RoyalUP? (Bid for stateroom upgrade)

[actuarian]

On 8/8/2019 at 4:04 PM, bulldogmommy said:

you will NOT get double points

Unless, of course, your original booking included double points.  For example, if your original booking was for a JS and you upgrade to a GS (or better) through RoyalUp, you still bet double points.

[minnie00]

3 hours ago, AshleyDillo said:

 

Basically it's a word for the process a computer uses to decide how Royal can make the most money from an empty cabin on the ship.  There's a ton of data analytics to drive the decision making that gets fed into it. 

 

Consider the avalanche effect when they accept a RoyalUp to a top tier cabin..they can then accept an offer for the cabin that was upgraded which frees up another cabin..and so on down the line.  They don't even have to accept the highest bid on the highest level room if they can make more money by combining all the other RoyalUp offers down the line.

 

Then in the opposite direction, it may be lucrative for them to accept a low bid for an inside to an oceanview because they can then resell the inside for the current prevailing rate which could be over $1,000 more than the upgraded party had paid originally.

 

On top of that, Royal gets to mine data from all of the offered bids to see what people are willing to pay.

 

thank you...that was interesting to read

[cured]

On 8/7/2019 at 7:48 PM, actuarian said:

I do not know the answer to your third question but the answer to your first two questions is yes.  However, it is not so much the "category of room" you book as how much you have paid for your original reservation (which is closely related).  They have a formula for evaluating bids that seems to take account of the amount you already paid so if two people bid the same amount for the same room category, the one who has already paid more for his or her original room has a better chance of winning.

This is hard to believe. We had an Ultra Spacious Ocean View with large balcony (7330 - Oasis) that we booked 18 months out and during what seemed to be a legit sale. It was cheap!

 

We bid $100 over minimum 11 days before sailing for a Crown Loft Suite. I  am writing this from the upstairs bedroom. 

 

Since we bid, the rooms have steadily went up. A regular balcony was more than what we paid shortly after and never went down. I hardly think we were the only ones to>88 in bid on a CL suite and certainly had less $$ in our original room than most other purchasers did. 

 

We are still thousands under what I priced 4 people in a CL suite when I first booked.

[grandgeezer]

Whoever offers them the most money will get the move up. They have all the upfront money already. If someone in an inside cabin offers them $2,000 p.p. to move up to a suite and someone, in a balcony offers them $1,000 to move up, guess who's going to get it? From what I understand, this is all done very close to sail date so the chances of selling the vacated cabin is slim to none. Do they take the $2,000 gain or the $1,000 gain???

[actuarian]

22 minutes ago, cured said:

This is hard to believe. We had an Ultra Spacious Ocean View with large balcony (7330 - Oasis) that we booked 18 months out and during what seemed to be a legit sale. It was cheap!

 

We bid $100 over minimum 11 days before sailing for a Crown Loft Suite. I  am writing this from the upstairs bedroom. 

 

Since we bid, the rooms have steadily went up. A regular balcony was more than what we paid shortly after and never went down. I hardly think we were the only ones to>88 in bid on a CL suite and certainly had less $$ in our original room than most other purchasers did. 

 

We are still thousands under what I priced 4 people in a CL suite when I first booked.

The algorithm is very complicated but designed to maximize Royal Caribbean's total revenue.  What you originally payed seems to be a factor but it is probably a relatively small one.  In your case, the fact that your original room 7330 was a cat. 1A was probably also a factor and maybe a more important one.  There are only 7 cat. 1A cabins on the Oasis so it is not unlikely that you were the only person in a cat. 1A who was even bidding.  If other people were bidding on cat. 1A, they had to accept your bid in order to free up a cat. 1A to award to another bidder.  When they moved you from a 1A to a CL, they received not only the revenue from your bid but also from that other bidder's bid and you have no way to know how much that was. 

