Understanding Virgin Voyages' level upgrade/bidding system
If you're fortunate enough to be able to book a cruise with Virgin Voyages1, you might have seen the "bid to level up" option hidden away on your booking confirmation.
The bid-to-upgrade system is weird.
It's not well explained. Sometimes it is counterintuitive. Timings are vague. It's a lottery-of-sorts, and like any lottery it becomes a little easier to win if you can figure out how it works.
I've got my fourth VV cruise booked for this summer. I've used the bidding system every time, getting lucky twice so far. I've read a lot of other peoples' experiences with the system, both the winners and the losers. I've developed my own bidding strategy which works for me. Maybe something similar will work for you too.
(Note: All of the explanations in this blog are based on reading other people's experiences, my own experiences, some review of the bidding system provider's sales documentation, and some intuition. There's little explicit explanation from VV themselves on the process and evidently they adjust the process over time. All of the below is written in good faith and appears to be true as of right now but do take it with a pinch of salt.)
Why does Virgin Voyages offer the bid-to-upgrade system?
Virgin Voyages offers many levels of cabin - inside-only, sea view, obscured-view balcony, central balcony, large balcony, and suites. The better the cabin, the more expensive it is. People will book what they can afford but there's always the lure of something a little better. Rather than having everyone on the ship in the cheapest possible rooms with the suites left empty, VV lets most passengers bid on most cabin classes above their current level of booking.
It's called 'ancillary revenue'. They've already got your money from being on-board but they can get a little more by letting you upgrade your room.
The chain-of-upgrading, or why the highest bid doesn't always win
The whole point of the upgrade programme is to make Virgin Voyages as much ancillary revenue as possible. When it comes time to allocate upgrades, they consider not just how much money they make from you but from all passengers as a whole.
Let's say I'm currently in a central balcony cabin. I bid £200 for a Seriously suite and £400 for a Cheeky Corner Suite2. Someone else is currently in a Seriously Suite and bids £250 for a Cheeky Corner Suite. If we are the only bidders in the system, I won't win the Cheeky Corner Suite even though my bid is almost twice as high. If I won that bid, Virgin Voyages would get £400 of ancillary revenue. Instead the other passenger gets that suite for £250, which opens up the Seriously Suite they used to be in which is then awarded to me for £200. Virgin Voyages then gets £450 in total - £200 from me, £250 from the other passenger.
There are thousands of passengers on board, many of whom will be placing bids. The upgrade system runs through every possible scenario to figure out which combination of upgrades will net Virgin Voyages the most money.
Oh, and another tidbit: not everyone sees the same upgrade bidding prices. The website specifies a minimum possible bid for each type of cabin, and it appears that the better the cabin you're currently in, the lower that minimum possible bid. This should, in theory, convince those in premium cabins to bid for an upgrade, which opens up their existing cabin to others. It better enables that chain-of-upgrading to make VV more money.
When do bids turn into won cabins?
When it makes the most sense for Virgin Voyages to adjust the cabin inventory. Ordinarily this means twice: once about 25 days before the voyage, and once again within a day or two of departure.
The 25-days-out batch of processing appears to be a shuffle to open up some rooms which might sell to people who haven't booked yet. From the posts on Reddit, Cruise Critic and elsewhere, this is often when the Rockstar suites3 are often allocated, presumably because people booking last-minute are less likely to book a suite.
The final batch of processing rarely seems to include upgrades to suites and is more focused on moving people from the cheapest cabins to the mid-price cabins. It looks like upgrades to suites do sometimes happen at this point, presumably either due to some cabins being held back which didn't end up selling or because people cancel their trip at the last moment and the cabin becomes available.
Occasionally upgrades do happen much earlier. As far as I can make out, this tends to be the case when a certain class of cabin is selling much better than expected. Virgin Voyages will want to make sure those popular cabins remain available well ahead of the sail date, so they upgrade people in those cabins to free them up. I don't see evidence that this happens regularly but it's not unknown.
How do I actually submit a bid?
Go to this page on the Virgin Voyages website. Put your booking reference and surname in the box towards the bottom of the page, hit "Let's check now", and you'll go to the bidding service. If your browser has a pop-up blocker, you'll need to disable this in order for the bidding site to appear in a new tab/page.
Some types of booking aren't eligible for upgrade bidding, particularly the cheapest 'lock it in rate' where you're not allocated a room during your initial booking. Sometimes these bookings do become eligible after the initial processing period, so it's worth trying a week before your voyage if you can't initially bid.
What should I bid on?
The best thing to consider is what cabins remain available. If you pretend to book a new trip for the same voyage on the VV website it'll tell you what's sold out; you can bid for those in the hope that the current occupants will be upgraded or cancel their trip but it's generally better to bid for what's still free.
