Honest Review of Swoop Antarctica Cruises

Swoop Antarctica Cruises is commonly used to book Antarctica and other polar cruises. They dominate the Google Search rankings and advertise heavily on social media and website banner ads. However, Swoop Antarctica Cruises is a travel agency, not an Antarctica Cruise operator. A fact I didn’t know until about 3 months before our cruise was set to depart.

Swoop’s business model is similar to Expedia’s. They have agreements for a certain number of rooms on various ships and cruises for different cruise operators. They then sell these rooms to guests. No one from Swoop or associated with Swoop will be on your cruise in an official manner at all.

Swoop is a glorified sales representative who only cares about pushing their book of rooms into the market at the highest price possible, which brings us to those prices.

From my research, Swoop Antarctica Cruises sells its cabins at nearly the same prices as the underlying cruise operators. They don’t appear to offer a significant discount or upcharge. However, depending on how early you book, what cruise you are going on, and what you do before and after, you could find better “package” pricing on hotels and flights using Swoop. We didn’t do that, so I can’t speak to whether or not that is the case, but it is something Swoop has mentioned in their marketing materials.

Nonetheless, booking with Swoop most likely won’t cost you more or less than booking directly with the cruise operator.

So, what does Swoop do if the prices are about the same and Swoop isn’t on the ship?

Swoop helps ensure that you are logistically ready for the upcoming trip. They provide checklists on what documents to prepare and what information the cruise operator needs and suggest where to stay, when to arrive, and what to pack. Swoop prides itself on offering you a “portal” with all of your trip’s information stored in it. However, this portal can be overwhelming and confusing. Navigating the various tabs to understand how much you paid for the journey can take a few minutes. Finding any specific activity information was so complex that I emailed our representative instead of trying to hunt it down in the portal.

What I found helpful was understanding what deadlines were due for what documents (e.g., passports, flight ticket numbers, travel insurance, hotel bookings, activity checklists, and final payment). However, many papers Swoop had us fill out were useless (at least for our cruise). For example, we spent multiple weeks going back and forth with our Swoop representative trying to fill out the activity form (i.e., a simple form listing what activities we would like to participate in during the trip). Many of our questions were about what equipment the activities required and if any experience was necessary. Swoop didn’t have great answers to either of those questions beyond just pointing us to a PDF on our cruise operator’s website. 

Once on the boat, we refilled out all those forms with the crew, who could readily answer our questions. We had wasted a lot of time doing it beforehand as no one from the cruise operator had even seen our form or knew that was something guests did beforehand.

An additional frustrating situation was regarding travel insurance. Many of these “expedition” cruises will require you to have some serious travel insurance, primarily for medical evacuation from these remote areas of the world. As someone who doesn’t know much about insurance, I relied on Swoop to tell me what to purchase. However, Swoop never provided us with any specific advice or recommendations. They claimed it is due to UK law, which may be true. Eventually, I had to buy some insurance and hope it covered the right areas at the right amounts. Luckily, I didn’t have to use it.

Swoop Antarctica Cruises can help you “check the boxes” on everything before you leave for your trip. However, they shouldn’t be seen as experts or even as knowledgeable travel agents (e.g., many of their recommendations on where to stay before and after the cruise were outdated and overpriced. A quick search on Expedia or even just Google pointed to much nicer hotels at much lower prices).

I have to caveat this, as I’m not a big fan of travel agents. In the modern world, most knowledgeable people can do a few hours of research on Google or read blogs (like this one 😊) and figure out 100% of what they need or want to know to create a customized trip itinerary and fantastic vacation.

However, Antarctica is a different beast (or so I thought). It is one of the most remote areas in the world, and it has little public travel. This was the trip to use a travel agent because they could provide us with expert customer service. I expected Swoop to know a travel blogger who only focused on Antarctica. Unfortunately, they didn’t quite meet this expectation. Many online blogs, such as Travel? Yes, Please! I have better insights on preparing and what to expect during a trip to Antarctica. 

Even more disappointing, Swoop didn’t seem like they were even experts on the exact cruises they were selling. For example, our cruise operator (Oceanwide Expeditions, who was fantastic, and you can read my review here.) doesn’t offer parkas to guests. Many Antarctica cruise operators will provide complimentary parkas and boots to guests during their stay to help ensure guests have the correct equipment. It took us a few emails back and forth with Swoop to figure this fact out. This meant we would have to go out and buy parkas before our trip (if you want to see everything we brought and what you need to bring, you can check out my packing list here). These parkas can cost up to $3,000! Living in Florida, we couldn’t just go to REI and try on some to get the right size, so we were stuck trying to buy used parkas on eBay, trying them on, and then keeping or reselling them if they didn’t fit.

Parkas

Swoop Antarctica Cruises would never recommend a specific brand or model of the parka, so we had to turn to online blogs to figure out the best type to buy. In total, we purchased four parkas and only kept one. We were getting close to our departure date, so we contacted Swoop to determine if we could purchase parkas in Ushuaia. They said yes, but then (at the last minute) they also told us we could rent gear from Oceanwide Expedition directly. If we had known this before, we could have saved a ton of headaches and some money (rental parkas were only $89 for the entire trip). While Swoop eventually got us this information, it required us to go back and forth with them for several months before it became apparent.

Two other areas of underlying poor support were mountaineering and onboard connectivity. The cruise we booked included a mountaineering activity. Swoop said we had to have mountaineering boots to participate in this activity and pointed us to rigid sole 4-season boots. We bought these heavy, hard-to-pack, and expensive boots to do the activity. Upon arrival on the ship, we were told that only the “advanced” mountaineering activity (which requires previous mountaineering experience, which we didn’t have) required these boots, and all the other basic and moderate mountaineering activities should use the shoes provided by the cruise operator.

Once again, we wasted time and money buying these boots. We were also never told by Swoop there would be no free online connectivity when onboard the ship. We were reading blog posts about the cruise operator and discovered that on our own. For some who have demanding jobs or require access to phone calls for child emergencies, Swoop could make a considerable mistake in not informing their customers that they won’t be able to speak to the outside world while on the continent of Antarctica. 

I expected more from Swoop. I expected more detailed packing lists for our specific cruise for our particular number of days. I expected experts to be able to give us a quick review of what a “day on the ship” looks like. I expected Swoop to make the trip easy to prepare for, and I can’t say it was.

Many of our fellow passengers booked through Swoop. Most had similar complaints, frustrating stories, and grievances with Swoop. It became a common topic to discuss and bond over at the bar.

If we did it again, we would use Swoop to compare cruises and then book directly with the cruise operator (Oceanwide Expeditions for us).

 As always, my thoughts and opinions are my own.

Angie xoxo