 

I believe that one of the best ways to win a RoyalUP upgrade is to start out in a room category for which there are very few cabins, like cat. 1A on Oasis class or cat. VP on Voyager class.  For my next cruise, my original booking was in cat. VP on the Navigator and I was upgraded to a GS for the minimum bid, even though that bid was "weak".

Edited August 9, 2019 by actuarian

[Biker19]

43 minutes ago, grandgeezer said:

. If someone in an inside cabin offers them $2,000 p.p. to move up to a suite and someone, in a balcony offers them $1,000 to move up, guess who's going to get it? 

The folks in the balcony will get it since insides don’t get suite offers. 

[grandgeezer]

1 hour ago, Biker19 said:

The folks in the balcony will get it since insides don’t get suite offers. 

O.K., if a person in a Central Park balcony offers $2,000 to move up to a suite and a person in an ocean view balcony offers $1,000 to move up to a suite, who do you thinks gets it. They make $1,000 more giving it to the Central Park bidder so if they don't the person making the decision should be fired.

Or don't balcony owners get suite offers? I know they do on Celebrity.

 

[cruiserking]

Just scored an Owners Suite for our Empress Western Caribbean cruise next Saturday. Super Excited. 

 

Jonathan

[Ready2SailAway]

6 minutes ago, cruiserking said:

Just scored an Owners Suite for our Empress Western Caribbean cruise next Saturday. Super Excited. 

 

Jonathan

 

Nice to find out a week before your cruise, rather than the day before -congrats!

 

So if you don't mind my asking:

1. What category did you upgrade from,
2. What was the minimum bid amount for that OS, and
3. What was your winning bid?

Edited August 10, 2019 by Ready2SailAway

[cruiserking]

2 minutes ago, Ready2SailAway said:

 

Nice to find out a week before your cruise, rather than the day before -congrats!

 

So if you don't mind my asking:

1. What category did you upgrade from,
2. What was the minimum bid amount for that OS, and
3. What was your winning bid?

We were booked in a Junior Suite, the minimum bid was $400 per person, I bid the maximum $900 per person. It's a great deal because this was originally a Cuba cruise and after the itinerary change we are due a 50% refund on our original fare. So the balance for this Owners Suite is just a couple of hundred bucks. Plus Royal had this suite priced at $5,600 last week. 

 

Very excited. 

 

Happy cruising. 

 

Jonathan

 

Jonathan

[SRV FAN]

7 hours ago, AshleyDillo said:

 

Basically it's a word for the process a computer uses to decide how Royal can make the most money from an empty cabin on the ship.  There's a ton of data analytics to drive the decision making that gets fed into it. 

 

Consider the avalanche effect when they accept a RoyalUp to a top tier cabin..they can then accept an offer for the cabin that was upgraded which frees up another cabin..and so on down the line.  They don't even have to accept the highest bid on the highest level room if they can make more money by combining all the other RoyalUp offers down the line.

 

Then in the opposite direction, it may be lucrative for them to accept a low bid for an inside to an oceanview because they can then resell the inside for the current prevailing rate which could be over $1,000 more than the upgraded party had paid originally.

 

On top of that, Royal gets to mine data from all of the offered bids to see what people are willing to pay.

Thank you Ashley. I guess I’ll give up trying to figure it all out & just wait to see what happens as there isn’t anyway to really to figure out the logic. 🤔 

 

What will be, will be! 

[AshleyDillo]

2 hours ago, grandgeezer said:

O.K., if a person in a Central Park balcony offers $2,000 to move up to a suite and a person in an ocean view balcony offers $1,000 to move up to a suite, who do you thinks gets it. They make $1,000 more giving it to the Central Park bidder so if they don't the person making the decision should be fired.

Or don't balcony owners get suite offers? I know they do on Celebrity.

 

 

It's not a person making the decision.  It's a computer and it isn't always the most obvious highest bidder.

 

IF a CP Balcony and BW Balcony are both trying to bid for a JS and they put in equal bids..who is going to win out there?  The answer will be whichever of the CP Balcony or the BW Balcony have bids in the pipeline that equal the greatest overall gain for Royal.  

