Well ahoy there choosers.
Gchoosers?
I mixed up cruises and gratuity.
So this one's a real controversial topic.
Gratuities.
We're going to take a look at cruise ship gratuities and exactly what they are.
But before we begin
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First of all what are gratuities?
So gratuities are an automatic tip or what we'd say is more like a service charge
that's charged your account every single day.
So it's a set fee per person, per day
that is automatically added to your account.
In addition to the automatic daily charges
you'll find an 18 to 20 percent gratuity on things like;
meal packages, speciality restaurants, the spa
or if you buy drinks without the drinks package you will pay that gratuity per drink.
These are automatic
so there's no need to actually manually or physically tip waiters or stewards
or anything like that.
These are taken off your account daily,
Yes so they'll be automatically charged to your onboard account.
You'll see a daily gratuity charge on your bill.
So that's what that is.
So how much do these gratuities cost?
So on average a gratuity costs around 14 US dollars per person per day.
But this can vary depending on the cruise line and the type of cabin that you're in.
Somewhere between twelve to fourteen dollars per person.
Suites and cabins above suite category are usually more expensive than a regular balcony cabin.
But as you can imagine this can add up.
Particularly if you're a family.
Say you're a family of four with two adults and two children.
That's going to cost you around $500 for a week's cruise.
So it's going to add up.
So you need to remember that
when you're booking your cruise that you're going to have to be paying the gratuity charge as well.
So just cost that into your cruise.
So who did these gratuities go?
Well, each cruise line differs in this respect but it's usually split between the crew.
Things like room attendants, dining staff, waitstaff and people behind the scenes.
But dining staff usually get the biggest chunk of this.
But there are some grey areas around this
because we don't know whether or not cruise lines take a cut this tip.
So we don't know exactly what proportions going to each person
and how much the cruise line, if any, are taking any of the tip.
But the crew work incredibly hard with ridiculous hours.
You're talking 15 plus hours a day.
No breaks, barely any breaks, seven days a week without time off for months on end.
And cruise passengers are really demanding so it is a really tough job to be crew on a ship.
Unfortunate they don't detail where these go.
But some cruise lines do.
When we sailed on Disney
they actually detailed who would be getting exactly what
out of our daily gratuity charge.
That was nice to know who it was going towards.
So this definitely causes most of the controversy
because people want to see the money go to the exact people who did the best jobs.
Who provided exceptional service.
But with this it's more of an overarching thing
and like we said it's a big grey area
so we don't know exactly how much is going to each crew member.
it's not just the people who we've talked about its people behind the scenes are getting recognized as well.
So you've got to think if you're going to take all cruise gratuities off
think of all of the other people you're going to be punishing who you don't even see.
So the people who are cleaning your clothes, everything like that.
So are we really just supplementing crew wages then?
Well we don't know
but what we do know is that
Cruise Lines register their ships in what they call ports of convenience
or sometimes called a flag of convenience.
This is why you'll see a lot of ships registered in places such as;
Panama, the Bahamas and Malta for example.
What that means is that they're using the local law of that country
that they're registered in
and these tend to have not very good labour laws
and as well for tax purposes.
So they'll have more freedom to not charge a minimum wage for example.
And also be working longer hours.
These labour laws are much less strict than say countries such as the US or the UK
and because there is no minimum wage they can pay the crew really whatever they want
so the gratuities make up a large part of their wage at the end of the month.
So by removing gratuities you are going to make the crew suffer in respect.
Whichever way if you like it or not
that's just really the way it is.
You'll also see that cruise lines employ a lot of people from poorer countries.
A lot from Asia so places like India and parts of China and Thailand.
Because they can get away with basically playing lower wages.
People I guess from Europe and the US are expected to have minimum wages
so they would find it much more difficult, I think, to hire people in these service roles.
Well what if I had bad service on my cruise?
Well hopefully this is just by one or two people and not by all of the people.
So the first thing we would recommend you do is obviously speak to the crew about this.
So head to guest services and make a complaint about it.
See if there's anything they can do about it to make it up to you If it's been particularly bad.
