EA Radio Episode # 13 - Lessons I Learned From Planning A Group Cruise EA Radio Travel Podcast

Scott Stein, the owner of and travel planner for Extraordinary Adventures (https://www.myextraordinaryadventures.com/travel-podcast.html), shares the lessons he learned from planning group cruises.
Music: www.bensound.com
 
(The show transcript is being provided by YouTube's automatic transcriber. Please forgive any inaccuracies or errors.)
[Applause] [Music] hey everybody this is Scott from extraordinary adventures welcoming you to the 13th episode of e a radio today I wanted to discuss something near and dear to us here lessons I learned from planning a group cruise why is that so near and dear well just today just yesterday no today we finalized the final payment for the final passenger on an affinity group cruise that we that we planned over the last couple years and I thought that today was a great time to teach the lessons that I learned from planning a group groups so that if you don't use stern adventures to plan your vacations which I don't know why you wouldn't that seems insane to me but if you choose not to I wanted to give you the information that you if you could do it without us hopefully again you'll come come to us so let's start off I put everything in chronological order meaning things you're gonna want to think about from the day this idea dawns and news that hey I'd love to go cruise with my friends because cruising with friends is definitely better than cruising alone think about it if you go on a cruise one of the things for most people is meeting other people at the bar or at their dining table or or at the nightclub or wherever they happen to be they bump into people at the spa the owner of a hot tub that you start chatting and you wanted Uppal people that you become like friends with like in real life not just on the cruise you become Facebook friends you and then you maybe cruise with them again and that was that that was the I forget the word on family the inspiration for why I did this one it wasn't because I wanted necessarily cruise with the people that I knew in my personal life right here right here in Orlando but they were welcome to it was to meet up again with the people that I had cruised with over the last several years I wanted to get together again so when that idea pops in your head that that's what you want to do you'd love to get together again with friends that you haven't seen in a while or maybe you want to do something locally let's a bachelorette or a bachelor party or maybe you're doing something for work there's a million different reasons why the family of our union crews the million different reasons why you might plan a group Cruise where everybody goes together so this could be used by anybody so you decide you're gonna do this what's the first thing to do okay I'm gonna make a suggestion select the cruise line the ship and the sale date by executive decision not democracy you might think oh well I want everybody have a say in this out in the other well if there's 10 15 20 30 people in your group and everyone gets to say you're never gonna get through this process they can't get a say in every single thing that happens what you're going to want to do though through your executive decision is figure out what cruise ship cruise line price point time of the year all these are the factors that go into it are gonna benefit the most amount of people so for instance probably gonna be harder to get people to go on Christmas it's probably gonna be harder to maybe get somebody to go on a Caribbean cruise during hurricane season so you have to think of different times of the year that people maybe maybe you know a lot of your friends like let's say you're going on a teacher group and teachers all have off in the summer so maybe you make it in the summer maybe you don't make it in January when everybody's in school and can't get off so you just think about everybody that's in your group think about their particular needs the best you can and then pick something to the best