P&O upgrade bidding - any good?

[Selbourne]

Having ignored the first email, we have now had a chaser email from P&O asking if we want to bid for our cruise in 2 weeks time, so clearly they haven’t had a massive uptake. Not surprised. The upgrade prices were as much or more than the cabins would have been had we booked them in the first place! 

[Megabear2]

28 minutes ago, Selbourne said:

Having ignored the first email, we have now had a chaser email from P&O asking if we want to bid for our cruise in 2 weeks time, so clearly they haven’t had a massive uptake. Not surprised. The upgrade prices were as much or more than the cabins would have been had we booked them in the first place! 

We've had the same, two emails to date.  We have a deluxe top grade balcony but they keep offering a mid/mid aft suite at £1,130pp minimum bid or a very confusing suite at £860pp minimum. There are currently no suites on sale for the cruise so I'm bemused where this stock might be coming from.

[Scots Couple]

We put in a bid for our Ventura cruise in 2 weeks time, we did put a slightly higher bid than was suggested, but we have heard nothing back so far. 

Edited October 14, 2023 by Scots Couple
correction

[Cathygh]

We have a GF balcony on Britannia in November, booked a late saver fare.

Our upgrade email is £320pp for a Superior deluxe balcony, £620pp for a suite and £790pp for mid or mid aft suite on deck 14. The GF fare was £1500 each. Currently a Superior Deluxe Balcony is £1886 each, the select fare is £2449 each. The suites are £3799, select fare only, and £4399 for deck 14 suites, again select fare only. So to us it looks like the suites could be a good deal, but I have to remind my self  that we could buy a week's cruise for £790 so we are not bidding.😭

[Trimone]

Having had 100% success rate with another cruise line the art to the bidding is to have something special to start with, as someone said there was no availability of a grade required, well there is if they get upgraded.

[Interestedcruisefan]

On 9/26/2023 at 8:22 PM, da.h@ntlworld.com said:

Hi Selbourne thanks for the information £220 sounds like a plan.

 

 

 221 might be even better

[Interestedcruisefan]

On 10/13/2023 at 12:08 PM, Megabear2 said:

We've had the same, two emails to date.  We have a deluxe top grade balcony but they keep offering a mid/mid aft suite at £1,130pp minimum bid or a very confusing suite at £860pp minimum. There are currently no suites on sale for the cruise so I'm bemused where this stock might be coming from.

Maybe from  existing suite guests who have bid to upgrade to a better suite?

 

(But then again there needs to be better suites for them to move to?)

 

Is there anything better than suites on the ship?

 

Lol

 

Or do they rely on cancellations creating a domino effect last minute when they announce if you are successful?

 

I guess just one high level suite cancellation late on could lead to lots of upgrade fees all the way down the line

 

 

Significant extra income for the cruiseline (for nothing really) when you think about it

Edited October 20, 2023 by Interestedcruisefan

[Interestedcruisefan]

RCL always used to have onboard paper bidding for massages and similar that I always used to win at a fraction of the normal advertised prices

 

Would like to see that on P and O as well as the advertised treatment prices are OTT 

[Selbourne]

I have been extremely surprised to receive the ‘bid to upgrade’ email this morning for our 65 night Aurora cruise in January, which we booked last week on a late saver fare via a TA. It’s wasted on us, as we couldn’t upgrade even if we wanted to, as there are no higher grade accessible cabins on the ship. However, the minimum bid prices were, shall we say, interesting 😂 

 

Mini-suite - an additional £12,920 

Aft Suite - an additional £24,360

Midships Suite - an additional £26,600 

Penthouse Suite - an additional £39,180 

 

I can’t imagine that there will be much take-up at those prices!
 

I wonder if those who booked on a Select basis (as we usually do) will be offered them at much lower prices? Has there been any evidence of that approach? That would seem like a much fairer system to me. Better still, when they don’t manage to sell the upgrades I would hope that those who paid Select fares are upgraded free of charge. Again, has there been much evidence of that since the bid to upgrade system was introduced?

