Southwest Cruises Launches Booking Portal With Limited-Time Promotions

Updated: October 2, 2024, 4:21pm CDT

Edited by:

What Is Southwest Cruises?
Limited Time Promotions — Up to 10,000 Bonus Points and 2x Points
Final Thoughts

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For those looking to earn Southwest Rapid Rewards points in additional ways, we have some good news. Let us introduce Southwest Cruises.

This new cruise portal offers more than just cruise bookings for your favorite cruise lines. It also provides a way to earn Southwest points — and you can earn a lot of them right now.

Here’s a look at the new Southwest Cruises portal and a limited-time promotion to earn up to 10,000 bonus points on your next sailing.

What Is Southwest Cruises?

Southwest Cruises launched in partnership with Southwest Airlines and World Travel Holdings. Using this cruise portal, you can book cruises on Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, MSC, Celebrity, Holland America, Princess Cruises, and Disney Cruise Line.

This isn’t the first airline to offer a cruise booking portal. In fact, it’s not the first airline to offer a cruise portal in conjunction with World Travel Holdings. American Airlines Cruises is a prime example.

Southwest Cruises offers a chance to earn Rapid Rewards points on your next sailing — including some nice bonuses for a limited time. Unfortunately, you can’t redeem Southwest points to pay for cruises through the portal.

Without any promotions, you’ll earn 1 Rapid Rewards point per $1 spent on bookings with Southwest Cruises.

Limited Time Promotions — Up to 10,000 Bonus Points and 2x Points

There are 2 promotions running right simultaneously, both coinciding with the launch of Southwest Cruises. With these offers, you can earn double points and earn up to 10,000 bonus points on your sailing.

Typically, you would earn 1x point per $1 spent on sailings. During this promotion, that’s doubled to 2x for sailings through December 31, 2025. It applies to sailings with Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, MSC, Celebrity, Holland America, Princess, or Disney for sailings of 1-5 nights.

However, an even bigger promotion offers up to 10,000 bonus points on eligible sailings. If you book by October 31, 2024, you’ll earn Rapid Rewards bonus points based on the room type and length of sailing.

Southwest Cruises 10k 2x points offers — Booking page showing available promotions. Image Credit: Southwest Cruises

Available promotions are clearly outlined when you’re choosing a cruise, and 10,000 bonus points is the maximum amount.

You’ll earn bonuses as follows:

Sailings of 6+ nights:
- 2,500 bonus points on interior or ocean view rooms
- 5,000 bonus points on balcony rooms
- 10,000 bonus points on suites
Sailings of 1-5 nights:
- 1,000 bonus points on interior or ocean view rooms
- 2,500 bonus points on balcony rooms
- 5,000 bonus points on suites

Hot Tip:

We value Southwest points at 1.3 cents each. That makes 10,000 bonus points worth $130. While that’s probably not enough to go out of your way to book a cruise you didn’t want to book or pay to upgrade your room type only for the points if you were planning on booking a cruise, checking rates with Southwest Cruises could make sense.

Final Thoughts

Southwest Cruises is now live, and you can earn Southwest Rapid Rewards points on your next sailing. The standard earning rate isn’t very good, but some limited-time promotions overcome that temporarily.

Unfortunately, you can’t redeem Southwest points for these cruises, but that may change over time. And now there’s another way to earn Southwest points, which should make many people happy.