Thursday, April 25, 2024

Tipping on a Cruise Ship The Ultimate Guide to Cruise Gratuities

tipping on cruise ships

On cruise lines where gratuities are not included, you can monitor the charges on your shipboard bill either from the Front Desk or on your stateroom TV. These start at $18 per person per day for Junior Suite passengers (and categories below that). Tips on Royal Caribbean rise to $20.50 per person per day for passengers in Grand Suites and above. The daily gratuities are applied to all passengers, regardless of age.

When and to Whom to Give Tips

How much are gratuities on a cruise? Increasingly, more and more. - USA TODAY

How much are gratuities on a cruise? Increasingly, more and more..

Posted: Mon, 13 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Other cruisers, often people who remember cruising before autogratuities, prefer tipping crew in cash. They might feel that it gives them more control over tipping, rewarding the crew based on their level of service. Others just prefer the face-to-face experience of handing over a cash tip. For many cruises that operate in the Australian market where tipping isn’t part of the culture, automatic gratuities aren’t added on to passenger bills. If mainstream cruise lines decided to abolish tipping and pay all crew members a reasonable rate per hour, they would have to significantly raise the cost of cruise fares.

I Spent 7 Days on My First Adults-Only Virgin Voyages Cruise

I prefer waiting to see how the service is before deciding on an extra tip, but that’s just my preference. Automatic gratuities cover just about every tipped crew member on the ship. If you order room service, it’s customary to give the person that delivers your tray about $1-2 per meal. Cruise lines typically flag their ships in countries with lax employment laws. They pay their crew (usually recruited from countries with limited economic opportunities) per contract, not by the hour. Cruise Radio prioritizes well-balanced cruise news coverage and accurate reporting, paired with ship reviews and tips.

Alternative Services

In that sense, the current system is more equitable than the old system of cash tipping, which favored certain workers, lines say. If you wait to pay for your gratuities until you are onboard, you can speak with a guest services agent and have the total amount adjusted. If you've prepaid your gratuities, they cannot be changed to reflect the quality of service that you feel you've received. Making sure that your gratuities are prepaid before your vacation begins is a surefire way to ensure that you do not get any hidden surprises at the end.

Be aware that if you're sailing to Hawaii, you'll be charged an additional 4.275% prepaid service charge GET tax. Understanding MSC Cruises' daily gratuities is a little more complicated than other cruise lines, as they not only by passenger age and where the ship is sailing to. The gratuities on Oceania Cruises are $16.00 per person, per day for most staterooms and $23.00 per person, per day for guests in suites.

tipping on cruise ships

The automatic service charges you pay when you book a cruise are divided among many staff members, including the main dining room servers and assistants. Though it’s not uncommon to leave extra for a server that has been. Your dedicated server for the duration of your cruise vacation. Some people will leave nothing extra while I’ve witnessed passengers give a server $100+ at the end of a cruise. I’ve had a wide variety of service quality over the years and If the server is the same server every night, I’ll often leave them around $25 at the end of the cruise IF the service has been really good.

Oceania Cruises

Before we get into tipping etiquette when you go on a cruise vacation, it’s important to point out that attitudes on extra tipping are largely cultural and vary greatly. Americans have tipping engrained in their DNA whereas Europeans don’t consider tipping a requirement. For Europeans, it is more of a gesture of simple “thanks” no matter how small the amount is. If you booked with a promotion that included onboard credit, you might want to hold off on prepaying gratuities. What do you think about cruise line gratuities and service onboard?

Norwegian Cruise Line

On the flip side, passengers have less control over where their money goes with autogratuities. In general, withholding tips is only recommended if there was no effort towards good service. Remember, crew members are not paid the same as in the US and rely on tips for their livelihood. The amount you should tip can be affected by several factors, including the duration and type of cruise line you’re sailing with – be it mass market, premium, or luxury.

How Cruise Lines Charge for Gratuities

& Ireland passengers from October 2019, gratuities are still applied to U.S. cruisers' bills. Auto-gratuities vary by destination and onboard currency (USD or euros). Passengers are at liberty to tip staff members personally if they wish to do so, and envelopes for this purpose are available at reception. All bar bill gratuities are included in the cost of the drink. If that’s the case — and you decide you want to change the amount you are charged for tips — then you can do that. Gratuity charges are typically not mandatory and can be adjusted.

However, everyone in standard -- interior, ocean view, and balcony -- cabins will pay the same rate. The fact is, the tips that crew get from passengers make up a good part of their wage. Crew members work really hard and make the difference between an ok and a memorable cruise vacation.

However, if you feel your stateroom steward went above and beyond in their service, feel free to increase the tip accordingly. When tipping on a cruise ship, showing appreciation for the hardworking crew members who make your cruise vacation enjoyable is important. Stateroom stewards are the ones who keep your room clean and tidy throughout your stay, so it’s appreciated–though not mandatory–to tip them an additional $5 per day per person. If you prefer to opt-out or adjust these automatic gratuities, most cruise lines allow you to do so by simply visiting the guest services desk. How gratuities are paid depends on the type of cruise line you are sailing.

The cruise director will also remind passengers about how much and whom the cruise line recommends you tip. Some cruise ship spas, like those on NCL and Royal Caribbean, add on a service fee or gratuity, usually about 18%. Check your bill after your services to see if your tip is already included. If not, 15-20% of the bill (excluding any products that you buy) is customary.

You simply pay this extra amount in full for your cruise as part of your cruise fare. Depending on your cruise line, you might find different language used than the word “gratuities.” We’ve seen these charges called tips, gratuities, crew incentives, or service charges. Instead, gratuities on a cruise ship are highly automated, with most people just electing to prepay or being charged a set amount for each day on the ship.

Carnival cruise gratuities are automatically added to onboard accounts for those in all rooms. In standard cabins, Carnival charges $16 per person, per day in tips. An automatic 18% gratuity is added to all bar bills, specialty restaurant cover charges and spa services.

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