A cruise on a luxury liner paints pictures of sun, sea and romance to anyone who has the opportunity to plan and experience one. But the daunting aspect is the price tag attached to the tickets. Reading this piece will hopefully give you a better understanding of the system and therefore get you a better deal.

There are, in fact, quite a few 'discount' cruise travels. Here's a tip for a trip that spells luxury and which you may just be able to buy for a song! The basic truth is that all the unsold tickets on a cruise liner are then sold in the 'discount' market since an empty berth is a direct loss. The closer you get to the date of the cruise, the more discounts you get and they naturally try and fill as many berths as possible. But remember that you have to be lucky and be at the right place at the right time. It is very much like being the millionth visitor to an amusement park.

Discounts as a rule are offered only on unsold inventory and chances are that with the size of ships increasing along with their capacity, discounts will be more freely available. The exception is a celebrity cruise or something similar. What cruise operators do is to reposition their cruises to accommodate the discounted passengers. Here's how it works and knowing it, will help you get better deals

Repositioning is the fancy word for rerouting their cruises and resetting their timing. In summer, most cruises will be scheduled for the north (Alaska) where the summer temperature is tolerable and the scenery beautiful, added to that is the lure of the local wildlife which you see if you are lucky. During the winter months when Alaska freezes over then they have no choice but to send the ships south where again the temperature is balmy - therefore the Caribbean. Cruises to the East - the Indian sub-continent, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc are normally run throughout the year as the temperature in the tropics is nice all year round.

How do you, as a prospective passenger, tell if a cruise is going to be repositioned? All one needs to do is follow the route of the various ships sailing at any time. Those that head north during summer will head south during winter and vice versa. There could be the odd Europe cruise during summer as well and this would be repositioned as a Caribbean cruise during the summer.

There are disadvantages of going on repositioned cruises, they normally spend a lot more time at sea than they do at ports, so if your objective is to visit as many ports as possible and experience the different cultures, then a repositioned cruise might not be the one for you. If after knowing the bare essentials, you are still interested in being on-board repositioned cruises in the summer, it's time to go and look up where you can get the best possible deal! On the Internet, it would be worthwhile looking up the web site of a cruise liner like the Norwegian cruise line or the Carnival Liberty.