My advice: search for your voyage on cruise.com or Harr Travel. Unlike other websites - including Virgin Voyages itself - both of these let you select a specific cabin. For my upcoming trip, I can see that within the Rockstar class there are six Gorgeous suites remaining, three Brilliant suites, and two Massive suites. If I want a suite, those three are my best bets.
How much should I bid?
Whatever you can afford.
It's a game. The interface has a dial showing you the strength of your bid from a scale of 'poor' to 'excellent'. You can bid thousands of pounds/dollars/whatever for it to tell you that the bid is as good as can be, but it doesn't matter if that particular cabin is totally sold out.
My advice here is to consider the value to you. If you really want a particular suite, why not just contact Virgin Voyages directly and pay for that upgrade without the uncertainty of this bidding process? If you're fortunate enough to have some disposable income to play this lottery and you're not pinning your hopes on winning to get you out of the lousy room you've booked, go for it.
How likely am I to actually win?
It depends on the cabin you're in and the cabins you're bidding on.
If you're in the cheapest inside cabin, the odds of you getting a premium Rockstar suite are incredibly low unless you're bidding thousands of pounds/dollars/whatever. Think about that chain-of-upgrading - if you're moved to a suite, what value does VV have from opening up your old cabin? Conversely, if you're already in a suite, an upgrade of a couple of bucks might mean that someone else can win your existing cabin, and someone can win their old cabin, and someone else can win their old cabin too.
The other consideration is available inventory. There are around 102 premium cabins on board which make up twelve of the possible bidding categories on the website. If you are currently in an inside cabin, you'll also see bidding options for a sea view cabin (95 available) or four other types of room with a terrace (1,138 available). Take a look on cruise.com or Harr Travel to see what's available - typically there are dozens of sea terrace rooms available right up until departure so the odds on getting one of those for very little is very high indeed. The odds of getting a suite when many other sailors will have bids on many of those twelve categories is far lower.
Don't bid for a cabin you don't want! Or, just don't ever bid on XL cabins ever
It's extremely tempting to bid on anything you can afford. For my upcoming trip, I can bid a minimum of £225 for a central sea terrace; I'm already in a standard sea terrace that I'm really happy with so I've decided not to place that bid.
I could also bid a minimum of £280 for an XL sea terrace. But I can see the only ones still available on my trip are on deck eight, right above the nightclub. They are going to be noisy. They're also likely to be ones with a metal-rather-than-glass balcony with no outside hammock. I might get more space in the room, but the room is definitely a downgraded experience.
This appears to usually be the case with XL sea terrace rooms. There are good ones, but good travel agents will help people book them in advance. They'll rarely be available as part of the bid-to-upgrade system, yet because they're there as an option on the website you're tempted to bid anyway.
I would never risk it myself.
The best scenario, for most, will be moving from an inside or view-only room to a terrace. If you bid near the minimum you'll almost certainly get that upgrade so long as there's the inventory available.
For me on this upcoming trip, I've got a few modest bids on the suites. I'm in a room I know I'll love already but it's fun to dream.
Some final words of advice4
This year's trip will be my fourth with Virgin Voyages in three years. I was put off taking a cruise after a horribly cheap, tacky experience with P&O, and I'm glad that I gave VV a go because the quality of the trip - the food, the entertainment, the service, the destinations - is top notch.
They have unlimited ice cream. For free. I've rebooked almost entirely because I dream of that brown butter flavour ice cream. No joke.
A trip with Virgin Voyages is just plain fun from start to end and bidding for an upgraded room is part of that fun. It gets me excited about the trip ahead of time. I like looking to see what suites are still available and daydream of sitting in a hammock in that little nook on the balcony of a Cheeky Corner Suite. But I'm in a nice room already, because a travel agent helped me find that room.
In 2026 we're all used to booking flights and lodging ourselves. Cruises are one area where a good travel agent has access to deals and data you can't get yourself - possible discounts, sure, but definitely some onboard credit and the ability to book a specific room as standard. We've worked with Kieran at Magical Traveller for the past two voyages and found him to be incredibly helpful, prompt, and friendly. If you're thinking about a Virgin Voyages cruise and want to make sure you're getting a cabin that's right for you, I heartily encourage you to drop Kieran a note too.
If you do still want to book yourself, this link will give you $150 of drinks credit. No bad thing.
This is a referral link which will get you $150 of drinks credit. Forgive the blatant promotion.↩
As much as I love Virgin Voyages cruises as a whole, the suite names are very awkward.↩
See?↩
I know all AI-generated written content always has a 'final thoughts' or 'conclusion' paragraph. This is all written by me, I promise.↩