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I wonder if you realize how many behind the scenes people are including in the daily tip plan or do you realize the guy or gal working at the buffet today might be the wait person around the pool or at your dining room table tomorrow? It all works out for everyone if the cruise lines use the daily tipping pool.
But that is it, we are low users of staff.
We did not use the dining room AT ALL on our last trip. Kids did not even eat three meals a day, just lunch and dinner... and often we were in port at lunch and they just went to the grill for dinner, or sometimes the buffet.
Yes, the food still needs to be prepared, but its much less staff intensive than ordering food, bringing 3 courses, and cleaning up the mess.
We have never used the pool wait staff.
Kid automatically made their own beds, hung up and reused towels, steward was done literally in ten minutes in our room. He took a half hour on the one across from us.
I know there are a lot folks in the tip pool, but I also know some guest are very labor intensive and some are not.
Once again you have to stop thinking of this as an American resteraunt where the servers have a per hour wage less than cooks or fast food workers, with tips that make up for it. On a cruise ship the tip pays for all the services you get and all the service workers are on the same low "pay plan".
You eat at the buffet and thus people still cook the food, bring it out to the buffet tables, clean the serving area, clean the kitchen, fill up the silverware, and many times bus the tables. The tips are for those people.
On top of that you get your rooms cleaned, employees clean the bed linen, you use the public areas which must be cleaned and prepared, they bring you your checked in luggage. Others maintain just about everything you touch, look at, and walk on in the ship. Then there is the entertainment on the ship - entertainers get paid better but again for each of these areas you have dozens of support staff that service it - prepare and maintain the shows.
Yes, I know that any people are in the tip pool and are not paid well
But some guests do not utilize the staff's time nearly as much as others. Eating at the buffets and grills are much less staff intensive. Besides the reduced wait staff, it takes a lot less effort for the cook to provide a bowl of oatmeal or cook a hotdog and chips at the grill, than prepare eggs Benedict or a 3 course meal. When the formal dining room is not used, the wait staff is reduced, obviously, but so it the time required for cooking and prepping food.
We never check luggage, but bring it onto and off the ship ourselves. We each use one carryon suitcase on the plane and take it ourselves onto the ship. Again, low staff usage.
The only public areas we used was the pool and the theater, no bars, INTERNET, special rooms, etc. for us.
My kids automatically made their own beds each day and rehung the towels for reuse. The steward only did the beds and towels one time mid-week when he changed them out. Otherwise he was in and out of our room in ten minutes in the morning and 5-10 minutes at fold down in the evening.
All of the money that the senior executives of the cruise lines make and they can just pay their employees a decent enough wage, to where they don’t have to start taking more money from me?
Seriously, I’m already paying for a cruise why do I have to tip the damn people?
It’s supposed to be all inclusive?
No. No. No. No. No. No.
They should just pay their employees better.
Simple.
We did not use the dining room AT ALL on our last trip. Kids did not even eat three meals a day, just lunch and dinner... and often we were in port at lunch and they just went to the grill for dinner, or sometimes the buffet.
Yes, the food still needs to be prepared, but its much less staff intensive than ordering food, bringing 3 courses, and cleaning up the mess.
We have never used the pool wait staff.
Kid automatically made their own beds, hung up and reused towels, steward was done literally in ten minutes in our room. He took a half hour on the one across from us.
I know there are a lot folks in the tip pool, but I also know some guest are very labor intensive and some are not.
ok, I hear you but let's look at it this way: 1-you cabin steward does a lot more than just make your beds. If you are dining at a regular restaurant at home, and the person at the table next to you is high maintanence do you think you should tip less than he should? Do you judge your tipping at a restaurant based on how easy you were to serve. Do you tip when you go to buffets? Do you realize how many people tip their stewards above and beyond if he is really good? Many leave him an extra $20 or more at the end of a cruise. Sorry, you have your view and i have mine. Of course I don't jump with joy at the amount of for tips, but I don't try and compare them with river cruising which, as I mentioned is quite a bit more expensive and I understand the reason for the high cost of tips on ships. For many years tipping on mass marketed lines was not an automatically set price but when too many were either not tipping or tipping too little the policy changed.
Royal Caribbean also has a similar "mandatory tipping paid on the account", but one can opt out and use cash for tips. I actually have always opted out and left cash, which you can do one or two ways. You can leave the tip in an envelope at guest services, and it can be spread out to their "general tipping fund", or you can direct it to a specific employee or employees. The other way is to leave the tip in the room. I do both, I leave a tip in the room for the room service, and I leave a tip at guest services for specific staff. We don't drink and don't use many other services. Our tip amount is about the same as if we paid through our account, but the money is being directed at fewer staff. I've put some thought into this and I'm thinking about just using the account to pay tips on the future, because I'm sure there are some staff who do help us and we don't tip, somewhere along the way in ways we don't even notice. But, I've never completely trusted Royal Caribbean or most any company with tips, I could easily see Royal Caribbean taking a few percent of the tip.
ok, I hear you but let's look at it this way: 1-you cabin steward does a lot more than just make your beds. If you are dining at a regular restaurant at home, and the person at the table next to you is high maintanence do you think you should tip less than he should? Do you judge your tipping at a restaurant based on how easy you were to serve. Do you tip when you go to buffets? Do you realize how many people tip their stewards above and beyond if he is really good? Many leave him an extra $20 or more at the end of a cruise. Sorry, you have your view and i have mine. Of course I don't jump with joy at the amount of for tips, but I don't try and compare them with river cruising which, as I mentioned is quite a bit more expensive and I understand the reason for the high cost of tips on ships. For many years tipping on mass marketed lines was not an automatically set price but when too many were either not tipping or tipping too little the policy changed.
