Now you can bid for your room with Royal Caribbean!

Royal Caribbean have always been one of the most popular main-stream cruise lines around since around the late 1990 when cruising really started to come in to its own when started to see the larger ships come out, although Royal Caribbean has been an established cruise line since 1968 when it was a Norwegian based company and ‘The Song of Norway’ was one of the first major ships Royal Caribbean had. I bet if you had shown passengers and even crew on board her, pictures of the Oasis Class they’d never have believed you that, that would be today’s cruise ship.

Although Royal Caribbean is one of the most family-friendly cruise lines, their prices can sometimes be very unaffordable for a family of limited means and at the end of the day in today’s world £100.00 does not go very far, let along for a family with 3 kids it can be hard to get away.

I have on many previous occasions spoken to families and couples, who have said we’d love a balcony but just cannot afford £500.00pp more to have one. This could all be changing for Royal Caribbean as they have announced they are bringing out a Cabin Upgrade Bidding Program.

This will mean that you can bid for your said ideal room, and potentially get it for a lot less than booking it at the time of booking.

But I did speak to someone the other day who said, ‘Great we will go with an inside and bid for a balcony, but we must have a balcony’ – In this case if you can afford a balcony, then you may want to pay to guarantee it as the bidding program will not guarantee you the room you want.

To second this Royal Caribbean has said this is only going to be available on selected sailings and that the guests will be notified via email and given a list of staterooms available for an upgrade.

You can then select the amount you are willing to pay and submit your bid, although it is worth noting that there will be a minimum bid for each category and you must put in your card details at the time and if successful you will be charged straight away.

The bit I really like about this and where families will really benefit from this is that the bids are only for passengers 1 and 2, so passengers 3 and 4 do not pay anything but will benefit from the upgrade.

You can bid across Oceanview to the top-level suites, so they are not holding anything back, if its available at the time the bids open – you can bid for it.

Royal Caribbean has also said you can submit multiple bids across different categories to increase your chances of getting an upgrade.

Royal Caribbean normally the leading in industry firsts, are a little behind on this as not the only cruise line to offer this, Norwegian Cruises has been offering this too since earlier in the Year and Azamara offer something very similar.

Would you bid for your room?