[Scots Couple]

Perhaps we will hear tomorrow if we have been successful in our bid as that will be 7 days till we sail on Ventura

[crompton21]

1 hour ago, Selbourne said:

I have been extremely surprised to receive the ‘bid to upgrade’ email this morning for our 65 night Aurora cruise in January, which we booked last week on a late saver fare via a TA. It’s wasted on us, as we couldn’t upgrade even if we wanted to, as there are no higher grade accessible cabins on the ship. However, the minimum bid prices were, shall we say, interesting 😂 

 

Mini-suite - an additional £12,920 

Aft Suite - an additional £24,360

Midships Suite - an additional £26,600 

Penthouse Suite - an additional £39,180 

 

I can’t imagine that there will be much take-up at those prices!
 

I wonder if those who booked on a Select basis (as we usually do) will be offered them at much lower prices? Has there been any evidence of that approach? That would seem like a much fairer system to me. Better still, when they don’t manage to sell the upgrades I would hope that those who paid Select fares are upgraded free of charge. Again, has there been much evidence of that since the bid to upgrade system was introduced?

Maybe put in a bid for an aft suite, it would be interesting to see where you ended up.  It's quite amusing that you can bid to upgrade to a room that doesn't exist...

 

[Selbourne]

Just now, crompton21 said:

Maybe put in a bid for an aft suite, it would be interesting to see where you ended up.  It's quite amusing that you can bid to upgrade to a room that doesn't exist...

 

But it would be less amusing if they charged me the £24,360 minimum bid for the privilege 😂 

[crompton21]

6 minutes ago, Selbourne said:

But it would be less amusing if they charged me the £24,360 minimum bid for the privilege 😂 

It probably cost more than that to write a computer programme that can calculate upgrade costs for things that don't exist.  Alternatively, is it possible the highly complex programme is actually a random person making up numbers as they go along.

[tring]

On 10/13/2023 at 11:11 AM, Glitterati said:

I’ve done the bid up process many times with other cruise lines. Got about a 50% success rate.

 

tips:

1. As others have said- always bid above the minimum. They allocate from the highest bids down. 
2. Check how full your sailing is. If it’s almost at capacity, only high bids are going to be successful 

3. The algorithm is strange. On my last celebrity cruise, I bid £250pp to upgrade from an inside to a balcony- this was £40 above the minimum. I didn’t get it, but I met a couple who bid the minimum for a Concierge cabin (same bid price as me) and got it. There were plenty of cabins available. I thought they must have paid more for their cruise originally, but they didn’t. We paid £700pp more per person than them for the same cabin (we went all incl) 

4. P&O do not sort out the bids. It is done by an external company that all the cruise lines use 

 

They often don’t allocate cabins until really close to the sailing 
 

 

A very interesting post, especially your comment that they allocate from the highest bids down.  Given you have had a lot of experience with such bids (I expect all systems may well be similar), do you think you will get a better placed upgrade cabin if you bid a higher price than someone else who was still successful with a lower bid?  So will those who bid for a balcony from an outside, for instance, be placed in the higher grade (and hopefully better placed) balcony than others who are successful with a lower bid?

[Guest]

1 hour ago, tring said:

 

A very interesting post, especially your comment that they allocate from the highest bids down.  Given you have had a lot of experience with such bids (I expect all systems may well be similar), do you think you will get a better placed upgrade cabin if you bid a higher price than someone else who was still successful with a lower bid?  So will those who bid for a balcony from an outside, for instance, be placed in the higher grade (and hopefully better placed) balcony than others who are successful with a lower bid?

Yeah all the cruise lines use the same system. 

 

I'm unsure. I bid just above minimum for a cruise on the Silhouette last year. We ended up opposite the cabin we had booked, just a balcony instead of our original inside. Deck 7, mid ship- so not the lowest grade (and we checked, there were obstructed left). I can only assume there were lots of balconies left so we ended up with a decent one. Or they place you near your original cabin. 

 

[ShelaghL]

On 9/27/2023 at 10:10 AM, lancashire_cruisers said:

We also had the upgrade email and booked with a TA not that we’ll be bidding as we’re more than happy with our deluxe balcony cabin. For information the prices to bid for an upgrade are as follows:

 

Suite £470pp

Family suite £420pp

Conservatory mini-suite £240pp

 

This is on Iona and interestingly the email splits the conservatory mini-suites into Promenade and non-promenade categories (even though the price is the same).

