Price Watches

You've booked the cruise, the client is happy, and then the price drops $400 two weeks later. Without price monitoring, you'd never know. Price Watches keep an eye on hotel and cruise prices after you book, so when the price drops, you can rebook at the lower rate and save your client money — or earn some extra goodwill (and commission) in the process.

How It Works

JourneyFuse tracks prices using different methods depending on the supplier:

Supplier	How prices are checked
Hotels & Resorts	Automated — checked via Amadeus, SerpApi, and Xotelo with scheduled background checks
Royal Caribbean	Automated — checked via the RC API with scheduled background checks
Celebrity Cruises	Automated — checked via the Celebrity API with scheduled background checks
Carnival	Automated — checked via the Carnival API with scheduled background checks
Other cruise lines	Manual — you get a direct link to the supplier's search page for quick spot-checks
Other suppliers	Manual — add a custom search URL when creating the watch

For automated watches, JourneyFuse checks prices on a regular schedule and alerts you when something changes. For manual watches, you still get reminders to check — you just do the lookup yourself.

Creating a Price Watch

Go to Price Watches in the sidebar and click New Watch. You have two paths:

Link to a Booking

Select an existing booking from any trip and the watch auto-fills the supplier, confirmation number, and amount paid. This is the fastest way — two clicks and you're tracking.

Start from Scratch

Manually enter the details. Use this for bookings that aren't in JourneyFuse yet, or when you want to watch a price before you've even booked (like monitoring a cabin category to see if it drops before committing).

What You'll Fill In

The fields depend on what you're tracking:

For all watches:

Label — a name you'll recognize (e.g. "Smith Family Balcony Cabin")
Watch type — cruise, hotel, resort, park, or other
Baseline price — what your client originally paid
Target price — optional price you're hoping to hit
Currency — defaults to USD
Check interval — how often to auto-check (in days)

For cruises:

Cruise line, ship name, sailing date, sailing code
Cabin category, cabin number, number of guests

For hotels:

Property name, room type, check-in/out dates
Number of guests, rate code

The First Check Is Not a Price Drop

The first time an automated watch runs, you get a First check notice rather than a price alert. It shows two numbers side by side: the price you recorded, and the first price we read from the supplier.

Those two numbers usually differ, and that difference is not a drop. What you recorded is your booked cabin or room at your booked rate, often through a trade portal. What we read is the cheapest bookable one of that class at today's public rate. The gap between them is normal, and it can be large. It does not mean the fare has moved, and it is not money your client can claim back.

Treat the first reading as the starting line. From the second check onward we compare each reading against the previous reading, so anything reported after that is a real movement in the published price. If the first check does show a much lower number and you want to act on it, call the line and ask about your specific category and rate before promising a client anything.

Alert Settings

You control exactly when JourneyFuse notifies you:

Alert on drop — get notified when the price goes down (this is the money-maker)
Alert on increase — get notified when the price goes up (useful for clients on the fence about booking)
Threshold — set a minimum percentage or dollar amount change before you're alerted, so you're not pinged over a $5 fluctuation

Changing a Watch After You Create It

Got something wrong on the way in? Nothing about a watch is locked once it exists, and correcting it keeps every price check you've already logged.

Open the watch, click the … menu, and pick Edit watch settings. From there you can change:

The name, target price, and how often we check
For a cruise: cruise line, ship, cabin category, sailing date, and guest count
For a hotel or resort: property, room type, and check-in / check-out dates
Supplier, confirmation number, and search URL
All of the alert rules and where alerts go (email, in-app, text)

Two things live elsewhere on purpose. Edit booked price (same menu) sets what you paid, since that is the number every drop is measured against. And a watch keeps its type for life — if you meant to watch a hotel and set up a cruise, create the right one and delete the other.

Guest count is worth a second look on cruises. We quote the fare at that occupancy and divide by it for the per-person figure, so a watch set to 3 guests on a 4-guest booking compares the wrong price every time it checks. Fixing it takes a few seconds and keeps your price history.

What Price Should I Enter as the Booked Price?

Enter what the cruise line's website would have quoted you: the fare with taxes, fees, and port expenses included, but without gratuities — and without extras like travel protection or transfers. The public prices we check work exactly that way (we verified this against Royal Caribbean's live pricing), so matching it keeps every drop comparison apples to apples. If your invoice shows one total, subtract the prepaid gratuities line and any add-ons.

Cruise Cabin Categories Are Classes, Not Specific Suites

Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, and Carnival publish one lead (cheapest) fare per cabin class — Interior, Ocean View, Balcony, Suite (Celebrity adds Concierge and AquaClass). There is no public price for a specific tier like Grand Suite or Sky Suite, so a watch set to one of those can't be priced automatically; the watch will tell you which classes are available. Setting the category to Suite gets it tracking the lead suite fare — just remember that's usually the cheapest suite on the ship, so treat a drop as a signal to check pricing for your exact category rather than a quote for it.

