USA TODAY’s guide to cruise ship gratuity charges

CLOSEx

Embed

Some cruise lines charge a daily gratuity fee that’s not included in the fare. Know which cruises include this fee to help plan your next vacation.
Wochit

There perhaps is nothing more controversial in the world of cruising than the gratuity charge.

It is a fee of up to $23 per person, per day that many of the biggest cruise lines, including Carnival, Princess and Norwegian, automatically add to passenger bills, saying it will be passed on to crew members in recognition of their service.

The charge is levied whether or not a passenger feels he or she has experienced good service, though at many lines it can be adjusted or removed while on-board.

The practice of adding automatic gratuity charges to cruise bills has sprung up over the past few decades, replacing a more informal system where cruisers tipped room stewards and wait staff at their own discretion, in varying amounts.

Many of the lines that automatically add gratuity charges to bills say they do so as a convenience to passengers. It’s just plain simpler for cruisers to pay an automatic gratuity than to be tipping crew members who give them great service one-by-one, the lines say. Cruise lines also note the money is shared with behind-the-scenes crew members who play an important role in the passenger experience but otherwise might go unrewarded.

Critics of the charges say tipping is a personal matter that should be left to passengers. Some see the charges as a thinly disguised method for cruise lines to push the responsibility for paying crew members to their customers. To that point, cruise industry watcher CruiseCritic has reported that some lines now pay housekeeping and dining department workers on ships as little as $2 per day in base wages, relying on the automatic gratuity to provide the great bulk of their compensation. As much as 95% of pay for some cruise ship workers now comes from automatic gratuities, according to CruiseCritic.

Norwegian Cruise Line to hike service charge

The dollar amounts of automatic gratuity charges, sometimes called service charges, have been soaring in recent years at a rate many times higher than inflation. At some lines, they’re up nearly 20% over the past two years.

Still, the practice of adding a gratuity charge to bills is at a bit of a crossroads in the industry. While mass-market ocean cruise lines such as Carnival and Norwegian are hiking the fees at a rapid rate, a growing number of more upscale ocean lines including Azamara, Crystal, Seabourn, Regent and SeaDream have been eliminating them. The practice also is disappearing at some river cruise lines. River lines Uniworld, Tauck and Scenic Cruises are among those that now include gratuities for crew members in their base fares.

Adventure-focused “expedition-style” cruise operators also have begun including gratuity charges in their base fares. Just this month, category leader Lindblad Expeditions began including gratuities in the fare on two of its ships, National Geographic Explorer and National Geographic Orion.

USA TODAY’s guide to cruise ship gratuity charges

Posted!

Posted!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply