When should and shouldn't you pay crew gratuities? One of the most controversial
and hottest topics in the world of cruising. Hi I'm Gary Bembridge and this
is another of my tips for travellers. In this edition I'm am exploring six things
that you need to know about cruise gratuities and, very importantly, whether
you should pay them. First of all what is a gratuity? A gratuity is
supposed to be, and its original definition is, a tip or a bonus that
you give to somebody if they've gone above the norm and if they've given you
exceptional service. However, increasingly it's become something very different and
it's actually become the norm, which is why so many people are getting upset
about it. It's supposed to be a bonus or a tip that you give someone for
exceptional service. When it comes to gratuities there's three broad
approaches that cruise lines take. The first of these is the gratuities are
included within the price of a cruise. That tends to be more common on the
very upmarket cruise lines, so the ultra-luxury lines will often include
the gratuity and they will say that gratuities are not expected by any of
the crew. It has become increasingly common that more mainstream cruise lines
are starting to include them, so cruise lines for example like P&O Cruises
in the UK and Marella cruises also in the UK have started to include gratuities
within the overall fare. The second, and more common approach, is that they auto-
added or you're asked to pay for them in advance. When you book your cruise
you're given the option of paying for gratuities in advance or once you're
onboard they are auto added on to your bill, and in some cases it's very difficult to
remove them. You can, of course, go up to the Guest Services Desk and ask to either increase or
decrease the amount of gratuities, but they are pushed through by the cruise
line either by getting you to pay them upfront when you pay your final balance
or by just simply adding them on to your onboard account and taking the
money off your credit card at the end of the cruise. This can sometimes cause a
lot of discussion because there is a lot of stories and rumours that
lists are put up telling the crew if certain cabins or
people have asked for gratuities to be removed. I don't have any evidence of
this, although there are various anecdotal stories. The
approach which used to be more common on cruise lines, and is largely gone
although you do see it quite a lot of river cruising, is you're offered or
encouraged to just decide if you want to add pay yourself and you can either hand
them over as cash to individual members of the crew or sometimes there'll be a
box where you can go and put an envelope in and gratuities are pooled.
When I started cruising that last one was much more common, you
were given envelopes and some guidelines by the cruise line and you put
cash in and you'd give it to each of the members of the crew that you wanted to. But
increasingly the second approach, where cruise lines encourage or force you to
pay gratuities, is much more common. It can add a lot of money on to the price
of your cruise. Most cruise lines will set a gratuity between $12 and
$20 at the time of recording per person or per day, and that also applies
to children. So, if you're a couple it can add between $150 and $300 for
a seven-day cruise. That's around about £150 pounds up to £250 and
about the same in euros. If you're traveling as a family, with two adults
and two kids, you could be talking many hundreds of dollars, many hundreds of
pounds or many hundreds of euros added on to the cost of your holiday. And
pretty much constantly cruise lines are increasing the amount that they
recommend gratuities should be. Why has the topic of gratuities become quite
so controversial? A lot is around how
crew members are recruited and paid. Gratuities have become a fundamental
part of a cruise wages. Cruise lines are registered in ports of convenience,
which mean that they do not have to follow the labour laws of places like the
US, UK or countries in Europe.They register them in places where
they're able to follow much more relaxed and less strict labour laws and there's no
things like minimum wages. The view is what cruise lines then do is they then
go out and recruit a lot of people from the Far East, so places like the
Philippines, Indonesia and India, and they pay them at a much lower rate and they
then use gratuities to top up and give the crew members a much more balanced or
fair wage. All the cruise lines are doing is using gratuities as a way of
giving the crew members a better wage. There's a lot of concern and
discussion around whether the gratuities that you pay in through Auto
gratuities or prepaid actually get to the crew members, and how much the cruise
lines actually keep for their own profits or used to supplement more
senior crew or senior managers bonuses. The real concern is that actually the
gratuities are not getting to the people that actually do the work and that
you're interfacing with on a day to day basis. In reality gratuities are
increasingly, in my view, becoming a tax because all that the cruise lines are
really doing is giving you a fare which looks much lower but once you actually
go on the cruise they auto add gratuity, so effectively adding cost. Of course
you can take it off but all they're really doing is hiding the fact that
your cruise is actually costing you much more money than you think it's going to
cost. So, instead of paying the crew a higher wage they're basically using
gratuities as a way of making the fare look lower but still making you cough
up and paying much more money than the fare appears to be in practice. The