This  is very interesting.  I've been invited to bid on a caribbean cruise in January.  We are also in a deluxe balcony.  Our minimum bid is over £1500 pp for a suite making the upgrade more expensive than it would have cost me if I'd booked the suite in the first place.  No cheap upgrades for us.

[ShelaghL]

On 10/20/2023 at 9:23 AM, Selbourne said:

I have been extremely surprised to receive the ‘bid to upgrade’ email this morning for our 65 night Aurora cruise in January, which we booked last week on a late saver fare via a TA. It’s wasted on us, as we couldn’t upgrade even if we wanted to, as there are no higher grade accessible cabins on the ship. However, the minimum bid prices were, shall we say, interesting 😂 

 

Mini-suite - an additional £12,920 

Aft Suite - an additional £24,360

Midships Suite - an additional £26,600 

Penthouse Suite - an additional £39,180 

 

I can’t imagine that there will be much take-up at those prices!
 

I wonder if those who booked on a Select basis (as we usually do) will be offered them at much lower prices? Has there been any evidence of that approach? That would seem like a much fairer system to me. Better still, when they don’t manage to sell the upgrades I would hope that those who paid Select fares are upgraded free of charge. Again, has there been much evidence of that since the bid to upgrade system was introduced?

Hi - I've just messaged about the high price we have been offered.  We always book select, so it doesn't seem to be that those on Select get a lower bid minimum. It's a joke.  On Princess there is no minimum bid - you can book any amount.

[Megabear2]

4 minutes ago, ShelaghL said:

This  is very interesting.  I've been invited to bid on a caribbean cruise in January.  We are also in a deluxe balcony.  Our minimum bid is over £1500 pp for a suite making the upgrade more expensive than it would have cost me if I'd booked the suite in the first place.  No cheap upgrades for us.

Which ship?  I had an offer for my Britannia one for £1,130pp from a deluxe to a suite.  It looks like some ships are getting far higher bid starting levels.

[ShelaghL]

Sorry - typo in message above - should say you can bid any amount!

[ShelaghL]

2 minutes ago, Megabear2 said:

Which ship?  I had an offer for my Britannia one for £1,130pp from a deluxe to a suite.  It looks like some ships are getting far higher bid starting levels.

It's Britannia.  Seems to be they just pick a figure out of the air!!!!

[ShelaghL]

Maybe it depends how many of each category they have left.  I think our cruise is pretty full so maybe they only have 1 or 2 suites left.  I am disappointed with how P&O are operating this.

[ShelaghL]

I asked my TA about an upgrade a couple of weeks ago before I got the invite to bid.  Her quote was £500 less than the bid price!!!

[Winifred 22]

33 minutes ago, ShelaghL said:

Maybe it depends how many of each category they have left.  I think our cruise is pretty full so maybe they only have 1 or 2 suites left.  I am disappointed with how P&O are operating this.

They are being operated by a third party provider on P&O ‘s behalf. Once they have a year of P&O and Cunard data there should be greater consistency. It’s the same firm that handles other cruise lines upgrades too. 

[da.h@ntlworld.com]

On 9/26/2023 at 7:54 PM, Selbourne said:

Keep in mind that the £210pp is not a cost, it’s a minimum bid, which you may or may not be successful with.
 

If you were to pay to upgrade (rather than rely on the bidding system), then the price to do so is the price difference that applied at the time that you booked, not the quoted price today.

 

If you are tempted to bid, my advice would be to bid a little bit more than the minimum, say £220 pp. The vast majority of people will probably just bid the minimum, so by bidding more, even just a tiny amount, automatically puts you ahead of everyone who just bids the minimum and probably increases your chances of being successful quite considerably. 

Hi Selbourne as you may have guessed I have not been successful in my bid for an upgrade ☹️but still have my £450 in my back pocket 😂😂😂.Only 2 balcony cabins left and just found out I’m in E123 deck 6.

[Selbourne]

9 hours ago, da.h@ntlworld.com said:

Hi Selbourne as you may have guessed I have not been successful in my bid for an upgrade ☹️but still have my £450 in my back pocket 😂😂😂.Only 2 balcony cabins left and just found out I’m in E123 deck 6.

Sorry to hear that but I’m sure that you will still have a lovely cruise, especially with your extra spending money!