To tip or not to tip! This must be one of the most common questions we are asked. Are tips included? Do we need to tip? How much are tips? And I with good reason. A family of four on a 14 night cruise with say Royal Caribbean can set you back over £600.00 for the room which is a lot of extra cost.
I generally remove the tips on booking, I want to tip those that help me personally and I believe the service I receive from the members that I tip is better for it, say tip your cabin steward on day 1 – They then know if they look after you they are going potentially going to get another tip.
Cruise lines handle tips in different ways, some can only be pre-paid when you get on board on a per day basis, others allow both pre-paid or tips on board, of course in both these tips you can remove the tips completely and opt to pay what you want.
Marella (Thompson) Include the tips in the price which gives them ultimate value for money, and then the likes of Silversea, Regent, Seaborn also include them but when you are paying the prices they charge you do expect that.
Norwegian Cruise lines did at one point go All Inclusive and included tips, but this has recently been scraped giving people the option to remove them before or whilst on board.
Well the next cruise line to jump on the Bandwagon is MSC Cruises, They did at one point say that tips would be compulsory but now the news on the block is that MSC are including the tips in the price and they have said that the prices of the cruises will not shoot up in price so win-win for everyone.
This is across all sailings and all ships for UK and Ireland Passengers! Meaning a family of four on a seven-night cruise can expect to save 210 euros just on tips and when you have kids that money is much better elsewhere.
What do you do about tips? Do you choose to tip who you want or are you someone who just adds them to the bill and forget about them?