On the vast majority of cruise lines, you are asked to pay gratuities to the crew that have been helping to make your trip special.
Well, I say you are asked to – the cruise line will add these gratuities to your account automatically, and you will be expected to pay them. In some cases, you may need to pay for them upfront if you want a particular type of dining service.
Yet what if you don’t want to pay the gratuities? Is it right that cruises try to enforce this on you, and is it possible to refuse to pay them? And also, instead of having a lump sum added to your cruise fare, can you not instead pay tips directly to the people who have served you best, using cash?
In this guide, I’ll explain why it’s possible to opt out of paying gratuities on your cruise – and also, why not paying cruise gratuities is a bad idea.
Here’s what you can expect to pay
The cost of cruise gratuities varies by cruise line, but it is typically in the region of $6 to $20 per person, per day. That’s per person as in per passenger, not for every single member of the crew on the ship! Some cruise lines include gratuities in the fare.
Your gratuities are worked out based on how many people are staying in your room, and how long you are sailing for. In some cases, especially on cheaper cruise lines like Carnival, you might find that your gratuities cost as much as 50% of your overall cruise fare, or potentially even more if you’ve managed to get a great deal.
This can make the gratuities feel expensive. If you’re only paying $400 per person for your cruise, and then you get another $200 or so added on top for the crew tips, your ‘great deal’ suddenly feels a little less great.
I could understand some frustration at paying the gratuities – especially if you’re from a culture like that in the UK where tipping is not a big thing.
Here’s a quick look at the cost of gratuities on some of the bigger cruise lines:
| Cruise line | Daily cost of gratuities | Depending on |
|---|---|---|
| Ambassador Cruise Line | £5 – £6 | Cruise length |
| Carnival | $16 – $18 | Stateroom type |
| Celebrity Cruises | $18 – $23 | Stateroom type |
| Costa Cruises | €11 – $16.50 | Stateroom type and destination |
| Cunard | $16 – $18 | Stateroom type |
| Disney | $14.50 – $23.50 | Stateroom type |
| Fred Olsen | £5 | |
| Holland America | $16 – $17.50 | Stateroom type |
| MSC Cruises | $0 to $14.50 | Booking region and destination |
| NCL | $20 – $25 | Stateroom type |
| Princess | $17 – $19 | Stateroom type |
| Royal Caribbean | $18.50 – $21 | Stateroom type |
There are also a number of cruise lines that don’t automatically add gratuities to your account, and instead include them in the cruise fare you pay.
Cruise lines that include gratuities in the fare:
- Azamara
- Celestyal Cruises
- P&O Cruises
- Marella
- MSC (When booked in the UK)
- Saga
- Silversea
- Regent Seven Seas
- Virgin Voyages
Where do your tips go?
Most of the crew that man the ship you’re sailing on will be paid an hourly rate, which can be very low – just a few dollars an hour. The gratuities then top up this pay, and in some cases (such as that of the Royal Genies), it can represent as much as 95% of what the staff take home!
The crew that tend to get gratuities paid to them include your waiters, your room stewards, those working behind the scenes to do the laundry for your bedding or if you’ve paid for a laundry service, cleaners and so on.
There are some crew who won’t get a cut of the tips. Bartenders usually don’t, because they’re paid tips in a different way (more on that below). Crew who work in the stores on a ship, particularly if they are third-party stores that may be manned by someone working for the retailer, also wouldn’t qualify.
Typically, though, the more senior positions on a cruise ship are salaried and, therefore, don’t get included in the gratuity payments – so your officers, your doctors, and your hotel and cruise directors onboard.
But that still leaves the majority of the workers on the ship relying on gratuities to make up the majority of what they earn, and a large portion of those work behind the scenes.
“I will never take the gratuity off my bill. After a personal tour from Nelson the hotel director of the Gem, I saw first hand how the staff works behind the scenes. I also give my steward, wait staff and of course the best bartenders extra throughout the cruise. They Work hard!!!!!”
