Upgrade on your cabin?? Why you have to think very carefully….

Have you ever been asked the question when you’ve booked your cruise….”would you like to accept a complementary upgrade on your cabin if one is offered?” Of course most people’s first reaction is yes ….why wouldn’t you…first of all it’s free and secondly surely an upgrade means you will get a better cabin! Well sometimes yes this is the case, but not always! It’s not as straight forward and clear cut as it sounds.

So you have chosen your cabin position, it’s a mid ship inside cabin, on a high deck, close to a lift, in between two other decks of cabins so nice and quiet, now your cruise agent asks you about accepting a free upgrade if you are selected. Without knowing too much about other cabins grades on the ship…and the agent not explaining it to you, you say yes please of course. A few weeks later you receive an email to say congratulations you have been given an automatic free upgrade. You look at your cabin and you find you are on the very bottom deck of the ship, where you really didn’t want to be, forward and I mean right at the very front away from the lifts and you have a small port hole, which means you have received an upgrade from an inside cabin to an ocean view which is very nice but all the things you didn’t want…like a low deck, forward position, under the theatre so potential for noise. You decide you don’t like this new cabin and would like your original cabin back ….however when you ask your agent this unfortunately she explains you can no longer have the cabin you booked as someone else has now been allocated your cabin as you received the upgrade you said you would be happy to take!

Sound familiar??? Unfortunately this is a scenario I hear too often from customers…..and it’s not until they have actually received an upgrade they didn’t want that they realise just what they have signed up to.  I believe that your cruise agent is there to guide you with this type of decision explaining clearly what it means, and this is what I do with all my customers, it’s sad but this isn’t always the case and not all customers know what they are saying yes to.

I have heard so many stories, where customers are so unhappy with their upgrade…from being in a cabin under the disco, to having the two cabins they booked next door to each other moved to different decks on the ship, to being allocated a cabin with twin beds for a couple on their honeymoon….the list goes on.

Remember if you say yes to an upgrade, you may not like the position of the cabin, check carefully the grades above what you have booked, study the deck plan and make sure you would be happy to be in any of the positions those cabins are in because they are the cabins you will be upgraded to.

If you are travelling as a family, or a group of friends and you have a number of cabins next to each other, remember if you accept the upgrade that you may all be upgraded to different decks, or maybe one cabin will be upgraded whilst the other isn’t.

Another point to remember that once you have accepted the upgrade at the time of booking, if and when the cruise line upgrade your cabin you can’t change your mind. Some other passengers will already be in your cabin.

Of course on the flip side of this is that some upgrades are truly fantastic, and that’s where the dilemma sometimes lies…do you risk it??  I once booked a lady in an outside cabin with a life boat view, only to find out that she was upgraded to a top grade of suite! Wow, what an amazing upgrade she received and there are plenty of other great upgrade stories out there.

So the question is do you accept or not???? Do your research and let whoever you are booking  your cruise with guide you, after all that’s what we do best and we know all the potential pit falls of the complementary upgrade!

Have you even received an upgrade you didn’t like or even want, or have you been on the other end where you have had a fantastic upgrade. As always I would love to hear your stories.

Thanks for reading , until next time Abbi x