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Business Travel

Etihad’s business class upgrade auction

While other airlines only send lame e-mails with offers to book a car or hotel connected to your flight, Etihad has a more exciting question: would you like to bid for an upgrade to business class? If you bought an economy class ticket, Etihad will “auction” upgrades to business class for each leg of your journey. The process is in three easy steps: make an offer using a slider that indicates the offer strength, enter credit card details, review and submit. The airline will then notify you via e-mail if the upgrade request has been approved (and only then charge you).

Etihad upgrade auction

Easy to use, and I would gladly participate if I could make a token low bid of let’s say €100 or €200 with a 10% or 20% probability that I would be lucky enough to get a seat. In other words, a “small investment, huge pay-off” bet. An offer strength indicator indicates the range of past successful offers for similar flights. Unfortunately, in my case, the slider tool does not allow a bid below €560 per leg, which would get me into the “red” category (this translates to me as: unlikely to be accepted). Starting at €595, you get into the “yellow” category (suggesting you have some chance of acceptance), and starting at €765 you are in solid dark “green” (suggesting it is highly likely that the bid will be accepted).

Frequent travelers have posted tips for successful bidding on the internet, such as:

  • Look at what it would cost you to purchase the business class fare
  • Bid slightly over the minimum bid
  • Check how full the flight is. Make a pretend booking online, in both business and economy, so you can get to see the seat map for each cabin. If business class if empty your chances of an upgrade are good. If economy class is super full, your chances of an upgrade are quite good as airlines overbook flights all the time so freeing up your economy class seat could help.
  • Decide what the upgrade is worth to you.
  • The kind of ticket you purchase may matter.
  • Your frequent flyer status with the airline may count.

Given that my original economy ticket was €988 roundtrip, I am not feeling I get a good “deal” here, as an economy ticket plus two upgrade bids would not be significantly cheaper than booking a business class ticket from the start.

In short: I love the concept, a nice incremental business model that could generate a good amount of additional revenue for Etihad by getting already “captive” economy passengers into those empty business class seats, but the deal has to make the customer feel he “wins” as well versus walking up to the ticket desk at the airport and buying an upgrade there.

One reply on “Etihad’s business class upgrade auction”

I prefer to give upgrades to gold/platinum flyers..since they have already spend a fortune on that airline…..but from an economical sense this one makes more sense for the airline than providing free upgrades. What some airlines do however is sending e-mails to people who booked a flight with offers on upgrades..with miles or $$, which could also work and is more targeted at those frequent flyers who are most inclined to take an upgrade for money or miles…so a more targeted approach then the one above. Interesting to compare who does better, providing the option to everyone or targeting specific customers who are most likely to buy/pay for it.

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