Frequently Asked Questions

What is Departure Day?

Departure Day is a travel planning, coordination, expense tracking, and cruise research platform for people who travel seriously. It organizes flights, cruises, ground transport, hotels, and experiences into a shared day-by-day timeline. Travelers see the plan. Family following along stays informed. What you paid stays private.

Is Departure Day free?

Yes. The Basic plan is free and includes up to three trips per year, group travel for up to ten travelers, twenty documents per trip, and free Cruise Intelligence. Paid plans start at $15 per month for travelers who need more.

How does the cruise research work?

Our cruise data comes from the same distribution feeds cruise lines use to share inventory with travel industry booking systems. You can search and filter across nearly every major cruise line by itinerary, port of call, duration, ship tier, and target market. Departure Day is not a booking engine, but you can send the sailing to your own travel advisor or book directly through the cruise line. Departure Day is not a travel agency and does not charge travel agencies when customers send them cruises through our system. We only work with third parties for customers based outside North America. The data is there to help you make a better decision, not to push you toward any particular line or sailing.

How does Natural Search work?

Natural Search lets you describe the cruise you have in mind instead of building the search one filter at a time. Departure Day interprets your prompt, turns it into regular search criteria, and then runs that search against the same cruise database used by Advanced Search.

It can recognize details like cruise line, ship, destination, departure port, ending port, season, year, number of nights, cruise type, ship size, sea days, ports you want to visit or avoid, and sailings that share port days with another ship or line. If part of the prompt cannot be matched confidently, we leave that part out rather than quietly guessing.

Natural Search is experimental. It is useful now, but it will not understand every phrase or every edge case, and we are constantly improving how it reads traveler intent.

Why are you giving away all this cruise intelligence for free?

We think it is helpful. Modern travelers are more self-directed, and our model is simple: research broadly, then request help from the travel advisor you already trust when you're ready to make a booking decision.

We hope you will consider using Departure Day to organize and manage your trips. When you manage a cruise with Departure Day, you can get alerts and guidance from our Cruise Intelligence system for that sailing.

Why would I search for cruises that sail with or avoid certain lines or ships?

The reasons are personal. Maybe something went wrong on a previous cruise, and you would rather not see that line or ship again. Maybe you want to avoid very large ships. Maybe you want to see a ship, such as the largest new ship at sea, without actually sailing on it.

Some travelers use this to avoid repeating a poor fit. Others use it to plan a sailing that may share port days with a ship they want to see in person, without making that ship the one they actually board.

How do itinerary deviation scores work?

Itinerary deviation scoring is experimental, and the methodology will evolve over time. We are starting simple so the signal is easy to understand before we tune it for more types of cruise operations.

For now, the score is the percentage of missed ports on a sailing. If a scheduled port is missed on its original day but appears somewhere else on that same itinerary, we count it as half missed instead of fully missed.

Deviation scores are computed against the last public version of the itinerary before sailing. Cruise line operations teams may also send us non-public operations information, which we call operations updates. Only cancelled sailings are exempt from deviation scoring; other operations updates are not considered in the score. If a submitted operations update includes a ship swap, we score the itinerary against the swapped ship, but still compare it to the original itinerary.

We do not currently score arrival and departure time changes. Those should be compared against historical norms from observed position reports, not just against the published schedule. Arriving an hour early or departing 15 minutes early usually has little guest impact.

The long-term goal is to help travelers understand whether a deviation materially affects the guest experience. Some factors are already measured but not yet included in the score; for example, we independently compute the minimum ground transfer time for ship swaps. Other context still needs more tuning. A mid-itinerary ship swap with a ground transfer may affect guests very differently than a high deviation rate on an Antarctic expedition itinerary, where weather and ice conditions are part of the expected operating environment.

What is your policy on operations updates?

Operations updates are non-public operations information submitted by verified cruise line operations teams. They can cover cancellations, ship swaps, port changes, timing changes, and other informational updates.

We treat operations updates as controlled corrections, not public announcements. Cruise lines can provide attribution and release timing for travel advisors, affected passengers, and public display. Embargoes can be immediate, set to a specific date and time, or scheduled relative to the sailing. Advisor release lets travel advisors know when their client has invited them into a Departure Day itinerary that includes the impacted sailing. Passenger release informs Departure Day users directly when the sailing appears on one of their Departure Day itineraries. Public release alerts people watching the sailing or cruise line and makes the operations update discoverable in the public Cruise Intelligence database. Different audiences can have different release times. Unless a cruise line specifically requests public disclosure, we do not publish the underlying operations update. Disclosure is limited to the audience requested by the cruise line's selected embargo policy.

Who can see my trip?

You control exactly who sees what. Travelers you invite have access to the shared plan. Family or friends following along can be added as watchers with read-only access. Financial details stay private unless you choose to share them.

What can my advisor see?

You can send a sailing to your own travel advisor.

If you already have an advisor, they can still use Departure Day like any invited collaborator: they can see a sailing or itinerary only when you invite them to help manage or watch that trip.

What is the Voyager plan?

Voyager ($15 per month, or $99 per year) adds unlimited trips and group size, more document storage, flight and cruise schedule change alerts, and live expense tracking via Plaid. It is built for travelers who take several trips a year and want real-time visibility into what they are spending.

What is Privé?

Privé ($100 per month) adds private flight and yacht charter planning, document intelligence for reviewing full contracts, and access controls for assistants and family office staff.

Is Departure Day available on mobile?

Yes. Departure Day works in any modern browser. Native iOS and Android apps are currently available to beta testers only, and are expected to be generally available in the fall of 2026.

Do you use AI?

Yes, in specific places. We use AI to help power Natural Search by translating plain language cruise requests into ordinary search criteria. We also use AI to help identify and classify document uploads, and to estimate travel expenses on request. These features run on isolated private instances (AWS Bedrock) of Claude Haiku and Sonnet from Anthropic.

Why is there a Plaid integration?

So you can track trip expenses without manually entering every transaction or uploading receipts. Connect a card or account through Plaid and Departure Day can match transactions to the trips and segments they belong to automatically. This helps users track what they’re spending per trip, and we can even put travel spending into total and liquid net worth context.

The Plaid integration is completely optional. If you connect an account, we use the transaction data to support trip expense tracking. Departure Day does not sell your financial data or share it for third-party marketing.

Who founded Departure Day?

Departure Day was founded by Jeffrey Payne. Jeff previously founded Flex Rental Solutions and BlockChyp (acquired by Stax Payments in 2024), and worked on the Ocean Medallion system for Princess Cruises. Jeff’s favorite cruise ship is the Silver Nova.

Still have questions?

Reach us at contact@departureday.app.