Anonymous cruiser
So to be clear – they’re not technically ‘mandatory’
Gratuities are never mandatory on a cruise, unless they are included in your cruise fare. When they are, you can’t ask for them to be removed in order to get a discounted fare.
Where they are not included in your fare, they are still automatically applied to your account, but you can have them removed.
There may be some situations where gratuities become mandatory and can’t be removed – usually, this is when you select a certain dining plan for the main restaurants, and gratuities must be included to guarantee this level of service.
One such example is My Time Dining with Royal Caribbean. If you want to avoid having a traditional dining sitting, giving you the option of visiting the Main Dining Room at a time that suits you instead, you have to prepay your gratuities in full.
Opting out
When a cruise line adds gratuities to your cruise fare, you can usually ask for them to be removed. You would just need to visit the Guest Services desk and explain your decision, and the cruise line will remove them for you.
You may be asked for your reasoning. This isn’t to apply pressure to you to retain them, but just so that it’s clear you understand the impact that removing the gratuities has on the crew.
So don’t be offended if you are asked – the team just want to make sure there’s nothing they can do to resolve any issues, and that you’re aware of what it means for all of the crew, including those behind the scenes.
There are some gratuities that you won’t be able to opt out of, and these work differently to the main gratuities added to your cruise account. Some gratuities are added on a per-payment basis, for things like drinks bought at the bars or reservations for speciality dining restaurants.
These are typically a percentage gratuity, so it might be in the region of 15-18% for every purchase you make. And you can’t have these removed.
If you don’t like the idea of paying a tip every time you order a drink, you might prefer to get a drinks package – you’ll still likely be charged a gratuity fee for the package, but at least it’s a one-off payment and then all of your drinks will be included.
Does anything happen if you opt out?
If you choose to have your gratuities removed from your cruise account, your cruise won’t be impacted in any other way. The crew aren’t told which passengers have refused to pay gratuities, and so the level of service you receive won’t change.
However, what’s more important is that members of the crew will lose out on money they really need to top up their hourly salary. And yes, on a ship with thousands of passengers, the impact of one guest removing gratuities won’t be huge.
But as soon as it becomes commonplace for a guest to remove gratuities, it can become a domino effect and it can seriously impact the earnings of the people who have worked so hard to make your cruise go smoothly.
If you’re removing gratuities because you want to tip in cash…
It’s important to remember that the gratuities that are added to your account are split between a large number of the crew, including many who work behind the scenes.
Choosing to remove them from your account and pay in cash means that a lot of people will miss out – people who you just won’t see. And while some cruise lines might leave envelopes for you to leave cash tips, even those may not include all of the crew members who would otherwise receive your gratuities when paid on your account.
If you want to tip in cash then it’s best to do this as well as paying your main gratuities. Rewarding excellent service (or encouraging a little bit of special treatment) is best done above-and-beyond the typical gratuities you pay.
If you’re removing gratuities because you feel the service let you down…
It isn’t possible to remove gratuities for one member of the crew, or one particular group of workers. So if you remove gratuities, you’re punishing all of those other crew members just because you feel the service in one area wasn’t good enough.
The best thing to do in this case is to speak to Guest Services about the issues you’ve had.
Don’t complain, just raise the problems with the service and ask for ways in which they can be improved. That way, you should enjoy the service you feel you deserve and that can justify the gratuities, rather than removing them.
There are always people who disagree with automatic gratuities, though.
You might be forced to pay in rare circumstances
Cruise lines generally can’t force you to pay gratuities unless you decide to leave it too late to have them removed. Cruise lines will add the gratuities to your cruise account at different times, but it is often only added to your account on the second-to-last day.
You then have the time to ask Guest Services to remove them, but once you have disembarked the ship you can’t challenge them and have the gratuities removed.
They will have likely been charged to your credit or debit card by this stage already – you generally get charged before you leave the ship – but in theory, you could get them refunded if you were still onboard.
However, once you leave the ship, the payment is considered final.