Otherwise we say please don't take all your tips off altogether.
This is probably the worst thing you can do
and if you do decide to take the automatic tips off please still do tip the crew.
I mean I know some people prefer that and that's absolutely fair enough
but don't punish the rest of the crew for one or two crew making a worse time for you.
Also like you said at least give them the opportunity to make it back up to you.
And have your voice heard as well by just removing your tip you're not actually saying there's an issue
and that means that they can't resolve it for future cruises.
Yeah we definitely disagree with taking tips off altogether.
Worst case scenario we think
you take them off and then you tip for individual people you think actually deserve it.
Because that seems fair enough to us.
So what would you do if you've had exceptional service?
well we get asked this question a lot.
Can i tip extra?
Well, of course, you can.
If you would like to recognize ~a particular member of crew
you can give them tips in cash as well so
if you'd like to give them a little bit extra
on top of what you've already paid as part of the automatic charge
please feel free to do that.
With cruise lines such as Princess you can increase or decrease your gratuity charge
depending on the service you've had.
We also recommend that you go down to guest services to fill in the questionnaire
and make sure that crew member has been highlighted.
Just so that head office know that they're doing a fantastic job.
It will get back to them and it'll make there day knowing that they're doing their job fantastically.
If you didn't want to give cash over you can also hand other things over such as
phone cards are usually quite popular or treats or gifts or anything thaty
you think shows a big thank you.
We like to bring things from our home country of the UK.
So things like chocolate and things just to give them a little bit of comfort food
and just show our appreachiation.
If you would like to tip extra in cash and you're wondering what currency
you should give the tips in.
We always say the best bet is US dollars because you can usually spend that everywhere
particularly if your cruise is in the Caribbean.
So should you remove tips?
Well as we've already said,
we pretty much disagree with this.
Whilst you know that in places like the UK tipping isn't really a regular thing
because we have a minimum wage.
Absolutely yeah.
You've got to remember that whilst on a cruise it is a thing on the most part
and when in Rome
you knew before you booked that there was going to be tips
so there really isn't any excuse for it.
Whether or not you think this should be part of the price or an extra charge.
More cruise lines now are changing to gratuity-less cruises.
So companies like P&O Cruises, Marella and Virgin Voyages, a new cruise company.
They're going to have no tips on their actual cruises
So we think you're going to be taking money off the crew to be honest.
So as we said if you're going to take them off please reward excellent service
individually in cash.
And whilst everybody might not 100% agree with auto gratutities.
It really is a lot easier than having to think about who you should tip and when.
Whilst it might not be a tip you've just got to think of it as an extra service charge to help the crew.
I think this is a really big cultural thing as well...
and you said we don't really tip in the UK it's not something we do
so we're not used to tipping.
So we actually do like the automatic charge because you don't have to worry about it.
When we're in America were forever trying to figure out how much to tip
We never know!
We're just like how much I don't want to make I don't know seem
rude but then I don't wanna seem overly generous so.
It's nice that it's all just taken care of.
You've got to remember if your cruise is coming with the gratuities included
there is no need to tip extra on your cruise for people
like waitresses and servers and things like that it's just not needed.
If you paying the auto gratuity remember you shouldn't be really paying tips to
the waiter and things on top of that that's completely up to your discretion.
And the same with buying drinks in the bar that comes with the tip included in
the price you'll actually see that broken down on the piece of paper.
If you want to give an extra tip you can do but don't feel obliged to as they've already
added that into the price.
Same with speciality restaurants the tips already popped on there already 18 to 20 percent tip
is automatically popped on there.
So again there's no need to tip extra unless you want to if you've had fantastic exceptional service.
It is completely up to you.
So guys we really hope you enjoyed our show about gratuities.
We know it's a real controversial topic
and we completely understand that some people view it completely differently
we have a good understanding of this and we
we really respect everybody's opinion.
Let's keep it nice in the comments please leave us a comment below
to tell us what you think about gratuities and if you've got any ideas of how
you could make them a more better thing or whatever let us know in the comments below.
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So that's it till next time
happy cruising