Royal Caribbean Expands RoyalUp Bidding to Cabanas, Casitas and Beach Beds Fleetwide
If you're booked on a Royal Caribbean sailing, watch your email for a RoyalUp Experiences bid invitation, which must be linked to your booking and submitted by you or an authorized adult 18 or older. You can bid on casitas, cabanas or beach beds at CocoCay, cabanas at Royal Beach Club Paradise Island, or onboard casitas — one bid per experience type. You can change or cancel your bid at no cost up until 48 hours before the experience, but after that changes are generally final.
Royal Caribbean is taking a program that worked for cabin upgrades and applying it to onboard and destination amenities, which strikes me as a straightforward yield-management play: let demand set the price on cabanas and casitas instead of a fixed rate card. The numbers from that Icon of the Seas guest's email are the interesting part — a CocoCay beach bed going for as little as $200 but a cabana clearing $1,500, and a sea day casita hitting $1,400, show just how wide the bidding range can swing on the very same sailing. Guests who bid low and lucky win; those who need a guarantee, or who bid too conservatively, lose out since Royal Caribbean can reject bids right up to departure. My read is this rewards flexible travelers who don't mind uncertainty. In the reader's shoes, I'd submit a modest bid on the CocoCay beach bed early, and remember I can back out free up to 48 hours out.