Before that, the only way cruise lines can force you to pay gratuities is by making them a mandatory part of your cruise fare. If they are charged separately, then you can’t be forced to pay them unless the cruise line’s terms state they can’t be altered – which is rare.
Prepaid gratuities explained
Most cruise lines will offer you the chance to prepay your gratuities. This means paying for them upfront, before you depart, instead of waiting for them to be added to your cruise account during your sailing.
There are a number of benefits to doing this – you lock in the gratuities at the lowest possible cost (because they typically do rise every year), and you can budget for your cruise more effectively since one more thing is ticked off in advance.
But it isn’t always the best option, especially if you plan on using any onboard credit you have for your sailing to contribute to your gratuity charges.
Read more: Should You Prepay Gratuities On Your Cruise?
Final word
So, do you have to pay gratuities on a cruise? Technically not, but I really can’t state this enough – you shouldn’t remove gratuities from your cruise, because it unfairly impacts many of the crew on the ship.
You may disagree with their salary structure relying on tips, again especially if you are from a country where tipping is not the norm. Yet this is how it works and so removing your tips will have a serious impact on how much the crew earn.
If you want to tip in cash, do that as an extra bonus. If you’re unhappy with any service levels, speak to the Guest Services team to rectify problems. But make sure to pay the gratuities so that all of the crew – including those you don’t see – get their fair reward.
Related posts:
- Can You Opt Out of Gratuities On A Carnival Cruise?
- Carnival Prepaid Gratuities: Worth It Or Not?
- How Much Do Cruise Ship Workers Make?
Jenni Fielding is the founder of Cruise Mummy. She has worked in the cruise industry since 2015 and has taken over 30 cruises. Now, she helps over 1 million people per month to plan their perfect cruise holidays.
I always remove tips.
Its a nonesense to even consider paying the autogratuities. As previously pointed out, the sums involved would make the staff very well off.
All cruise lines departing from UK ports should not ask for extra money. P&O stopped a while ago, Princess openly state that all tips go to a central US fund.
The companies should fess up, its extra profit.
Of course we tip our room steward in cash and also in Amazon voucher cards so they can be posted back to wherever they come from at the next available port.
I am a fairly seasoned cruiser and I have just returned from a month long cruise with Holland America on the Nieuw Statendam. She is a beautiful ship and spotlessly clean. The crew are all fantastic as they are on most cruise lines, and are predominantly Filipino or Indonesian on HAL.
I took the opportunity to chat to crew members during the cruise on a variety of subjects including their life on board. The one thing that they have all said is that they receive nothing from the gratuities that we pay. They are salaried according to their job role and are paid accordingly (it seems to range from about $800/month for wait staff in the dining areas upwards depending on seniority and length of service. The most I heard was $1650/ month).
Their contracts are usually 6 months but can be longer for less experienced and those with shorter service time with the company. A normal contract is for 77hrs per week over 7 days. They don’t have any ‘days’ off just a few hours down time each day. They can earn an extra 15mins off by passengers giving them good reviews on the ‘contact us’ section of the app, which very few passengers are aware of.
The current gratuity is $17pp/day and there is an additional gratuity of 18% on all drinks and onboard purchases. The crew don’t get any of this either.
To say that I am annoyed with the cruise line would be an understatement. I was charged $952 for gratuities on my understanding that the crew had a share. Definitely NOT the case. It seems like the cruise lines are duping passengers (especially Americans whose culture is to tip) into thinking they are helping these poorly paid staff with a few extra dollars, when in fact all we are doing is bolstering the coffers of the cruise line.
Another piece of misinformation is that crew have to turn in any cash tips they get. They don’t, so long as you tip them in cash, they keep it which arguably is a little unfair to behind the scenes crew but surely the company should address their pay accordingly.
Another case in point is the actual salary and is it good compared to what the could expect to earn in their own country? Answer, generally yes it is and many crew appreciate the opportunity to provide well for their families. But the cost is high being away for long periods and missing family life. An example on this cruise was that a waiter’s wife is expecting their 2nd child in December but he will not be allowed home and will not see the child until February. They accept these things as part of their job.