 

It could go even further to where the tiebreaker is booking that has C&A members who have historically spent more onboard per day on a cruise!  We don't really know all what data they have going into making the decision, but they do have the ability to mine data like this to use it to their advantage. 

 

There's absolutely nothing in the T&C for RoyalUp that states a room goes to the highest bidder.

[micruiser2002]

26 minutes ago, AshleyDillo said:

 

It's not a person making the decision.  It's a computer and it isn't always the most obvious highest bidder.

 

IF a CP Balcony and BW Balcony are both trying to bid for a JS and they put in equal bids..who is going to win out there?  The answer will be whichever of the CP Balcony or the BW Balcony have bids in the pipeline that equal the greatest overall gain for Royal.  

 

It could go even further to where the tiebreaker is booking that has C&A members who have historically spent more onboard per day on a cruise!  We don't really know all what data they have going into making the decision, but they do have the ability to mine data like this to use it to their advantage. 

 

There's absolutely nothing in the T&C for RoyalUp that states a room goes to the highest bidder.

RCL IT can't even keep a website fully functional but you expect them to be able to add all of these algorithms to the upgrade process?? 

[molly361]

3 hours ago, micruiser2002 said:

RCL IT can't even keep a website fully functional but you expect them to be able to add all of these algorithms to the upgrade process?? 

It's  not RCL running the program

[ladydiinflorida]

There is a third party that runs the Royal up program, it's the same company that runs Norwegian' S program.

[actuarian]

1 hour ago, ladydiinflorida said:

There is a third party that runs the Royal up program, it's the same company that runs Norwegian' S program.

That same third party runs the Celebrity MoveUp program and many airline upgrade programs.  However, I am also almost certain that Royal employees have a "back door" to RoyalUP that allows them to accept (or reject) a bid before that third party issues the awards.  This is based on my own experience:

 

For my 8/12 Navigator cruise (now in only 2 days), I booked a cat. VP Panoramic Suite for my wife and myself for $674 per person (plus $97.74/person tax).  This was actually a little less than a JS cost at the time but it was only shortly after they reclassified those rooms from Panoramic Family rooms to Panoramic Suites and simultaneously eliminated the minimum occupancy requirements. 

 

When RoyalUP became available, we put in a bid of $180 per person for a Grand Suite.  The bid was marked "weak" and we thought it would fail.  Actually, we were happy with the Panoramic Suite but thought it would be worth $360 to get a veranda and a mid-ship location, even though the view would not be as spectacular.   However, that "weak" bid was accepted on July 17, almost a month before the cruise and, in my experience, about 2 weeks earlier than RoyalUP bids are usually accepted.  My guess was that some Royal Caribbean employee went in through a back door and accepted the bid so that he or she could move a family into the VP suite.  Both the GS and the VP can sleep 4 but the VP is much better designed for families with an extra half bath and a private sleeping alcove for children.  Moveover, there are only 2 VP suites on the ship.

 

The bottom line is that we got a GS for $854 + tax/person, a little over half of what it would have cost to book a GS when we first made the reservation.  If you ever see a VP being offered for the same price as a JS, grab it.  While it has no veranda, It is much larger than a JS inside, has spectacular views, and there is a very good chance that you will get a cheap upgrade to a GS via RoyalUP.

 

 

Edited August 10, 2019 by actuarian

[Ready2SailAway]

5 hours ago, actuarian said:

That same third party runs the Celebrity MoveUp program and many airline upgrade programs.  However, I am also almost certain that Royal employees have a "back door" to RoyalUP that allows them to accept (or reject) a bid before that third party issues the awards.

 

And they probably gather intel from this RoyalUp discussion -which begs the question: 

Who initiated this RoyalUP forum anyway??!   haha

 

[Biker19]

46 minutes ago, Ready2SailAway said:

 

Who initiated this RoyalUP forum anyway??!  

If @John&LaLa didn’t do it someone else would have. 

