Marriott Elite Guests Asked To Bid For Suite Upgrades They’re Supposed To Get Free

Hotels have started auctioning off upgrades instead of giving them to elite guests. Regular once a year customers may get the better room instead of a Platinum, and Platinums are being asked to put in their bids, too.

A lifetime Marriott Bonvoy titanium member shares screen shots of the bids they were asked to submit for an upgrade less than 24 hours before their stay at the Delta Hotel in Durham, England. This is the period where they can check in online and they’re supposed to be offered a free room upgrade that’s available at check-in.

Here’s a River View room with a ‘regular’ upgrade price of $45 where this elite member could bid to get to the front of the line for it:

This one bedroom suite has an upgrade price they say is ~ $94, and you can place a bid in any amount if you want a shot at it:

And here’s the pitch – everyone else is doing it, so you’d better get on the auction train or miss out on a better room:

It’s very much like the way that airlines have squeezed upgrades.

• Delta says only about 12% of their first class seats go to upgrades, while 15 years ago, 81% of first class seats went to upgrades, awards and employees.

• That’s because they’ll now sell an upgrade for as little as $26 ($299 for long haul business class!) to a new customer rather than offering it to a $30,000 a year Diamond member.

In fact, airlines pioneered the bidding model with a company called PlusGrade. More aggressive upgrade selling is a short-term revenue win for the hotel, but it’s long-term destruction for the loyalty program.

A chain like Marriott and Hilton is only really valuable to individual hotel owners because they bring customers and loyalty. Customers choose the franchised property because they know the brand name and earn their points and status. But when the benefits of the program diminish – you no longer count on even a better room without bidding – there’s no reason to stay within the brand.

So while these chains have been pacifying owners to keep them happy in the short-term (Marriott’s CEO says they will put “net rooms growth” on his tombstone), that sacrifices the long-term value of the chain itself.

Hotels have an incentive to cheat on the program. But it’s worse when the chain allows it. In fact,

• Hilton adopted an explicit strategy to sell upgrades, including to elites, in lieu of offering real complimentary upgrades.

• Marriott quietly weakened its upgrade language last year. They no longer promise Platinum members and higher an upgrade to the best available room.

  Current terms for Platinum Elite and above say members receive a complimentary upgrade subject to availability upon arrival, and that eligible upgrades can include suites, better views, high floors, corner rooms, special amenities, or executive-floor rooms. This is at the discretion of the hotel.

What’s striking about these auctions is that UpsellGuru/UpgradeMyRoom bidding describes their product as a way for guests to personalize the stay while hotels “maximize profit.” And it’s actually framed as a way to help hotels by “eliminating the potential number of free upgrades” while freeing lower room categories (that the guest doing the bidding moves out of) for resale.

Older “Nor1” upgrades have been around for decades. You’ll see offers at some hotels for “eStandby Upgrades” which are fixed-price offers for better rooms. The upgrade bidding at hotels seems new, and I’ve found it reported at several hotels over the past year.

• There’s a Marriott Bonvoy Flyertalk thread specifically on “Marriott ‘Make us an offer for an upgrade’ / ‘Name your price’ bidding offers” from the fall.
  started Oct. 30, 2025.

• Accor’s Novotel Sydney Airport offered a Platinum member an auction bidding offer, and the hotel replied to a concern that elite upgrades remained complimentary so they could disregard the bidding. But of course this reduces the inventory available for those complimentary upgrades.

• Here’s a Marriott member sharing a bid to upgrade pitch at Edwin Chattanooga where the minimum offer was $100 for a better view and $500 – $1,500 for suites. Something similar has been reported for an Autograph Collection property as well.

• And Hyatt Cancun all-inclusives — Secrets, Ziva, Vivid — reportedly do this kind of pre-arrival bidding for upgrades as well.

The messaging from the Delta property in England is stark: “51 other guests” are bidding for an upgrade on the same arrival night. If you don’t jump in with a bid, you’ll be behind them and lose out!

That monetization of pre-arrival upgrade space means that your expectation of receiving an upgrade as an elite drops, which means the incentive to earn elite status drops.

And by the way the offers look scammy because the email domain it’s sent from isn’t the hotel and with the Booking.com hack, many scammers do know actual planned stay details.

I’d add that this also undercuts Marriott Nightly Upgrade Awards, which may be denied even as a non-status guest wins a cash auction for the room. Nightly Upgrade Awards do not make all eligible rooms of a type eligible for upgrades available for processing – only those that Marriott doesn’t expect the hotel to sell. And now they expect to sell more of those rooms, even at a deep discount.

At the Delta Durham, a one-bedroom suite with “Regular Upgrade Price: GBP 70” and a bid slider starting at GBP 0 is monetizing exactly what the member’s status is supposed to provide for free. Now they’re being asked to bid for it.