gratuities are used to pay the crew a better wage, and it's not really for
improved service. When should you not pay gratuities. Here are the reasons
that I see most people who go cruising argue all the time that you shouldn't
pay. The first of those people argue when you cannot afford it as it's an extra
cost on your cruise which you can't afford. Of course many people would
argue against that because they argue in reality by doing that you're not giving
the crew a fair wage, and by removing gratuities not paying them and you're
actually getting the crew to subsidize the cost of your fare. A lot of people
then argue against that. You shouldn't pay gratuities if it is
bundled into the fare. There's no need to pay extra because it is already
covered. Of course you may decide you want to because someone's giving you
phenomenal and really extra service, so it genuinely returns to what a gratuity was
supposed to be which is an extra tip above the person's salary for doing an
exceptional job. You shouldn't pay them when you're buying something like drinks
or using the spa, because gratuities are Auto added on the bills. Usually on a
cruise line when you buy a drink you'll find that a gratuity is added of
about 18% and the same applies in many spas. You shouldn't then pay an
additional gratuity on top of that because effectively you've got like a
sales tax or tax already added. Also you shouldn't really pay use, many
people argue, things like if you put your kids in the kids' club if
you're Auto paying maturities. Don't give an extra tip if someone
comes and fixes your room. For example, you have a problem in your room and they
come and deal with that you don't give a tip for that. So any of those kind of
services that are provided you would normally expect to be covered you don't need to pay
an extra gratuity particularly when auto paying into a central pot
because you effectively are then paying double gratuities. When should you pay
the gratuity? It depends on your view around whether you believe
that gratuity is part of your
overall fare and by paying the auto gratuity or pre paying the
gratuity all you're doing is making sure that the crew members who deal with you
are getting a fair wage or a better wage than they would if you don't pay the
gratuity. They actually expect that gratuity and you may see it
if you generally have
individuals that you see as providing phenomenal service and someone's gone way
beyond what you would normally and reasonably expect and you really want to
acknowledge that because they've done something
absolutely amazing, you may want to give them some extra dollars to
recognize that. Another reason for paying into the gratuities through that central
process is nowadays we tend not to eat in the same restaurants, with increasingly
many different dining venues and speciality dining we don't have the same
server all the time so actually by paying the gratuities into the
central pot is making sure that all of those people that have served you across
your week or two week cruise are actually getting some kind of recognition of the
services they provided. The other reason for paying gratuities, particularly
paying them individually, is for people that are not going to get part of that
bigger pot so, for example, people who work in the casino don't get a share of
those over gratuities, people running the tours and the bus drivers are not going
to get a share of those gratuities (unless you're one of the ultra-luxury
lines where they do build that into the overall fare), also people like porters at
the port who help you with your bags or carrying a bags. Those kind of people
are not going to get part of the overall gratuity pot. Some people also see it
really important giving a gratuity to the maitre de asif you have a lousy table
and you want to move to a much better table a gratuity is often a way that
people see helping to make sure you get a better table. And, certainly that's
something we have done in the past. Gratuities are always going to be a
controversial part of cruising, particularly nowadays where they are
Auto added and the cruise line kind of forces you to pay it. They've almost
added it as a tax. The whole issue of gratuities is kind of a bizarre
in my view because it's not really a gratuity, it is a service charge, it's an
additional charge and it's really part of your fare. If the cruise line is
kind of making you pay them it's not really a recognition of service above
the norm. One of the things that we do as consumers is when we go out
looking for cruisers, we often looking for great fares, and as
long as the cruise line knows that and they know that by under
pitching effectively the fare by a couple of hundred dollars / couple hundred
pounds / couple hundred euros they know they're going to catch that up in gratuity charges.
They're going to keep doing it because they know that often when you're
looking for a cruise we look at the fare, and we forget a lot of those extra costs
they're going to add on particularly gratuities. Unlike on land where some hotels
have resort fees, which is another kind of tax, but they do at least bundle in
extra things. What you need to bear in mind with gratuities on a cruise line is
you're probably not going to get service above and beyond because they have just
become part of the normal fare. Gratuities are a very hot topic and I
would love to hear what you think about gratuities. Do you auto pay them?
Do you take it off and pay people in cash? What is your view about gratuities
and how do you think cruise lines should handle it? Please watch many more of
my Tips For Travellers videos to help you get travel inspiration, advice and tips on
how to make much more of your precious travel time and money.