hey everybody its Bruce here with traveling with Bruce its December 2018
and another Cruise Line has increased the tipping charge for drinks on board
their ships Carnival has decided to charge 18% gratuity on all drinks
instead of 15% that's an increase of 20% why are they doing that so they can
continue to do this they like to show off deals on billboards and other places
to advertise cruises to tell us come on and take a cruise it's super cheap it's
a great deal you're gonna love it and we'll give you deals and offers but
what they don't tell you is the other charges you're going to have to pay
that's why they have a little asterisk behind the price because there are other
fees involved back in the day in the 70s when cruise ships looked like this it
was much more expensive to take a cruise but then again it was all-inclusive back
in the day in the 50s when ocean liners went from New York like here to
Southampton there were three classes of cruises there was the first class affair
the second class fare and the tourist fare in first class this is what the
passengers were looking like or at least this is the cruise lines image of what
first-class passengers looked like men with dinner jackets or tuxedos women in
elegant evening gowns here's the captain of the ship joining us for a dinner that
doesn't happen anymore you don't see the captain hanging around and socializing
like that back in that time tipping was done by envelope you would present an
envelope with the name of your room steward at the end of your cruise and
you would do a personalized one-on-one tip also to the maitre d also to your
waiter and to other staff that you would have come across today's staff they take
good care of us just like back in the day but look how many there are of us we
are on monster cruise ships and we need thousands of people to take care of us
but to keep an idea of how things have changed
back in the 50s if you were on an ocean liner with 20 100 passengers and that
was the big liner of the day the biggest one
at that time you'd have 1,100 crew members taking care of you today
2100 passengers on a cruise in the Caribbean
you'd have 900 staff members 200 less and why is that
Automation we're talking about dishwasher systems we're talking about
laundry systems we're talking about an engineering staff we just don't need as
many people to handle 20 100 passengers anymore
and in fact cruising is cheaper now than it was in the 50s cheaper now than it
was in the thirties even if you take inflation and adjust it all out we're
paying less and we're getting more but when a tip charge is increased it
creates all kinds of controversy because tourists and travelers think that
they're getting taken for a ride in reality the staff on these cruise
ships are paid in a great extent by tipping the tips are pooled and split
amongst the various departments on the ship and in today's world cruise crews
will work for a cruise line for 10 to 20 years at a time they don't have any
illusions of finding a higher paying job back home from where they're coming from
cruise lines today go round-trip Miami to Miami where in the old days it was
New York to Southampton stay in here for a few months then come back today we're
on a seven-day trip and it's all over we're coming back home to Miami and
flying from there it's a different world but I think we're getting a better value
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