Merging of pre and post hotel stays for expedition cruises

Following several requests by customers and cruise operators, we are going to amend the hotel stays logic for integrations of Expedition cruise that have regular/standard pre/post hotel stays included as part of their itineraries. The aim is to include the pre/post hotel days within the itinerary itself, instead of only providing the cruise days.

We understand that this doesn’t match the logic of the API as it has been since it was first launched more than 6 years ago (ie to make all fields be for the cruise segment itself, with only a few fields indicating pre and post stays.) It was however launched with standard Ocean cruises in mind, which do not often have hotel stays. Expeditions cruise work differently by most often including pre/post hotel nights to make sure guests are able to take in charter flights to the true cruise departure location on the start day of the cruise itself. This means that, at the moment, the API doesn’t reflect the true start/end dates of these packages as it doesn’t include the hotel stays in the itinerary itself, or the departure date field.

This change will affect the following fields (when applicable):

• starts_on (may change to take into account pre hotel nights)
• starts_at (may change if the hotel stay is not at the same location as the start of the cruise)
• stay_at (will be cleared out)
• hotel_nights (will be cleared out)
• cruise_nights (though the number will no longer reflect only cruise nights, it will reflect the
• number of nights available in the itinerary)
• post_cruise (will be cleared out)
• stay_post (will be cleared out)
• ends_on (may change to take into account post hotel nights)
• ends_at (may change if the hotel stay is not at the same location as the start of the cruise)

The full list of impacted integration is:

• AE Expeditions (previously Aurora Expeditions)
• Swan Hellenic
• Quark Expedition
• Poseidon Expeditions

Example:

The first day of the itinerary will then contain 'Helsinki' (previously listed in the stay_at field) as the first day of the cruise. 

What this means for you:

Cruise Search  - you will not need to make any changes, as the dates, durations, and itineraries will automatically update to include any pre/post stays.

Cruises API - The fact that the hotels_nights and post_cruise will be set to 0 and that the stay_at and stay_post will be cleared out means that any calculation you make to the duration and itinerary using these fields should not be broken. However if you have made manual changes specific to these cruise lines, then these will need to be amended/removed. 

Please don't hesitate to contact support should you have any queries.