Air travel

From personal experience and working in the travel industry for 10 years, the few times when I ran into issues and needed to get someone to help, the best customer services were always provided directly by the airline, and almost never through any Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) like Hotels, Expedia, Booking or Priceline.

Booking with OTAs almost invariably end up with the flight operator (airline) and the OTAs pointing fingers at each other when something goes wrong. Therefore, if you’re looking only to purchase standalone airfare, I highly recommend booking directly through the airlines’ websites.

For fly-in cruises, it makes a lot of sense to book your air travel through the cruise line. Unlike OTAs, cruise lines have a vested interest in making sure you get to your cruise.

If you book your flight through them, most cruise lines guarantee that you will make the departure, and if not, they have a dedicated response team that will make the necessary arrangements at their expense (including additional flights, rerouting, other transportation, and accommodation arrangements) to make sure you get on the cruise, at the departure or at the next available port.