Holland America will say that they pool gratuities and give out bonuses at the end of staff contracts. Blatantly not true if you talk to staff. They are only paid for their contract and are subject to medicals and good reviews to be invited to renew their contract.
I did a little numbers exercise based on the Nieuw Statendam passenger capacity and if everyone paid gratuities the ship would accrue over $16m per year from that ship alone, plus all onboard spend gratuities. The ship has a crew of 980 from the captain down. Clearly they don’t distribute any of this to the crew but use it as another form of revenue.
This has changed my perspective completely on the whole cruise ship gratuity culture and I am sure that other cruise lines operate in much the same way. We all know that cruises can be a bit expensive at times but does it really have to be so ‘nickel & dime’ as the Americans call it.
You may well think differently, but I am more than a little irritated by so much misinformation that is bandied around.
In my view, under the American tipping regeme the cruise lines are conning the British because the price you agree on is not the price you are expected to pay even though you have signed the contract and payed the asking price for the cruise, because added tips is a stealth tax!! The operators who make $Billions, should pay the correct wages by covering them in the headline cruise price and most people will agree to tip at a rate and frequancy they can afford, the staff in the Laundry, engine room, are not in any way the passengers concern, the customers should not have to subsidise the cruise line wage bill in order to give the companies shareholders a good bonus
So, when I get a taxi I leave the driver a tip. Not the person who services it or the people who repair it? If I eat at a restaurant or diner I tip the waitress, not the cook/chef or cleaners or anyone else that keeps the diner running in the background. They are all there by choice, none of them are forced to work there? Which indicated they all are happy with the contracted hours and pay? Yes, if the gratuities are included in with the advertised cost of the cruise then it’s down to choice and affordability to all passengers, and I would prefer this so that I can make a better informed decision of what a potential holiday onboard would be? If I book a cruise costing £2,000 and pay for it.. I expect that’s all it is… £2,000 plus drinks package etc.. with full excellent service as promised by the cruise company’s own advertising and reasons for choosing them. Why is it ‘expected’ by some passengers that an extra payment is added for the exact same excellent service as has already been paid for?
We normally have a package that includes these extra payments to gratuities so yes we don’t have them removed, but I would fight the case for everyone who doesn’t have a package to have the RIGHT to remove them as their choice in where they spend or invest their own finances! It’s their choice, not mine or anyone else’s..??? World gone crazy… !
Hi Jen,
on past cruises I’ve found gratuities high sometimes as much as £70 per person for a weeks cruise.
Have spoken with customer services and asked for the gratuities to be reduced to a more reasonable level, but they have just removed all gratuities ?
His there a reason why.
Some cruise lines include the gratuities in the fare. It depends on the cruise line and the destination, but this is more common on cruises with British and Australian guests as tipping is not as much part of the culture as it is in the US. Jenni
The fact that customers have the option for tips to be removed proves that legally a stealth tax is a grey area, when cruising from America I do not quibble as American cruises are much cheaper than British cruises and tipping subsidises the crew wages, American customers also have better protection benefits, however, British cruisers pay much more for their cruises and do not have the benefit of asking for their money back the day before the cruise sails.
So as British cruisers pay much more for their cruises the company can afford to pay their staff more when cruising from Britain, as for tips I much prefer the brown envelope to tip those who served me well, but did not fill in the requested name, cabin number, or the amount as I was told that Fred Olsen take tips off staff if they know they have been tipped, whether that is true or not I don’t know but I have started giving cash in hand just in case
Hi,
Interesting article regarding tips on cruises. In all our 20 years of cruising we have always opted out of paying tips & paying individuals at the end of the cruise. For example, a 12 night cruise on Princess would cost me over £300 which is a ridiculous amount of money to add to the £1000s already spent on the cruise!!!
I accept that tips are spread to all the crew, but if they were paid a decent wage in the first place that would solve all the problems.
