new Royal Caribbean gratuities policy (effective March 1, 2013)

tmpcase · February 23, 2013

according to the new guidelines, the amount of Royal Caribbean tips per day will be slightly changed - from the old $13,90 (suites)/$11,65 (the rest) to the new, respectively, $14,25/$12 pp pd. But this is not all - by the new tipping policy on RCCL ships tips will be charged automatically to your seapass account, plus there will be an option if you're not satisfied with the service of, say, your cabin steward or the wait service in the MDR you'll be allowed to reduce or even get back all your prepaid tips. That article also has this link for the guidelines of the Carnival cruise lines gratuities policy, but what I found interesting there is that they say tips are not extra money but real salaries for the hotel service staff on board all these huge ships - obviously many thousands of people do count on these prepaid gratuities. I don't know if this is quite true but could it really be that the hotel staff has a salary of under $100 PER MONTH?!?! And the real money for them are our tipping money?

WeCruiseToo · February 25, 2013

Depending on the position, crew members make very little money outside of the service charges or “tips” paid by guests. This policy seems to be pretty much in line with what all the other cruises companies do. Just another way they keep the initial cruise price down. Seems fair to me.

Sarge6870 · February 25, 2013

We've been dealing with the Auto-Tipping policy on Carnival for years so when we sail on RCCL in November, it won't be much of a shock. Never had a reason to remove or reduce tips to any of the crew it goes to (although there was one time I should have). :unsure: