Mara Vance

About Mara

Mara Vance has been writing about cruise travel since 2011, first for a regional newspaper travel desk and, since 2019, as the senior editor at BestCruiseDeals.us. She sets the review framework every cruise line page on this site is scored against.

Her reporting focuses on the gap between the brochure and the bill: what a fare actually includes, which upgrades are worth buying at the point of booking, and where mainstream lines have quietly moved services behind a paywall. She sails at least six times a year in cabins her own household would book, paid for by this site rather than by cruise lines.

Before travel writing she spent five years as a consumer finance reporter, which is why every page she edits carries a per-night number rather than a vague claim about value.