Before or after your cruise in Marseille

One day, two days, three

How long to stay depends on what you want from the time, not only on the flight schedule. Each extra day buys something specific, and if you are unsure, the simplest way to decide is to start from your flight and your embarkation window and work outwards from there.

One day: the Vieux-Port, the Panier and a long lunch. Enough to walk the old harbour in the morning, climb through the old streets of the Panier, and sit down to a lunch that nobody is timing. You sleep in the city, and the next morning belongs to the ship.

Two days: add Cassis and the calanques, or Aix-en-Provence. The coast and its limestone inlets on one side, the squares and fountains of Aix on the other: either fits into a day from Marseille, with the first day kept for the city itself.

Three days: a night in the Luberon or the Alpilles before sailing. The rhythm changes completely: villages, olive groves and a dinner in the countryside, then a drive back to the port on the morning of embarkation.

The same logic works in reverse after disembarkation. When the flight home leaves the day after, the last morning of the cruise becomes the first day of a short stay rather than an afternoon in an airport lounge. Our private tours of Marseille and our days in Cassis and the calanques fit on either side of a sailing.

The logistics nobody tells you about

Embarkation runs to a window set by the cruise line, and that window is what everything else is timed to. A private transfer is booked to ship boarding, not to hotel checkout: there is no point leaving the hotel early to queue at a terminal still processing an earlier wave, nor arriving at the very end of the window with no margin left.

The hotel itself is chosen with the port in mind: close enough to the terminal that the transfer stays short on the morning of departure, and central enough that the evening before can be spent walking to dinner rather than sitting in a car.

Luggage is handled from the hotel lobby to the terminal. Bags leave the room when you do and reappear on board; nobody wheels a suitcase across a port. On a pre-cruise stay, it also means a bag delayed by an airline can be collected and brought on to the hotel, which is exactly the margin a same-day arrival does not have.

Disembarkation happens by waves. Passengers are called off the ship in groups, and the time of your wave decides when a morning pickup can realistically happen. We plan the pickup around your wave rather than around a guess, and adjust if the ship announces a change.

The terminal is a working port. Coaches and cars need the right access arrangements to reach the passenger buildings, and meeting points are set by the port rather than by the driver. Arranged in advance, none of this is visible to the traveller. Improvised on the morning, it becomes the most stressful hour of the trip.

For travel advisors and tour operators

We operate pre- and post-cruise programs for groups and private clients on behalf of agencies. Hotels, transfers timed to the ship, luggage logistics, guides and days out are built into a single program, with one point of contact on the ground.

Net rates or commission, as you prefer. The client relationship stays with you: your clients travel under your name, and the program is run on your behalf. Send us the ship, the date and the number of travellers, and you will have a first proposal within 48 hours. The way we work with the trade is set out on our trade partners page.

When the ship only calls for a day

Not every itinerary starts or ends here. If the ship calls at Marseille for a single day, what you need is a shore program built around the ship's timing rather than a hotel stay: we set out how those days work on our page on shore excursions in Marseille. For a stay before or after the sailing, use the form below or our contact page.