If you’ve taken a cruise in the last decade, there’s no doubt you’ve seen the emails about bidding for an upgrade to your room. The chance to upgrade your travel experience for less than it costs to book those cabins outright is a very enticing opportunity, one that makes the bargain hunting, Midwesterner spirit glow proudly as one searches for a good deal. Unfortunately, it’s far more common to have your upgrade bid rejected than accepted. Why, many ask, does my offer fail to impress the mercurial upgrade machines? Well, there’s a lot of factors and I’m going to break them down for you.
What is an upgrade?
In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll explain it briefly. However, if you are acquainted with the cruise upgrade bidding process, skip to the next section.
When you take a cruise, the line will typically send you an offer, via email, to place a bid to upgrade your cabin category. Clicking on the emailed link takes you to a page with an assortment of rooms that are rated above your current booking. Each room will have a minimum bidding amount and, as you enter the amount you are willing to bid, the page will show you how “strong” or “poor” your bid for that upgrade is.
Hint: Bidding more money will always make the bid stronger.
Within a week or two of the sailing date, the cruise line will notify you if your bid is accepted. Sometimes, they will notify you as late as the day before you sail, although that is far less common. Now that you know what the process is, here’s the reasons why you might not have your bid accepted.
It wasn’t enough
This is the most obvious answer to why your upgrade bid wasn’t accepted, but also the hardest to track. You only get to know your bid or the bid of anyone you can personally verify, like your family or friends. The cruise line won’t tell you, and travel agents don’t know either (we don’t get that information). Whatever amount won the bid is a mystery to everyone but the upgrade process algorithm.
If you hear that your upgrade bid wasn’t accepted, someone likely outbid you.
I don’t have figures for how many people bid on upgrades. Most people I’ve spoken with will make an offer, but it’s not everyone. Since all it takes to win is being the highest bidder, it could be five dollars more than what you bid and still win. In a ship with hundreds or thousands of cabins, if even half of the people choose to bid, that’s a lot of competition.
It’s important to understand that just because you bid an amount and it was accepted, or heard of someone else bidding an amount that was accepted, that has no bearing on the next sailing. There isn’t a magic number that you can bid and win.
They sold the cabin
Another important factor to understand is that those upgrade bids are really the cruise line trying to move unsold inventory. These aren’t some sort of courtesy the lines offer because they like you. The bidding process is there to help the company make more money.
The company will continue to try and sell rooms until they either can’t, because, for example, the ship is sailing tomorrow, or they don’t believe that these rooms will be sold by the time the ship sails. That second reason is part of the internal alchemy of this whole process that only the company knows and they don’t share that information with us.
Unlike the first reason, though, travel agents can see what rooms are sold on a ship, so we can check on this. If you placed a bid for a suite, we can see if any of those suites are even available. When all the rooms are sold, there’s no upgrades happening, but there can be cancellations at the last minute.
VIPs
Yes, cruise lines will hold inventory for VIPs to travel. This could be company execs, celebrities, shareholders, influencers, anyone that is important to the company. This isn’t an everyday occurrence, but it does happen. For example, when Richard Branson wants to sail on a Virgin Voyages ship, they have a suite for him.
These rooms aren’t held indefinitely, even VIPs have to plan ahead a bit. If the line is aware that someone important wants to travel on that sailing, a room may be held back. This could be why you didn’t get your upgrade, even if it looked like there was inventory left and you put in a high bid.
How can I improve my chances of my bid being accepted?
Bid more.
Don’t like hearing your upgrade bid wasn’t accepted? There’s only one thing you can do to change that…
What? You thought there was a trick?
Nope. There’s nothing else you can really do.
There’s no formula to guarantee that you win an upgrade. No, “one weird trick that cruise line upgrade bid processors hate.” It’s just bid as much as you’re comfortable doing, hope you bid the most, and that there’s a cabin available.
