never hear anything back from them.

If enough people combine efforts and ask or write emails to ask for Bitcoin payments, they might consider it.. but people do not consolidate efforts.

A lot of merchants accepts Bitcoin payments, then people do not support them enough and they stop doing it. 

just watched a vlog video about traveling with cruise exactly royal princes and i think its better to make a vacation and paid with bitcoin and finally i find https://btctrip.com i think this the awesome site,cant wait to make it happen

It doesn't look like they do cruises but this is pretty cool... https://btctrip.com/
You could look for tickets on craigslist and see if they would be open to swapping for BTC.

that will be hard to do.

Thanks for posting. Didn't know this site exists. Hope they are legit. Might come in handy for my next vacation. However they should definitely take some new pictures for their "team" page... they don't look all too friendly...

Hopefully Elwar will be lucky booking a cruise with them - so far they only offer flights. It's always sad to see existing BTC businesses go.

ya.ya.yo!

Hey,

You should try to see if you find what you're looking for here https://btctrip.com/ or you can email the guys there to see if they can do the reservation for you.

Enjoy your cruise!

I don't think you'll have any luck with this by emailing big websites or companies. Try your luck with some tourist agencies maybe.