Abolishing the daily service charge.

Is this about time? P&O are abolishing their daily service charge. Yes, that’s right from next year you will no longer have the gratuities added to your bill. P&O claim to take huge pride in exceptional service and making their customers experience a truly memorable one. Personally, I think this is about time and I would like to see all cruise lines follow suit. We already know the Americans won’t being a tipping nation. I think all cruise lines should reward their staff for the hard work they do on board. We all know how hard they work and we don’t think they’re not worthy of a tip but should it really have to come from us to pay their wages? They should be paid a decent wage for their hard work and any tip from us should be discretional and if we think the service has been over and beyond our expectations. I hope their salary isn’t compromised by this and I too hope that service levels don’t drop either as staff will know they’re not getting a share of a mandatory charge added to our staterooms.

You only have to look at Tui for an example. I’m not a fan of their ships but the staff have always been excellent on board and they don’t have a service charge. I also hope this doesn’t effect the pricing of cruises and that P&O put the prices up as another way to hide the charge. This will probably happen though. However, I think and I’m sure others would agree, that it would be better to pay more up front and nothing to worry about as an extra cost rather than get on board really cheaply and then you have lots of additional costs. I like to think that the cruise lines make enough profit to afford to reward their staff with a fair decent wage for the consistent hard work and long hours that they do. I have always hated the thought that staff rely on our tips to make their wages up. I wonder if other cruise lines will follow suit. What do you think? Is this a good idea or a publicity stunt from P&O? It’ll certainly be interesting to hear from passengers once they’ve returned from a voyage when they wasn’t charged the daily service fee. Let me know your thoughts too.