I agree Tony. We always remove gratuities and pay any tips in cash. What hasn’t been mentioned, is that a documentary on Royal Caribbean a few years ago, said that the staff who receive gratuity vouchers , then have to pay 20% admin charges to cash it in. I’m with you, when you pay thousands for your trip, there should be no other charges. If you want to tip anyone that should be up to the individual.
You are quite right. We are supposed to not support slave labour I believe this idea of us paying tips to supplement wages only encourages it. It should not be allowed as some people are to embarrassed not to say anything. She should not be advising that it is a good thing to do as it is not
We are now in an era where we are promoting fair wage.
Cruise companies are paying sub low wages and hiding this in an auto-gratuity, where they, the cruise company, take their slice to.
I am certainly not adverse to tipping for good service, but I do object to being expected to have a charge automatically added regardless of the service received and it should not be to reward the company/employer, but for the employee
cruise liners should be responsible for paying their workers. when passengers get good or above average they are happy to give a tip and not happy to pay a salary
Deadbeats stay home You probably do this at restaurants too. No way they are making 125,000 or I would be working there and you too
I also think that people should be paid a fair wage and not be dependent on tips.
Hi, I agree 100 % with your refusal to pay tips. We have always opted out, & pay individuals at the end of the cruise!!!
most the cruise liners tke 10% fee for dividingf the tips up. so not only are they putting a stealth tax on cruisers they are taking money from the people that these tips are going to. i will always remove tips and tip directly.
Food for thought on gratuities and rates of pay on cruise lines:
I follow your blog and really appreciate the insights you provide that have helped us on numerous cruises.
However, when you say, “I really can’t state this enough – you shouldn’t remove gratuities from your cruise, because it unfairly impacts many of the crew on the ship.” I need to put forward an alternative view using a Celebrity Cruises example.
1. Not all staff receive gratuities as part of the “distribution” of daily charges – e.g. see recent posts from Disney in the US.
2. The starting salary for a cabin steward is c$1700 per month – equivalent to a cleaner in an average UK hotel – rising to c£3500.
3. Cabin stewards tend to be on five-month contracts with two months between contracts.
4. The automatic gratuity distribution for a cabin steward is c$10/person/day.
5. Each cabin steward services c20 cabins with an average occupancy of two = 40 people at $10/day = $400/day; allowing for 90% occupancy level = c$360/day.
6. Most cabin stewards receive hours off, not days; therefore, $360 x 30 days = $10,800 per month + base salary = $12,500/month
7. A five-month contract has a value of c$62,500
8. Two contracts in 12 months = c$125,000
9. Accounting for only 60% of passengers paying “automatic gratuities” = $40,900 or $81,900 over 12 months*
* This does not account for those who opt out of automatic gratuities and tip the cabin steward directly or those who tip the cabin steward in addition to the automatic gratuities.
For us, this sets expectations on service levels; it’s also why we opt out of daily rates, instead choosing to tip the individual based on our experience.
Thanks for your comments, David. I would be interested for you to please cite your sources. I suspect that the assumption that cabin stewards take home $125,000 per year is very much an overestimate, but of course, I’d be interested to look at where these figures came from. Jenni
David, source is highly needed here. Otherwise, its just hot air.
Totally disagree. This is a ridiculous way of paying people. The only reason people are relying in tips is because cruise liners are not paying people properly – passing the Buck onto consumers and making them feel bad. Trust me – if people stopped tipping and all their staff left, they would be forced to pay them a reasonable wage in the first place to continue operating their businesses.
So – why don’t we encourage companies to pay people a good, living wage; rather than subtly passing on gratuities as a hidden tax to consumers. the whole idea of gratuities was originally to reward excellent service, not subsidise standard, or below average service because the employer is not paying someone a good wage.
I completely agree Joe. I don’t mind tipping for great service, but to make up someone’s wage by using tips and under paying them is just wrong. As you say, if everyone pulled the tips, the cruise lines would soon re-structure. I love cruising but it always feels like you are on edge over the next hidden cost instead of just paying your price and enjoying your holiday. America is backwards in its employment laws and the tipping culture is completely ridiculous. Ps great work crusie mummy 👍