I know the steward does more than make beds but we also waited for him and he was not in our room more than 10 minutes at a time on our last cruise. He even said there was nothing to do in our room, it was easy.
When dining at home, I think that high maintenance people should pay more, and when I am with a high maintenance person, we do tip more.
I do judge my tipping at home, in part, by how easy it is to serve my party. And the quality of the service. A buffet where the server clears the plates and one gets their own drinks would get 10% tip, where a restaurant where the an order is taken at the table, brought, etc. would get a 20% tip for the same level of service.
Yes, very good stewards do get extra tip money. And I give my steward extra when they do something beyond the normal e.g. one steward made us towel animals each day, and when he saw the kids go into the room and both wanted the animal on 'their' table he started leaving two animals. He was well compensated in an extra tip and on the comment card, so he should have also received more from the tip pool.
I do think that there should not be mandatory tip amounts. I do think they should suggest a range, and ask people to consider the quality of the service offered and the level of service required.
And I do not think that everyone should be in a tip pool, just those with direct customer interface. Others should have a better salary.
We just got back from a seven day cruise on Carnival and like other cruises, the service was very good. Carnival has instituted the practice of automatically charging tips onto passengers' shipboard accounts. We theoretically had the power to opt out of paying them this way, and we opted out when we booked, but Carnival still charged our credit card over $180 for tips on the 7 day cruise. We had to go to Guest Services to get them to remove the charge. And every cocktail and specialty coffee drink we ordered was assessed an automatic 15% gratuity that we couldn't opt out of.
Before I'm accused of being a cheapskate, I tip generously in the States, but the practice has gotten out of hand, and there are many threads here that attest to that. Just doing a job, even if it is low paying, does not automatically entitle a person to deserve tips. Tips are deserved for going above and beyond the call of duty. Some tipping on a cruise is polite and customary. But mandatory tipping is a fee, not a tip. And I have a few issues with Carnival and these tips specifically. Why should we tip every staff member for doing their jobs? Does every employee in every industry deserve a tip just for going to work? That is Carnival's rationale for charging us these "gratuities."
It should not be the passengers' responsibility to directly pay the bulk of the staff's wages because Carnival doesn't pay them a living wage. But because of the American practice of tipping everywhere for everything, if the cruiser says no, they are made to feel guilty for refusing. Because Carnival ships are registered internationally, they are not bound by American minimum wage laws, so they pay their employees very little.
When we buy cruise tickets, the fare should cover the bulk of our costs. Even the lowest fare costs a lot of money. We shouldn't have to kick in another $200, $400, or even more to pay for tips. When we went on a cruise and a resort vacation a couple of years ago, neither one deducted tips. Cruises used to be inclusive, but now they are nickel and diming quite a bit. We were on vacation, but we were also on a budget; in the cheapest room with no internet service, no drink packages, and no special services. We tipped, but not the nearly $200 Carnival wanted us to.
I have read on cruise forums that Carnival is not passing these gratuities onto the staff members as they claim they are; they are pocketing most or all of these monies themselves. They are also increasing the rates of these tips frequently by large amounts and cruisers are paying them believing the staff are actually receiving the monies. If you cruise, do you allow the cruise line to do the auto-tipping or do you tip separately?
It is obvious that you are not a regular cruiser. Auto tips have been in affect for many years now. Before completing your booking, you knew about the tipping process. You could have chosen an alternative vacation.
Last edited by Rastafellow; 06-10-2018 at 03:04 PM..
Reason: change wording
It is obvious that you are not a regular cruiser. Auto tips have been in affect for many years now. Before completing your booking, you knew about the tipping process. You could have chosen an alternative vacation.
and my gut feeling is and has always been, those who are opposed to auto tipping are not about to leave a decent tip. They just do not understand why there is the auto tip policy. Every notice they all say, I am a good tipper or I am not cheap!!!
With 17+ billion, yes Billion in revenue in 2017 I don’t understand why Carnival can’t take a intermediate approach and scale back the mandatory tipping. I actually love tipping cash and to make sure those hard workers get the actual money. I’ve heard straight from cruise workers that they don’t get all that $ and Carnival pockets it.
We just went on the Carnival 3 day to Ensenada and the tips were rather reasonable compared to when I first cruised 15 plus years ago. It was $60 and change, very reasonable to me.
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