About Christmas Market Voyages

Christmas Market Voyages is a specialist planning service for European Christmas-market river cruises. We're powered by Vacation Planning Company, a U.S.-based travel agency — and we're built around one simple idea: booking a great river cruise shouldn't require you to become an expert in eight different cruise lines.

There are eight major lines sailing the European rivers at Christmas: Viking, AMA Waterways, Tauck, Uniworld, Scenic, Avalon, Riverside, and Emerald. Each one has its own personality, its own ships, its own inclusions, and its own way of pricing. Their websites naturally try to sell you their product — not the right product for you. We do the opposite.

Our philosophy is straightforward: compare all eight fairly, surface the two we think do it best for most travelers — Viking and AMA Waterways — but show you the other six honestly. We don't hide a smaller line just because it doesn't pay us as much. We don't manufacture urgency with fake countdowns. And we never publish prices we can't stand behind: if a fare is real, we say so; if it changes weekly, we label it "request pricing" and let you ask a human.

Every booking through us goes through a Vacation Planning Company advisor based in the United States. They've sailed the rivers, walked the markets, and stayed in the ships. They're licensed and bonded. And they cost you nothing — the cruise lines compensate us, never you.

We built the comparison engine on this site because we got tired of seeing travelers book the wrong ship for the wrong reasons. A family of four doesn't belong on an adults-only longship. A solo traveler shouldn't pay a full cabin's supplement. Someone who wants ultra-luxury shouldn't end up on a value line — and someone who wants value shouldn't be upsold to butler service. The right Christmas-market cruise is the one that fits you.

That's the whole pitch. Use the comparison engine, take the 5-question quiz, or just tell us what matters to you and let a real person do the rest.