What’s Your Tipping Point?

Over the years whilst working in the cruise industry, I seem to have spent more time discussing tipping than I have discussing cabins. No, I’m not talking about the ships tilting! I’m talking about the one point that seems to cause most controversy and that is tips, service charge or gratuities as they are often called.

The biggest issue seems to not be paying any tips, but having an automatic pre-set charge added to your on board account. This can be quite a considerable amount. A two week cruise for a family of four on Royal Caribbean’s Independence of the Seas in an outside cabin next August  will be an additional £615.16 for this service charge. It will be charged to your on board account in US$ unless you select to pre-pay in £s with your booking. You can select to remove this charge whilst on board at the beginning of your cruise, but many people either do not know that they can do this, or are too embarrassed to ask. It can be a nasty surprise at the end of a good holiday.

The idea of the set amount is that it is shared equally between all the crew and not just those you get to meet such as cabin attendants, bar staff and waiters. We are told that the staff rely on these tips to supplement their salaries. Why are they then not paid adequately by the cruise lines?

Without wanting to generalise about any nationality, we Brits seem to take the attitude of rewarding good service after receiving it, whereas our friends from across the pond will tip on entering a restaurant or bar to ensure attentive service.

P&O, who ironically were one of the last lines to introduce adding this daily charge, have just announced that they are scrapping it. NCL recently changed most of their fares to include drinks and tips and this increased them quite considerably. Will P&O fares now go up?

What do you think?…