[John&LaLa]

8 minutes ago, Biker19 said:

If @John&LaLa didn’t do it someone else would have. 

 

Good times.  

 

[grapau27]

7 minutes ago, John&LaLa said:

 

Good times.  

 

You did good John.

You deserve a pint.

Cheers.

[brandy3415]

Received Royal Up email exactly 60 days out from the cruise.  I have been reading this thread since Royal UP stated and gone on several cruises but did not want to bid --liked the cabin we had.

 

I bid slightly over the minimum and of course "weak bid".  But there is also a disclaimer on the email--don't know if people read it but I did--it states (paraphrased) the each bid is evaluated separately and not as compared to other bids.   I kind of go along with whoever said they look at spending (although I don't think just onboard spending--I think it is total expenditures over x number of years---

 

So we shall see if the 2 megabuck cruises in the past bear any weight!

 

What a suspense!

[Ashland]

7 hours ago, actuarian said:

That same third party runs the Celebrity MoveUp program and many airline upgrade programs.  However, I am also almost certain that Royal employees have a "back door" to RoyalUP that allows them to accept (or reject) a bid before that third party issues the awards.  This is based on my own experience:

 

For my 8/12 Navigator cruise (now in only 2 days), I booked a cat. VP Panoramic Suite for my wife and myself for $674 per person (plus $97.74/person tax).  This was actually a little less than a JS cost at the time but it was only shortly after they reclassified those rooms from Panoramic Family rooms to Panoramic Suites and simultaneously eliminated the minimum occupancy requirements. 

 

When RoyalUP became available, we put in a bid of $180 per person for a Grand Suite.  The bid was marked "weak" and we thought it would fail.  Actually, we were happy with the Panoramic Suite but thought it would be worth $360 to get a veranda and a mid-ship location, even though the view would not be as spectacular.   However, that "weak" bid was accepted on July 17, almost a month before the cruise and, in my experience, about 2 weeks earlier than RoyalUP bids are usually accepted.  My guess was that some Royal Caribbean employee went in through a back door and accepted the bid so that he or she could move a family into the VP suite.  Both the GS and the VP can sleep 4 but the VP is much better designed for families with an extra half bath and a private sleeping alcove for children.  Moveover, there are only 2 VP suites on the ship.

 

The bottom line is that we got a GS for $854 + tax/person, a little over half of what it would have cost to book a GS when we first made the reservation.  If you ever see a VP being offered for the same price as a JS, grab it.  While it has no veranda, It is much larger than a JS inside, has spectacular views, and there is a very good chance that you will get a cheap upgrade to a GS via RoyalUP.

 

 

I have a Panoramic Ocean View #1804 on Freedom B2B booked for April 2021 for just the two of us. The price when I booked was only $200.00 more than a JS.. I'll be interested to see if I get a RoyalUP offer. It might be a little more difficult as I would only be interested in an OS and the same cabin for both legs. If not, I'm perfectly happy with keeping what I have.

[Biker19]

38 minutes ago, Ashland said:

It might be a little more difficult as I would only be interested in an OS and the same cabin for both legs  

Just about zero chance of that happening. 

[John&LaLa]

2 hours ago, grapau27 said:

You did good John.

You deserve a pint.

Cheers.

 

The inventory manager on Harmony told me his Newcastle comes from England. 😁🍺

[John&LaLa]

On 8/6/2019 at 11:10 AM, JennyB1977 said:

On the 3 Day Navigator departing 9/20. I am currently in a JS. We are at 45 days out and I just got the "Act now - Upgrade your stateroom before you sail" e-mail. Yesterday there were 7 OS and 1 GS available. No balconies available for the last 2 days. Today showing 7 OS available, No GS. OS still about $3k (total not pp). Options:

Royal Suite - starting at $650pp

Owner's Suite - starting at $180pp

Grand Suite 2 BR - starting at $300pp

Grand Suite - starting at $100pp

I'm not going to post my offer until after it's been accepted or declined.

 

Good strategy