Take a luxury cruise or plan your own trip?

Taking a luxury cruise can be an exceptional way for the upscale traveler to experience a new region of the world. But what if you have always planned the details of your own trip? To cruise or not is the question we will help you decide. We will review the pros of each travel method and see where that analysis takes us.

When I was a young traveler, I always thought cruising was for older people. I skippered and crewed sailboats and took a Caribbean Windjammer cruise, but that was a different kind of adventure. Still, it’s a good place to start, because some experiences answer the cruise or not question by themselves.

Want to explore Switzerland and hike the Alps? You are not cruising. The best way to immerse yourself in Tuscany? Do a road trip. Want to hit the highlights of Canada, from Vancouver to Banff to Quebec? Plan your own amazing trip that might involve planes, trains, and automobiles.

Want to experience the glaciers and straits of the Alaskan coast for the first time? A luxury cruise beats bush planes and unknown accommodations. Want to see numerous Greek islands to figure out which you might want to revisit someday? A cruise is the answer.

So, aside from the more obvious journeys, what are the pros and cons of taking a luxury cruise versus planning your own trip?

Many reasons to take a luxury cruise (in no particular order)

1. Unpack once

Everybody has heard this one. But if you are traveling day after day to new places, the grind of “living out of a suitcase” can become tedious, if not miserable. Instead, arrive on the ship, put all your stuff in your walk-in closet, and live in a home-like setting. There are even washer/dryers onboard.

2. Wake up somewhere new (travel while you sleep)

It is downright exhilarating to open the curtains in the morning and be in a different city or even country. No hotel check-out, travel to the airport, wait while your flight is delayed, sit on a crowded plane for hours, hope your luggage arrives at baggage claim, figure out transportation to a new hotel where check-in is not allowed until late afternoon. Instead, travel while you sleep – what a concept!

3. Key decisions are made for you

We made a trip from L.A. to Toronto during World Cup. How to fly there? Need to change planes in Charlotte, NC. Where to stay when all the upscale hotels were charging more than $1,000 a night? I thought I was renting a luxury car, but the BMW was disappointing. What were my toll charges for the week? (I would find out weeks later it was $130). Where nice to eat every day? Logistics proved to be wearisome. On an all-inclusive luxury cruise, the travel mode and locations, the accommodations, the food and drink options, and more are all decided for you – in a good way. Rest easy, tomorrow is another destination.

4. Surprising value (and no surprises)

After much research, the Toronto trip above cost $1,000 a day for two of us. An upcoming luxury cruise on Seabourn will be about $1,500 a day. There is a belief that cruising is expensive. But so is planning your own luxury trip. Top end hotels, fine restaurants, entertainment, and tours all add up. Cruise costs for an inclusive voyage are predictable. Eat gourmet food, drink champagne, catch a show, or not – the price doesn’t change.

In the mainstream category, the value can also be there. A few years ago, I needed a getaway and checked out flights from Los Angeles to Mazatlán, with a resort stay for three nights. I found it was cheaper to book a veranda suite on a Carnival cruise for six nights, that included Mazatlán, Puerto Vallarta, Cabo San Lucas, and more. And it was hassle-free.

5. Make a difficult itinerary easy

Some years ago, I took a cruise from Sweden to Finland to Russia to Estonia to Latvia to Sweden, visiting five countries in seven days. It is highly unlikely I would have booked this itinerary on my own, dealing with so many flights, ground transportation, hotels, visas, tour guides, etc. Would I even have thought of seeing delightful Tallinn or Riga?

Most would agree the best way to see the Alaskan coast (for the first time, anyway) would be via a cruise. We took a luxury cruise with Seabourn for experiences we could only see with a small ship that carried its own zodiacs. That included the Inian Islands and Icy Strait Point and a second zodiac venture to the calving Dawes Glacier at Endicott Arm. I also was keen to see my first bald eagles, and a stop at the raptor center in Sitka went beyond checking that box. And Juneau, with nearby Mendenhall Glacier, is the only state capital that is not even reachable by road.

6. Diverse dining

All-inclusive luxury cruises, such as Seabourn and Silversea, have a wealth of choices throughout the day. Gone are the days of the one-buffet-fits-all mentality. Specialty restaurants beckon you to eat eggs benedict for breakfast, fresh sushi for lunch, scones at afternoon tea and grill-your-own steak and prawns for dinner. We seldom eat that well on a plan-your-own trip.

7. Intimate entertainment

We often don’t experience quality entertainment when traveling independently. What shows are in town the night we are there? Are they already sold out? Do we feel bad leaving early if we aren’t happy? On two recent Seabourn cruises I was able to have dinner and become friends with a top jazz singer who was headlining the show. How do you accomplish that with self-travel?

Seabourn even topped that on an evening at Ephesus, Türkiye. With the ancient site closed to visitors for the day, the cruise ship held a private party and evening of live classical music in the nearly 1,900-year-old Odean Amphitheatre. A memory-making experience.

8. Meet experts

Luxury cruises are able to attract interesting experts, often giving numerous lectures about the history and features of the cruise’s destinations. We had an upcoming stop in Bergen, Norway on a Silversea cruise. The lecture about the city was so good and detailed, we canceled our city excursion and easily did a self-tour.

