Targeted discounted cabin upgrades bidding offers

[hayyoot]

I have a booked inside cabin on a future seemingly undersold NCL Jewel cruise in November. I received an email offering me to bid on an upgrade to a balcony or oceanview cabin. The bids to upgrade to a balcony start at $150/ pp, and are capped at $600/ pp. If I want to upgrade to a balcony the regular way, I will have to pay $1100/ pp. The bids to an oceanview start at $100/ pp, and cost $250 if I want to do it the regular way. 

I submitted a bid to upgrade to a balcony 4 days ago that is midway in between, and haven't heard back. 

Does anyone have any experience with this kind of offers? 

[YVRBassElectric]

you will hear sometime between now & 48 hours before sailing if they have accepted your bid. I have been upgraded at 60 days and 48 hours. Rejections have always been sent at 48 hours. 

 

Once your bid has been accepted your credit card will be charged and your cabin reassigned - you have no chance to reject 

 

 

[Rsavtechcruise]

It’s a supply and demand deal basically and done by a 3rd party vendor 

 

basically you can be accepted or denied up to 48hrs prior to sailing 

 

example of insides sell out and balconies are slow selling they will upgrade a bunch of insides to balconies to then have more fast selling insides to sell

 

but again a upgrade bid is no  guarantee and no choice or changes if you win and a winning bid this week may not be a winning bid next week

[Nclgetawaymenhoney]

There is a huge thread about upgrade advantage with lots of questions and answers I suggest you read a couple pages for guidance, it's called what was your upgrade offer etc, it's 157 pages plus.  Just because you got the offer doesn't not mean the cruise is under sold, the first red flag I see for your offers if this is a seven day cruise is the minimum bids are hire than normal which means ship is fairly full.  Have you went to ncl website and did mock bookings to see how many balconies are available?

 

[Starry Eyes]

Why do you think your cruise is undersold?  If you think so because you were offered the opportunity to bid, think again; bidding opportunities are common on NCL, even on cruises that are selling well.

 

If that seems odd to you, imagine that the cruise is sold very well, almost sold out, but there is an unsold high end suite and maybe a couple people in balcony cabins had to cancel a week out due to illness/family emergency. Well, the bids are in place, a somebody in nice suite moves up to the high end suite with a winning bid, somebody else moves to that newly-vacated nice suite with another winning bid, and that cascade continues with additional $ collected with each winning bid.  Similarly, those last balconies vacated due to cancellations are filled by bidders.  And if the cruise sells out and nobody cancels, then the bids are just rejected at 48 hours prior to the cruise...and the cruiseline has some more market info from the bidding numbers.

[zqvol]

9 hours ago, hayyoot said:

I have a booked inside cabin on a future seemingly undersold NCL Jewel cruise in November. I received an email offering me to bid on an upgrade to a balcony or oceanview cabin. The bids to upgrade to a balcony start at $150/ pp, and are capped at $600/ pp. If I want to upgrade to a balcony the regular way, I will have to pay $1100/ pp. The bids to an oceanview start at $100/ pp, and cost $250 if I want to do it the regular way. 

I submitted a bid to upgrade to a balcony 4 days ago that is midway in between, and haven't heard back. 

Does anyone have any experience with this kind of offers? 

 

Don't expect to hear back  until about 2 weeks prior to sailing.

[triptastic3]

I think it is safe to assume the Jewel is undersold for November. The Jewel only has two sailings in November, Nov 1-14, Honolulu to Papeete and Nov 17 - Dec 1 Papeete to Sydney. All cabin types show available and if you try a mock booking in every category there are many that display 15 cabins, many. At 63 days and 76 days to sail they are well past the 120 day cut off. I have been monitoring both cruises. The total cost for both has come down more than $3000 Cdn since July 1st. Unless they get a last minute rush and book a few hundred cabins in the next 8 weeks I think both will sail with quite a few empty cabins.

I suppose there is a chance of a mad rush on cabin bookings but the airfare to or from Papeete isn't cheap and unless someone is doing the B2B going from Hawaii to Sydney the cost of flights will be a factor.