- In 2021, cruise lines offered fares for as low as $29 a day to fill its ships.
- These discounted fares and promotions will continue into next year, but might not last.
Your grand 2023 vacation could cost you less than $60 a day as long as you enjoy going on cruises and act fast.
Throughout 2022, cruises became the go-to vacation for budget travelers looking for a getaway. While airfare, hotel rates, and gas prices soared, cruise lines dropped fares to as low as $29 a day in an effort to fill ships, Tynan Smith, the founder of cheap cruise aggregator Cruise Sheet, told Insider in July, and it doesn't look like that's changing yet.
From July through the end of 2022, there were 45 cruises sailing for $50 a day with another 2,000 sailing for under $100 daily, he said at the time. And as the months passed, these prices continued to fall.
Under $50 a day for a private room, food, entertainment, and swimming pools may seem too good to be true, but it's looking like these low prices won't just be a short-lived 2022 fluke.
Cruise lines typically have at least a year and a half to fill their ships. But during the pandemic and the subsequent whirlwind of changing health protocols and vaccine restrictions, cruise companies weren't granted this same timeline. As a result, despite rising demand for cruises, many companies are still offering discounts and promotions to entice travelers.
So if you missed out on a budget cruise this year, there's always next year. There are 419 cruises sailing in 2023 at $60 or less a day with cruise lines like Carnival, Royal Caribbean, and MSC, Smith told Insider in November. As of now, the average 2023 cruise fare sits at $135.
"Our pricing is always competitive, but there is also very good demand for higher-end accommodations and longer itineraries on Carnival, and we enter 2023 with tremendous optimism," a spokesperson for Carnival Cruise Line told Insider in an email. Carnival currently has 30 cruises sailing for $70 or less a day, according to data from Cruise Sheet.
Smith predicts the rising demand could normalize prices by the end of 2023, although he notes it's "hard to know with any certainty."
So snatch up these budget sailings while you can: We may not see these consistently low cruise fares by this time next year.