Cruise Travel Agents in Napier
At YOU Travel Napier, we plan ocean, river, small-ship and expedition cruises for travellers from across Hawke's Bay. We are a locally owned and operated family business.
Browse cruises
If you're not sure yet what you're after, our cruise search tool is a good place to start. Filter it by destination, time of year and length of cruise, and use it for ideas and planning. Not every sailing is in it, so once something catches your eye, come and have a chat with us about what you really want and we can find your perfect cruise.
Browse Cruisesor call 06 835 3917Choosing a cruise
How cruising works, and why finding the perfect match matters
A resort ship carrying several thousand people, a river ship of under 200 guests on the Rhine and a 16-cabin boat on the Croatian coast are all called cruises, and they're very different holidays.
What they share is the reason a lot of people cruise: you unpack once. Seven places in a week is hard going when you change hotels each time, and easy on a ship, because the moving happens overnight.
After that, the size of the ship shapes nearly everything. Big ships carry more on board and go to the bigger ports, which tend to have more to do, and they cost less per person because the cost is spread across more people. Small ships get into small places a big ship never could, the pace is slower, and you generally pay more per person for it.
It's horses for courses. What matters is knowing what you're getting before you go: board expecting a casino and a piano bar, find there isn't one, and you're on the wrong boat. That's the real job of a cruise specialist. Putting the wrong person on the wrong ship is the mistake we're there to stop, so the first thing we do with anyone thinking about a cruise is work out which kind suits them.
Cruise styles
Four kinds of cruise
Ocean cruising
An ocean ship sails port to port across open sea and doubles as your hotel for the trip. Ships run from a few hundred guests to several thousand, and the biggest carry pools, spas, theatres and casinos. It suits you if you like plenty of choice on board and a sea day or two to enjoy it. The catch is that you only get the use of it on the days you're on board: pick a route packed with ports and you'll spend the week walking past the pool to the gangway.
Read our guide to ocean cruising
River cruising
River ships are long and low, carry around 130 to 190 guests, and sail inland waterways such as the Rhine and the Danube. Most mornings you wake up moored in the middle of a town and walk straight off into it. It suits people who'd rather have the scenery and the old towns than big-ship entertainment. The catch: no large pools or stage shows, and a couple of hours' walking most days, often on cobbles.
Read our guide to European river cruising
Small-ship cruising
This is ocean cruising on a much smaller boat, and the Croatian coast is one of the best-known places to do it. There, boats of around 16 cabins typically sail seven nights out of Split or Dubrovnik, as a loop or one way. Most mornings you anchor in a bay for an hour or a few and swim or paddle board off the back. Breakfast and lunch are generally on board; dinner is ashore, at your own cost, in whichever small town you've tied up in, long after a big ship would usually have sailed. The boats range from basic backpacker boats to comfortable ones on the same route. You need reasonable mobility for this cruise style: boats often tie up several deep in port, so you're crossing other boats and climbing stairs. We've sent clients on these Croatian sailings for several years, and one of our team sailed one this year.
Browse Cruises
Expedition cruising
Expedition ships are smaller and tougher, built to reach remote places like Antarctica and the Arctic. They carry anywhere from about a dozen guests to a few hundred. You go ashore in Zodiacs, small inflatable boats, often several times a day, and an expedition leader and a team of specialists run the landings. It suits people who'd rather spend their days on wildlife and wild places than on-board entertainment. The catch: the expedition team on board decides each day's landings around the weather and the ice, so the plan can change, and smaller ships generally cost more per person. We plan these voyages through specialist operators such as Hurtigruten, Ponant and National Geographic-Lindblad Expeditions and more.
Browse CruisesBooking with us
Booking your cruise with us
We'll ask how you like to travel, and how much you want going on around you. Then we look for the cruise that fits, rather than selling you something off the shelf.
Everyone on our team cruises. Between us we've sailed ocean and river, big ships and small, so whoever picks up the phone can talk it through with you.
Our cruise search carries dozens of lines, from Carnival and Royal Caribbean to Ponant and Avalon Waterways, and we book lines that aren't in it too, Viking among them. Like a mortgage broker who searches every bank, we look across all of them for you.
You pay the same price as booking with the cruise line direct, because the line pays us a commission. Around the cruise itself, we can arrange:
- your flights, and accommodation for the nights before and after the cruise
- travel insurance, through Allianz Partners or Cover-More
- the rest of the trip, if the cruise is one part of a longer holiday (see how we build custom itineraries)
Step by step
How it works
Have a look in our cruise search for ideas, or give us a ring.
Talk it through with us. The first consultation is free, at our office, by phone or remotely. Or request a quote on a sailing straight from the search, and it comes through to us.
We book the cruise and everything around it, and your itinerary goes into the Travefy app, with flights, accommodation and contact details in one place.
While you're away, we're there 24/7 for anything urgent, by phone, WhatsApp or email.
Questions
Common questions about booking a cruise
Does booking a cruise through a travel agent cost more?
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No. You pay the same price as you would booking with the cruise line direct. The line pays us a commission for the booking.
I don't know where I want to go. Where do I start?
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Plenty of people ring us saying just that. Have a look through the cruise search to see what appeals, or skip it and tell us how you like to travel, and we'll suggest a few kinds of cruise to think about.
River, ocean or small ship: which suits me?
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It depends what you want from your days. Ocean suits you if you like a big ship with plenty on board. River suits you if you'd rather wake up in a new town most mornings. A small ship suits a slower pace and evenings ashore, as long as you're comfortable with stairs.
What is a sea day?
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A full day the ship spends at sea instead of in port. On port days you're usually off the ship by eight or nine and back by four or five, so sea days are when you get to use the ship. First-time cruisers often tell us they wish they'd booked more of them.
Can I cruise from New Zealand?
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Yes. Some sailings start or finish close to home, such as a New Zealand coastal route, Auckland to Sydney, and Carnival's sailings to the Pacific Islands. No long-haul flight to reach the ship takes out the jet lag and a good part of the cost.
Can you take over a cruise I booked myself?
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Often, yes, and at no extra cost, as long as you get in touch quickly. Cruise lines only allow a transfer within a short window after you book, and for some it's as little as 24 hours. If you're in time, the line transfers the booking to us and we look after it from there.
Talk to us
Browse cruises or give us a call
Browse Cruises for ideas, or call us on 06 835 3917 and we'll go through it with you. You can also send us a message. Our office is at 86 Tennyson Street, Napier South, open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, with weekends by appointment. We look after travellers from Napier, Hastings, Havelock North, across Hawke's Bay and New Zealand-wide.
or call 06 835 3917
Written by the team at YOU Travel Napier.
Image credit: river cruise ship at Rüdesheim by Gary Bembridge (CC BY 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons.