For tips sake

So as many of you know the biggest gripe of all about cruising is the tipping policy, so you have just spent a large amount of your money on an amazing cruise thinking that there should not be any extras, unless you purchase drinks or purchase any tours. So it does come as a surprise to many that gratuities are needed to be paid when cruising. The American cruise lines are the worst offenders including cruise lines like Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Norwegian Cruise line to name a few. Although depending on the seating you decide to choose will influence whether you can take the gratuities off and pay as you go. Another interesting point that does come up often, and we get asked all the time, “If I do pay my gratuities ahead of time, does the money find it’s way to the crew members” Ummmm this is a tricky one and we can only expect that the cruise lines are honest enough to make sure all gratuities paid are passed onto the crew members. As a former crew member I did look into this myself and was shown how the system works, however much too long winded to share now, but maybe I will leave for a later post.

There are a couple of cruise lines that force you to pay the gratuities and will not allow you to take these off later, cruise lines include MSC, Costa and a few others I cant think of right now. I personally think this is naughty and everybody should have the right to decide.

Well it looks like things could be changing, not quite on cruise lines but an American restaurant owner in New York has decided to ban any tipping in all his restaurants.

Click the link below for the full story

http://www.cruise.co.uk/news/american-company-first-to-ban-gratuities/?affref=nikb