Why should you consider becoming an approved cruise speaker?
Because in addition to a free cruise for yourself an a traveling companion many cruise lines offer their enrichment speakers other perks like huge onboard discounts. For example, some lines will offer 50% off at the bar and/ or 50% off in the gift or photo shop. Sometimes steep discounts will be offered on some shore excursions. Also, these discounts will apply many times to popular duty free items like cigarettes, jewelry, liquor, perfume and cigars. These discounts can really count up.
You see, while you do get your cruise and all the amenities for free, you still have to cover your alcohol consumption, gift purchases and shore excursions. So these discounts can be really nice - and will certainly stretch your travel dollars.
For example, on the last day of a recent 12-day cruise I went to pay my bar, gift and photo shop tab which was about $400. Not bad for 12 days but you should have seen the stuff I got. All of it was at a 50% discount. So you see a $400 bill looks a bunch better that an $800 tab. Plus, I got birthday gifts, Christmas presents and some nice onboard portraits of my grandfather and me. Additionally, I usually had a cold Heineken every day. I won't say how many Grandpa had...
Enjoying a "Cerveza Fria" as we depart Panama. Want to learn a little vacation Spanish before your next cruise?
Another type of discount that will sometimes be offered is payment of your gratuities. Of course, there are things you can do to diminish your gratuities like dining at the buffet and going easy at the bar. But some gratuities you can't wiggle out of like paying your cabin steward. So it's very nice when the cruise line offers to pay them for you.
A word of caution: Not all cruise lines offer discounts like this to their enrichment speakers. However, in some cases these types of discounts can be negotiated with the cruise lines when you are first booked for a particular cruise.
The willingness of the cruise line to extend these discounts many times relates to how bad they want or need you for a particular itinerary. That is, the more they want or need you and your expertise for a particular itinerary the more leverage you will have in the negotiations.
You see, you can make an absolute mint speaking on a cruises ship IF you know how to get onboard in the first place. Here's the very best way to start: http://www.speakerscruisefree.com
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