Recently, on Seabourn, the cruise director announced at the sail-away that author Walter Isaacson would be joining us for a week of talks about his books. That included personal stories of Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, plus a preview of a book he was working on. I got to meet him several times on the journey and share some kbb.com stories of my own.

9. Meet people with similar interests

On a small luxury cruise, you can be as private or social as you desire. We always seem to meet people with whom we share something in common and wind up becoming new friends. Certainly, everybody on board enjoys travel, many veterans of dozens of voyages throughout the world. It’s just easier to meet people on a cruise than when you are traveling independently.

10. Elite service

This is one area where there is clear differentiation, even within cruising. Luxury cruise lines, such as Seabourn, Silversea, and the new class of luxury yachts, have crew to guest ratios of a remarkable 1:1. On mainstream cruise lines, such as Royal Caribbean and Carnival, it is 3 guests to 1 crew, a dramatic difference. Of course, when you plan your own trip, there is no one to remember your name, your drink preferences, your privacy wishes, and so on.

11. Multi-region sampling

On a 10-day Norway/Denmark cruise we visited eight destinations. On our own, we would never have thought to visit Stavanger, Norway. Who knew the Petroleum Museum would be so interesting?

When we took a Greek Islands cruise, we had little idea which locations would interest us the most. Fortunately, the cruise featured eight destinations, as diverse as Santorini and Ephesus, Türkiye, on the way from Athens to Istanbul.

12. What if things go really wrong?

Just before Covid, I carefully booked an adventurous Norway trip through a small, quality agency there, complete with extensive train travel, boutique mountain stays, and ferries to fjords. Then the pandemic hit, and there were no longer flights to Scandinavia. I lost everything, as the agency said they had already spent the money on non-refundable train tickets, hotel rooms, etc. By comparison, during Covid, Seabourn offered its cancelled passengers a 100% cash refund or 125% future cruise credit.

13. Scenery from the ship

True luxury cruise ships have no inside staterooms. In fact, every suite has a private veranda reached through glass doors. Your morning latte is delivered to your balcony, while you watch seals lounging on ice floes in front of forested cliffs. Or maybe you count how many waterfalls drift by in today’s fjord. By contrast, road trips are great and so are scenic trains, but nothing beats the endless views from the comfort of your deck chair or bed.

14. A choice of excursions or DIY

Seabourn docks at Hakodate, Japan at 8:00am to begin a 13-hour day in the region. The cruise line offers ten excursion options from sushi making at a mountain top to a national park hike. But with that much time, there’s nothing to stop you from booking a third-party offering that might better fit your needs and budget. Nothing looks interesting? Stay on board for a spa treatment or have other ship’s facilities largely to yourself.

Some reasons to plan your own trip (in no particular order)

1. No rushed destinations

Our cruise line’s highlights excursion spends just two hours in the famous Greek village of Oia, Santorini. The narrow, cobblestone lanes are crowded midday with tourists from other ships. It would be much better to marvel at sunset here and truly appreciate the beauty of your surroundings. You can plan for just that with an overnight stay. Speaking of which, how can you be mesmerized by sunrise or sunset at Maui’s Haleakala volcano if you need to rush back to the departing ship?

2. Flexibility to deal with change of plans

We so enjoyed Taipei, Zermatt, Reykjavik, that it was possible to add extra time there. But there can be negative change of plans too. We were so frustrated by a safari we were on in Kenya that we skipped the Tanzania portion and flew to Nairobi. I got food poisoning in Venice and couldn’t travel to Cinque Terre. We quickly canceled those plans and added more nights in Venice. You can’t do that on a cruise.

3. Allow for some cultural immersion

Critics of cruising sometimes point to a superficial approach to destinations. How much can you really understand about a location, its history, cuisine, and people during a 12-hour stay? Would it be better to plan for numerous days to visit landmarks, museums, local restaurants, and events?

4. Everything comes back to being in control

What if I think Ketchikan is just a tourist trap? What if Cesme looks boring to me? What if I have already been to Helsinki? What if the next Caribbean island just feels like the last one? They may be cruise stops you have no interest in, but you are not in control of your itinerary.

So, should you take a luxury cruise or plan your own trip?

There is always the hybrid approach

Hopefully, this article has helped you think about whether cruising or independent travel is right for you. We often take a hybrid approach. We had never been to Greece and wanted to spend time absorbing ancient Athens. But we also were anxious to experience Mykonos, Milos, and other islands. We had never been to Türkiye and were curious about Istanbul. The answer was to plan our own trip for several days in Athens, as well as Istanbul, with a Greek islands luxury cruise connecting the two.

I cruised from Dover, England, along Scotland, ending in Iceland, with the objective of spending as much time as needed to explore Iceland with a hotel in Reykjavik as a base. I took a Baltic cruise from Stockholm because I had a week-long travel conference to attend there afterward. Spending time in Vancouver before an Alaskan cruise is a must in our book. And, of course, I couldn’t take a Disney Caribbean cruise without first spending several days at Disney World. We will embark on a 12-day Seabourn cruise around the coast of Japan, but are planning sufficient time to explore Tokyo before and Kyoto afterward on our own. If you have the time and energy a hybrid approach might just be the answer.

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