Spot-Checking a Price by Hand

Every cruise and hotel watch page shows a Check price on [supplier] link right under the current price. By default it opens the supplier's own site pre-filtered to your ship, sailing date, and guest count, so a manual look takes one click. Found a deeper link yourself — say, the cruise line's booking flow with your exact suite pre-selected? Paste it into Edit watch settings → Search URL and the link opens your URL instead. Record what you find with Log price, using the same basis as the automatic checks (taxes and port fees in, gratuities out) so your price history stays apples to apples.

Your Price Watch Dashboard

Each watch card gives you the key numbers at a glance:

Booked — the price you recorded paying
First check — the price we found the first time we looked. Every drop, movement, and savings figure is measured against this one.
Now — the current price from the last check
Movement — how far the price has moved since that first check. A drop here is a real change in the published price, so it's worth acting on.
Below the price you recorded — a standing comparison, not a saving. The price you entered is your booked cabin or room at your booked rate, often through a trade portal; what we read is the cheapest bookable one of that class at today's public rate. A gap between the two is normal and doesn't mean anything is available to claim.
Status — Active, Paused, or Overdue

Watches we haven't checked yet show no first check and no movement. That's deliberate — until we've read the price ourselves there's nothing to compare against, and comparing to the rate you booked would report savings that aren't there.

Filter Tabs

Use the tabs at the top to focus your attention:

All — every watch you've created
Active — currently tracking
Price Drops — watches where the current price is below what was paid (these are your action items)
Overdue — watches that haven't been checked recently

Running a Live Check

Click Live Check on any watch to trigger an immediate price lookup. For automated watches (hotels, Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Carnival), the current price comes back instantly. For manual watches, it opens the supplier's search page in a new tab so you can check and log the result.

Price History

Click History on any watch to see a full log of every price check — the date, price found, whether it went up or down, and how it was checked (automated vs. manual). This is great for spotting pricing trends. Some cruise lines drop prices in waves, and the history helps you see those patterns.

Who Can See Your Price Watches

Only you. A price watch is your own working note on your own booking, so it stays with the advisor who created it — it isn't shared with the rest of the workspace, and agency owners and admins don't see it either. Alerts, reminders, and the savings total on your Watches page all follow the same rule.

The one exception is a cruise watch you deliberately publish. Turning on Feature on website widget puts that sailing on your agency's public sailings widget, which is the whole point of the setting. Everything else stays private to you.

If you're an owner or admin looking for team-wide numbers, price watches aren't the place to find them. Reports and the agency dashboard cover production and commissions; watches are a per-advisor tool.

Tips

Create a price watch the same day you confirm a booking. Prices are most volatile in the first few weeks after booking — that's when you're most likely to catch a drop.
Link watches to trips so you can jump from the watch straight to the booking with one click. It also makes it easy to reference the booking details when you call the supplier to rebook.
Check your Price Drops tab weekly. This is where the money is. A 5-minute weekly habit of reviewing drops and rebooking can save your clients thousands over the course of a year.
Set realistic thresholds. A $20 hotel price drop probably isn't worth the rebooking hassle, but a $200 cruise cabin drop definitely is. Set your alert threshold accordingly.
Fix a wrong setting instead of rebuilding the watch. Deleting and recreating throws away the price history, and that history is what shows you a line's pricing waves. … → Edit watch settings keeps it.
Don't forget to pause watches after departure. Once the trip has happened, pause or delete the watch so it's not cluttering your dashboard.
For manual watches, bookmark the supplier search page. The custom URL field is your friend — paste in the exact search with dates and cabin type pre-filled so checking takes 30 seconds.

FAQ

Does JourneyFuse rebook for me? No — JourneyFuse monitors prices and alerts you. The actual rebooking is still a conversation between you and the supplier. This is intentional, since rebooking policies vary by supplier and you may want to discuss options with your client first.

How often are automated checks run? You set the check interval when creating the watch (e.g., every 1 day, every 3 days). Background cron checks run on that schedule automatically.

Can my agency owner see the watches I've set up? No. Watches are private to the advisor who created them, and that includes owners and admins of a host agency. See Who Can See Your Price Watches.

Do Lite advisors have price watches? No. Price Watches are part of the full JourneyFuse app, so they're available to advisors on a paid JourneyFuse plan. Lite advisors working out of a host agency's back office don't have the Watches page.

I set the guest count (or the sailing date) wrong. Do I have to start over? No. Open the watch, use … → Edit watch settings, and correct it there. Your price history stays with the watch. See Changing a Watch After You Create It.

Can I track prices for bookings made outside JourneyFuse? Yes. Use the "Start from Scratch" option and enter the details manually. You don't need a booking record in JourneyFuse to create a watch.

Bookings — how bookings connect to price watches
Managing Trips — trip detail page overview