In this video I'm going to tell you about the five items that could
completely blow the cost of your cruise apart. I am Gary Bembridge of Tips For
Travellers. On average, people spend at least $500 per person on board the ship
per seven days. That's a thousand dollars per couple, and that's probably on the
low side. So here are a couple of things that you absolutely need to watch out for.
The first of those is gratuities, which can vary from on the low end from $12 per
person per day right up to almost $20 per person per day - and they keep going
up. Gratuities are increasingly auto added on to your bill by the cruise
lines. If you're traveling with an ultra luxury cruise line, gratuities are
normally included in the fare and also if you're traveling in some regions of
the world where tipping is not culturally the norm, like Australia,
you'll also often find the gratuities are included in the fare. But for most
regions of the world they are Auto added by the cruise line onto your bill. In
some cases on some lines you can go and request that they're either reduced, increased
or totally removed. But increasingly cruise lines are moving away from that.
At the time of recording, for example, on Norwegian Cruise Line if you want to
change the auto gratuities you have to pay them and then apply for a refund, or
a change, once you've left the cruise. But they are in fact an integral part of the
members of crew on board salary, and they really rely on those gratuities. So in some
ways, in my view, adding gratuities and auto adding is a little bit dishonest
because all the cruise line is really doing is keeping the headline fare down -
but actually it's something that you've got to pay - and the crew members' salaries
really depend on those gratuities. The gratuity is going to cost you around
$100 per person per seven days. The second thing to watch out for are drinks.
Unless you just drinking water, or you're perhaps on one of those high-end
cruises where drinks are included, for most cruise lines and most cruises
you're going to drink more than the tap water that's available! Even if you don't
drink a lot, you'll soon find even just soft drinks, coffees and teas can soon mount
up. Cruise lines also add gratuities on to your drinks of around 15%. Most
cruise lines offer drinks packages and these can cost around about $55 and up
for an all-inclusive package that includes soft drinks, wines, beers and spirits.
That's $55 per person per day and also if you're traveling with someone,
everyone in the cabin has to buy the package so you're talking around about
$100 per person per day. There are, of course, cheaper packages like soft drinks
only ones which could be $25 per person per day. You can easily be spending
around for a couple a hundred dollars a day just on drinks. The third
thing to watch out for are excursions. Of course if you're going on a
cruise just to stay on the ship, and you don't plan to get off in any ports, there's
going to be no costs at all. However, most people when they're going cruising get off
in the ports and many people will go on excursions, either with the cruise line
or with independent providers or they may even go traveling by themselves on
things like hop-on hop-off buses or taxis. If you're going on cruise
excursions, you're going to mount up a pretty hefty bill as excursions can cost
anything on the low end from $40 / $50 just for a very simple transfer,
perhaps to a beach, up to of course many thousands of dollars. On average I've
found excursions are going to cost you around $75 to $100 per excursion.
So again you could be spending that amount of money every single day of the
cruise. You can minimize those costs by going on independent excursions, which
may cost you slightly less, or of course you can self-tour but still you're
going to have things like entrance fees, hop-on hop-off buses, taxis. You
need to make sure that you understand what excursions you want to go on and
budget for them, because you could find yourself spending $250 and upwards on
excursions on your seven-day cruise. The fourth big watch out is the Internet.
The Internet on board cruise ships is very expensive. You can be spending
anything from 25 cents a minute up to 75 cents and above. So even if you're just
spending an hour online at the best package price available you could be
spending $100 per person across the course of seven days. The good news
is cruise lines understand that Internet and access is becoming more and more
important to people, and they are trying to drive down the cost of the Internet.
I have spent up to $250 in a seven-day cruise just to have decent Wi-Fi access
to be able to do all the things that I want to do online like checking
emails, browsing social media - so that could be a big cost that can
completely blow away your budget. The fifth thing is discretionary spend.
Things that you might want to do on board, and you can probably control these
more. There are things that you soon find you're racking up a lot of costs.
One of the big ones is speciality dining. Of course your fare includes all
your meals in the main dining room or buffet restaurant and often
it'll include room service. But what the cruise lines have started to do is to
put in more and more specialty restaurants, whether it's a steak
restaurant, a sushi restaurant, burgers restaurant because they want to get you
to spend more money on board. The charge for speciality restaurants can be
at the low end just $10 or so but it can go right up to $75 or more.
So if you decide you want to start eating at those specialty restaurants
it's going to cost you quite a lot of money. Even one night out for two of
you could be costing you you $150. The other
thing, of course, is spa treatments. Spas on board ships can be very
expensive. I found the cost of treatments to be
quite high versus what I find them to be on land. You can be paying way over
$100 just for a 60-minute massage. The good news is the fitness center is free
to use, but they will try and sell you classes for example where you can be
paying $25 per class. Another thing that people rack up a lot of costs
is buying the on board photographs. There are photographers all around the ship at
every event. They take lots of pictures and you want to know why? It's because it
earns the cruise lines a lot of money. The pictures themselves are pretty expensive
to buy. Again you can buy packages. That's something that people really like to do as
they like to have their picture taken with the captain or senior officers,
which are often offered because again the cruise lines know that a lot of
people want to buy those. Of course then there's gambling and gaming like
bingo. Of course that's not compulsory, but is something you might want
to do. But again, if that's the sort of thing that you like to do, and it's very
easy when you're on vacation to get swept up in that whole thing and find
yourself spending at the casino. They take up a lot of
space on cruise ships and, if you've wondered why, it's because it
makes them a good sized amount of money. Once you're on board those are the
things to really watch out for. Some of them are quite hard to avoid: some
gratuities, you've got to drink something more than just water even if
you are a non drinker, you've got excursions because you're going
to go out and see the port and you've got the internet and you have
discretionary spend. As you look at the cruise, don't just look at the fare.
You've got to think about those other costs, which are pretty hard to avoid and
could add a huge amount onto the cost of your cruise. I hope you found that helpful.
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