You can now scuba with Explorer Ventures in Indonesia!

[tursiops]

Group bookings may very well involve additional complexity that a specialist booking agent can assist with. I can totally envision, for example, that booking 10 "day rooms" in a hotel may take more effort than a few clicks on a web site. I don't claim to know anything about group trips.

The wire transfer thing can be problematic for a group trip, because the sums can cause eyebrows to go up, depending on the destinations and amounts.

One thing to keep in mind about many popular boats and companies overseas - an awful lot of their US business is group trips. Some popular boats especially get booked up for years mostly by dive shops and other groups. (Perhaps there is a bit of a chicken and egg thing in this, where people go with groups because it's easier for them, and the companies make things easy for groups because that's where the business is coming from.)

In addition, the group trips involve an economy of scale...which translates to more booking-certainty for the destination, and thus the likelihood of lower prices for the consumer.

 

[Lorenzoid]

Yep. International wire transfers over the magic $10,000 trigger and all that. I completely understand.

As far as economy of scale, someday I would love to get in on a group trip that offers some economy. Or those "last-minute deals" that pop up in my Inbox now and then. The problem is that we usually have a specific week we want to go, and that limits our options.

 

[chillyinCanada]

When I was dealing on my own with Dewi Nusantara (pre-liquidivingadventures relationship), their rep was in England. She still is as far as I know. Hi, Allison!

 

[EVMia]

Someone in another thread mentioned the Blue Manta Explorer has the option for 10% single supplement, but the Raja Manta Explorer does not. From the website:

"Guaranteed Single Occupancy Supplement: Blue Manta Explorer departures are billed an additional 10% of the retail stateroom price and Raja Manta Explorer departures are billed an additional 90% of the retail stateroom price."

Good to know. Wonder why the difference?

Richard.

Hi Richard,
I just noticed I overlooked your comment regarding the Single Supplement differences between the two vessels in Indonesia:

The reason the Single Supplement on Blue Manta Explorer is only 10% is because there are 14 cabins that limit our occupancy to 20-22, so we have extra cabins we can use for single supplements. That is not the case on Raja Manta Explorer or the other EV vessels for that matter.

Hope this clarifies things
Mia

 

[The Chairman]

That's a huge boat. Looks like fun!

 

[BDSC]

I also book a lot of group trips and have been using an outfit called Scuba Travel Ventures for most of my liveaboards. Some of the Caribbean stuff I do myself. One of the big advantages in using STV is the amount of money I have to put out there to hold a boat. I will book liveaboards as much as three years out to get the entire boat when I want it. I have no idea what they would want me to put down if I contacted the boat myself as a deposit. By using STV, who has been in business for a long time, I have never had to put down more than $2,000 to hold a boat with the next set of payments due about a year out from the actual trip. That's a check I can just write myself without having to start collecting money that far out.