Are cruise lines going overboard with service charges?

I’ve always had excellent service on Fred Olsen cruises and tipped accordingly.I wonder if the service will deteriorate if there is no incentive to try that little harder.I think so.

Over recent years we have cruised with Fred. Olsen, P & O, and Holland America. On the first two, gratuities were dealt with personally with the cabin steward and table waiter on the last day and they supposedly distributed their receipts amongst their underlings as they thought fit. The company recommended daily amounts per passenger per day [currently £4 with Olsen] but it was left to each passenger to tip as much or as little as they wished. Envelopes were provided to add a degree of privacy and security to the arrangement but it was almost impossible to avoid making a gratuity as the envelopes were keenly awaited with hovering anticipation. Our own views were that the recommended rates were excessive but we nevertheless went along with them, admittedly on occasions taking the opportunity to unload some foreign currency notes in the process. We were also concerned that many other staff on the ships did excellent work and were unlikely to gain any supplements to their remuneration [e.g. the laundry staff who do a phenomenal job in some pretty unpleasant working conditions]. It seemed likely that the companies were employing large numbers of third-world workers at pitiful rates [but with “all found” of course] and using the gratuity system to boost their wages to a respectable level on a guilt-trip basis, so to be a cheapskate and refuse to tip, or to tip low, would be the height of bad form since the staff would not have enough money to send home to their families each month. On Holland America the system was the same as now being introduced by Fred. Olsen with an automatic supplement added to the end bill. The benefit of this is that the share-out among the crew is probably more equitable and might cascade further into the bowels of the ship but the drawback is that it is anonymous and crew have less incentive to “earn” their tip. Exercising the “opt-out” is not as agreeable as the operators try to make out. We did in fact publicly prostrate ourselves at the reception desk and crave to be allowed to cut the amount deducted centrally in return for declaring that we would be making gratuities to the key personnel who had contributed significantly to our enjoyment [well it felt like we were going through a bit of an obstacle course to achieve our purpose, with raised eyebrows and loud requests for a justification for our decision]. On balance I think the whole thing is an embarrassment and an anachronism that has no place in modern cruising. The wages should be decent and the fare should be set accordingly. In practice there is very little the staff can do to make your cruise any better than it already is because any such factors are tightly controlled by the company. The crew could, of course, make your life on board a misery if they took against you but that is unlikely to happen as it would surely lead to instant relegation or severance. In all our time on cruise ships we have never encountered anything but the highest standards of service, courtesy, diligence, conscientiousness, disposition, and friendliness among the hundreds of crew-members and feel this should be fully recognised with proper terms and conditions of employment, dignity of treatment by passengers and company alike, and due reward for exceptional conduct. So headline prices would have to go up a little, but the notion that we would all be trying to get “recompense if the service is below par” is unrealistic – the standard of service on the better cruise lines is so much higher than you would ever experience in a British four-star hotel that the concept of “below par” is meaningless.

We went on a first cruise las summer with Princess. We were able to look at our bill during the trip and were horrified to see a $9 charge per person, per day for our cabin which included 2 adults and an 8 year old. We were perhaps naive virgin cruisers, but didn’t realise that this would automatically be put on to our bill. We were able to remove the ‘discretionary’ tips and we gave tips to the staff who we thought deserved the tips. We wonder how many passengers had been caught out by this discretionary charge and who had inadverently paid this amount. The service was excellent throughout and we felt that it was more fitting for the tips to go directly to the staff who had contributed to our fantastic holiday.

I refer to your article about adjusting or opting out of tipping on a cruise, by visiting the reception/purser’s desk.
This is not possible if you have already included the tipping in your payment to your travel agent when you first book.
I was told when on a Celebrity “Eclipse” Cruise last year that it could not be adjusted for that reason. I think £107 paid by each traveller is too much.
When I book again I will make sure I do not pay for the tips in advance, although I do tip what I think is a reasonable amount.
I prefer the method on P and O who let you tip each waiter and cabin person individually according to the service given.

Cunard not only add a massive gratuity to each bill, but also leave space on bar bills for another tip. However, I did draw the line last year in the Queens Grill on the Queen Victoria, when I spotted an extra charge for Spanish Port duty, despite us having left port hours before. I recieved a refund, but it stayed on everyone elses bill.