If you’ve cruised a mass-market line, you know the deal. That cruise fare may look cheap, and likely is, but tipping service staff is part of the bargain above and beyond the fare. Affectionally known as a daily service charge in some circles, it is now customary for many mass market lines to automatically add anywhere from $12 to $15 per day (an average, perhaps more if you have booked suite acommodations), per person to your on board account to cover tips for housekeeping and dining staff. It is also customary for the cruise line to adjust these charges off your bill if you prefer to tip in cash or have experienced some kind of service failure during your cruise vacation that you feel warrants a reduction in gratuities.
According to this Cruise Critic thread, the option to remove the service charge onboard your ship is no longer in place at NCL. Apparently, you must now email a form to a special guest relations address after the cruise and they will process a refund for you. This must be done within 30 days of your cruise, and you must include a reason why you are adjusting the service charge/gratuity.
My Take
I support this. First, if you have a legitimate gripe, you are likely to be motivated to follow through with this process and provide the reason why which can lead to corrective action. If you are just cheaping out of tips which far too many people probably do, I think it is less likely that you will take the time to do this….and fortunately less likely that the hard working staff on board gets stiffed.
Personally, I make it a habit of pre-paying the daily service charge/gratuity nowadays when the fare does not include it. I have a better idea of my costs upfront, and I look at the daily charge as a minimum. If I encounter staff during my cruise that go above and beyond in service, they get extra cash handed directly to them at the end of the cruise. I know many people that tip their service staff in cash as a matter of principle, and I support that. This change in policy by NCL will still allow you to do that I assume, but you will have to take a few minutes to follow up with NCL after your cruise.
-MJ, September 15, 2015
If gratuities are not a part of advertised price, then by common sense they should not be mandatory. Putting gratuities out of main price into small prints and footnotes is clear attempt of deception which most people in U.S. somehow got rather comfortable with. For my family of four this is not Ok: extra 20% in hidden costs can well justify changing vacation plans. Let’s say once you fix a budget based on advertised price, then to offset paying $400 extra in gratuities would mean taking a cheaper room or skipping on-shore excursion. At this point the the whole idea of taking cruise becomes much less appealing.
This is all wrong. I don’t care how much a worker makes at his job. Tips are gratuity paid for services rendered above and beyond. It should be my choice of how much and to whom I give a tip. If they are simply doing a standard job then they should be paid by their employer. If they are exceptional they deserve more. If the cruse lines want us to pay the employees general salary then it should be clearly added to the base price of the cruse. They don’t do this as it makes the price of the cruse higher and harder to fill ships, so they use this gratuity ploy to cover their expense of having employees doing standard jobs. Tips are not nor ever been saposed to pay a workers General salories they are to show appreciation for a job done above and beyond and that should be my decision. After all it is my money!!!
I see absolutely no problem with this service charge and automatically applying it to a person’s stateroom if not prepaid. My first cruise was shortly after 9/11 and at that time, tipping was discretionary and you handed envelopes to staff at the end. For all those of people complaining about this being mandatory, think about it this way. Waiting for cash at the end, just imagine how many of the thousands of passengers on a ship who leave without tipping 1 penny yet were waited on hand and foot by many staff members only to receive nothing at the end. Would you go to a restaurant where you received decent to excellent service then just walk out leaving nothing as a gratuity? Do the math. Say a particular ship has 1600 crew members. Say of that 1600, conservatively, 1300 of them work mostly for tips (as we know their base pay is little to nothing as they get room and board and the opportunity of travel year round). We’ll say the other 300 are salaried (store managers, captain, engine crew) again, this is a conservative number. Now out of the 3900 passengers, again lets be conservative and say 800 of them are under the required tipping age, so now you’re looking at 3100 people who are being asked to tip for services received. At $13.50 a day, x 3100 passengers x 7 day cruise = $292,950.00. Now divide that by the number of crew of 1300 and that comes out to be $225.35. That’s it! These people work 12-14 hours a day, minimum, and at the end of the week walk away with just over $200? I’m sure there are exceptions and some walk away with much more, but these crew members do not make a lot of money. To me it’s just like going to a restaurant and knowing I’m going to tip my server 20% (provided they’ve done a good job) 15% otherwise it’s just this is being charged up front and all at once. Sounds like to me the people complaining about this are either just very cheap at tipping or haven’t really thought it all through. Meaning doing the math as I did above and realizing how many people this money has to go to. My husband and I took NCL in October for our honeymoon and we had the same frustration as many of you did. Then one night at dinner, we did the math and I remembered my first cruise where it was all cash and the honor system and I have ZERO doubt, many, many passengers left without tipping at all. Would you work for free??
This is not good. The gratuity line item is the only leverage you have left with the cruise lines. Last year, I bought a cruise via a large cruise travel web site with an onboard credit. I had my travel documents which showed the travel credit. The credit did not post to my shipboard account and the cruise line refused to issue the credit. They said it was my problem and I should contact my travel agent. I pointed out that the agent is an agent for the cruise line and the cruise line would be better equipped to contact the agent. (It’s $5 a minute to make a call on the ship with long hold times at the travel agent) The pursers office refused to help so I deducted the shipboard credit from the gratuity account. It’s a bummer for the employees but its not my fault either. Someone has to eat it and that someone is not me! Needless to say, I never booked with that agent again.
Does the gratuity actually get paid to the cruise line workers or do the cruise lines keep part of the gratuity money?
@rjb, Thanks for sharing your experience. A few comments: 1) Most cruise lines, and it’s hard to know individual practices, have the service staff share tips, sometimes including behind the scenes service staff. It used to be that at the end of a cruise, when all tipping was individual, all the dining staff would sit down and place their tips into a common pot, that was equally shared (relying on an honor system, with anyone holding something back and caught immediately terminated). 2) The mandatory tips added to guests fares are most definitely shared with the service staff, again including some behind the scenes (but never officers or entertainment staff). 3) Beware of the large online travel agencies, such as those that advertise on Cruise Critic: by and large they are more interested in earning commissions than focusing on the interests of the client. Indeed the owner of one of the largest such agencies (which has in the past been able to spend up to $800,000/year on Cruise Critic alone-a lot, even including co-op dollars) has given an interview to a travel trade publication explaining how she incentivizes individual sales staff to direct clients to particular cruise line offers, on which that agency makes the highest commission). From my own experience I either would use a travel agent I personally know or if a Costco member, book through Costco as they pay their individual agents competitive salaries, including medical care and other benefits, so the agent can focus on the client. 4) On a recent cruise on an all inclusive cruise line, Paul Gauguin Cruises, where the fare actually is inclusive of service staff (cabin & dining room) tips, I found the so service so good that rather than reward individual crew members with additional tips (it was a small vessel), I spoke with the Hotel Manager and made a $300 contribution to the crew fund (and at the very end of the cruise received a very kind thank you card signed by all of them).
I was on one cruise on the Diamond Princess of Princess Cruise Lines where a good 50% of guests opted out of automatic tips. the great majority of passengers were Australian and the lines at the reception desk where they went to do this were long. In fact, they boasted about their plans to do this on Cruise Critic message boards as well as sharing tips on how to smuggle wine aboard and drink them in bars out of coffee cups so they wouldn’t be caught. Overall, despite this, service was excellent, but I felt so sorry for the service staff that it negatively impacted my enjoyment of the cruise.
@Stuart,
Recognizing the USA tipping culture is mostly not one that exists elsewhere, the situation on ships is what it is. Cruisers need to plan accordingly.