Cruise passenger discovers how cabin upgrade winners are chosen and changed his strategy

A man who has an avid traveler, revealed the moment he decided to change how he bid on cruise rooms once he learned how upgrade winners were chosen, and others have weighed in.

When you book a cabin on a cruise liner, normally, you get to select what you want from the free options.

This could be a room with a view, a cabin tucked inside of the boat near the amenities, or it could be a more expensive suite to suit your luxe taste.

Or you could do what some others do – book a standard room and wait tirelessly for the expected upgrade bidding to start.

But when Gary Bembridge lost to someone who bid less than he did, he began an investigation into how winners are selected.

Bembridge, also known as Tips For Travellers on YouTube, has long been giving people the ins and outs of journeying around the world.

Gary Bembridge revealed how cruises choose their upgrade winners (YouTube/@TipsForTravellers)

But despite being well-versed in most things to do with transport, he revealed his surprise at the cruise ship bidding process when booking his next trip.

In a video he published to the platform on July 26, he wrote: " If you've ever been invited to bid for a cruise cabin upgrade, you probably assumed (like me) that the highest bid wins. But, that's not how it works at all. After losing an upgrade to another passenger who had bid less than I did, I decided to investigate what was really going on behind cruise line upgrade bidding. What I found completely changed how I approach the process."

So, what did he find out?

Apparently, it was staring him right in the face all along.

The realization of how bidding really worked call after 'pulling up the bidding emails from 11 different cruise lines', which led to him noticing on each page that they were all 'powered by Plusgrade'.

"This means the cruise lines are not managing cabin upgrades themselves, but are using a third-party company, Plusgrade, instead," said Bembridge.

Why is this important?

Because Plusgrade apparently 'developed a sophisticated machine learning model that is able to pull in data like demand, bidding patterns, passenger segments, and works out bid ranges by cabin grade that will maximise revenue across the ship for each specific sailing."

According to the YouTuber, this includes them not taking the highest bid, despite it seeming 'counterintuitive' because the ML takes into consideration the price of your cabin, that of the other people bidding, the price of the upgrade and the location of where you are because of the likelihood of them being able to re-sell your location to someone else if you win.

"So, the assumption we passengers make that if we bid high, we increase our chance of winning is not true," he said.

Thanks to what he has learned, the traveler now bids based on whether he thinks the cruise line will want to shuffle him from his room or not - effectively increasing his chances of being chosen.

"As someone who only travels in solo cabins I never bother bidding as I’ve always just assumed the system is stacked against me," one commenter wrote under his investigation, adding: "Thanks for confirming my hunch. Great video as always."

Another wrote: "Ok, now this makes more sense! We always get those emails to bid for an upgrade but usually the amount it lets you bid is far more than we're comfortable with - because that amount IS doubled!! Thanks Gary!!"

UNILAD reached out to Plusgrade for comment.