Travel expert reveals 'secret' trick to get cheap cruise holidays that 'companies want to keep quiet'

Going on holiday is as cheap or expensive as you make it, with many of us looking to keep the costs down as much as we can.

And advice from one travel industry expert has shown how you can make luxury a whole lot more affordable.

With the cost of living crisis engulfing us all for the past few years, millions of us have headed to the likes of Ryanair for the cheapest flights you can get to fly to some of the most beautiful places on earth.

It costs just £15 right now to get to one of Europe's best beaches, for example.

There's also easyJet, which is about to drop millions of new flights that you can get for rock-bottom prices if you follow Martin Lewis' advice.

On the other end of the cost spectrum there is the luxury of a cruise ship holiday.

Data from the Cruise Line Industry Association says the average cost per person for a seven day cruise is $1,700 (£1,339). Costs for a balcony room can range from $800 to $8,000 for a week stay in the Caribbean, for example.

It can get crazy expensive, with one cruise ship worker showing off what a £3,100 a night suite on Royal Caribbean's Odyssey of the Seas looks like.

And then there's the 'crazy' cost of Wi-Fi on top of that; something cruise liners have staunchly defended.

But there's a 'secret' way to bring down the cost of a cruise ship holiday if it's something you really want to experience or something you regularly go on as it is.

TikTok user @covertrip regularly offers travel advice to his more than 110,000 followers.

And in one video, he speaks about a 'surprising way to get a good deal on a cruise'.

He explains: "It's a secret travel agents know about but even cruise lines need to keep it quiet."

So, what's the 'secret'?

Well, it's something in the industry known as 'unpublished rates', which you might have seen advertised as a 'quiet offer'.

He goes on: "Sometimes cruise lines have empty cabins that they can't sell. Maybe it's an unpopular date or the airfare for the departure port has gotten too expensive.

"Either way they have empty cabins and they want to get rid of them in full, so they need to discount them. But if they discounted them in a public way on their website, people that paid full price would get upset. So they send out these quiet offers to travel agencies that focus on cruises."

There are two ways to find these unpublished rates, he says, the first being to look online at cruise-specific agencies and get on their email lists.

"This is how they're going to send out these quiet offer deals," @covertrip says.

"Next, when you're searching online and you see a button that says 'call for rates', call them. I know this feels like a gimmick just to get you on the phone and sometimes they are. But talking to a real person is another way to find these unpublished rates."

Over on Reddit, those who have been on cruise ships have spoken about their success rate at getting these cheaper rates.

One user said: "We called sites like this twice. Once, they did have a better price. The other time, they didn't. There wasn't a hard sell or anything, we just called and they told us the price."

Another said that in their experience, cruise lines can give you the discount via access to group fare discounts. They said: "Typically they are group fares that they have access to. If they have a group fare going on a particular cruise, then they add you on to that group and provide you with some sort of extra discount."