Will you reduce DSC

By adding the term service charge they are protecting themselves from having to give those monies directly to employees and can instead declare it as revenue. The word gratuity is there solely for marketing.

Real talk right there.

Actually, upon thinking about this further, I have concluded that it's highly unlikely that NCL's recent DSC raises are solely for the staff's benefit.

Let's look at what they did:

1) Raised the DSC in early 2015, effective almost immediately.

2) Raised the DSC AGAIN, just four months later, effective almost immediately.

3) Excluded the speciality restaurant employees from the DSC, and then tacked an 18% gratuity onto specialty restaurant fees.

So THREE price increases were done in the first half of 2015, with almost no waiting/grandfathering period for existing bookings.

Clearly NCL knew that this would not sit well with some of their cruisers, and it would perhaps lead to cancellations and/or loss of future business from formerly loyal NCL cruisers.

I'm not saying that EVERYONE was going to hate it or complain, but clearly as we can see on CruiseCritic, there are a lot of people upset about the situation.

With that being the case, do you think they made these THREE changes in such a short time, simply to benefit their crew?

That's highly unlikely, and not how large corporations work.

Cruise ship crew jobs see a high rate of turnover, and are highly coveted. This makes their crew very replaceable. If a crewmember is unhappy and quits, there is a long line of candidates to replace him. These may not seem like pleasant jobs to you or I, but for someone from an impoverished country, these are wonderful opportunities.

A large corporation does not feel pressure to greatly improve working conditions or salaries for highly coveted, high-turnover positions.

That's not to say that the crew doesn't get raises every so often (to keep up with inflation), but there's no way they would ever be getting three raises in 6 months. Have you ever worked for a large company that raised your pay three times in 6 months?

I still assert -- though I can't prove it -- that the DSC is simply a reimbursement tool for NCL. That is, when you adjust up or down the DSC, it does not affect the staff's pay. As I mentioned before, my theory is that the DSC works like this:

- The staff's pay is constant, and set at a stable amount via a contract signed by each crewmember.

- NCL attempts to recover all or most of this through DSC. Through a formula, they establish how much they want to collect from DSC, and set the per-person price accordingly.

- If the DSC collected falls short of expectation, NCL simply eats it and does not dock the pay of the crew.

- If the DSC collected beats expectation, NCL uses the excess for "teambuilding" and other crew incentive programs, but does not increase their pay.

- When NCL decides that it wants a higher percentage of their crew's salary paid through DSC (or if they keep falling short of expectation), they raise it. That's probably why we've seen three raises in just the first half of 2015.

I can't prove this is how they're doing things, but it makes sense. What makes zero sense is that NCL has decided to change three policies in six months simply to put more money in the pocket of a crew that would exist even without these raises.

You can try to counter me by saying, "Well, NCL just wants to keep their crew happy" or "NCL has the best crew of all the comparable lines!", but that's a bunch of subjective nonsense. Even if NCL has a higher standard for the crew they hire, and even if they pay them a bit more than, say, Princess, they still don't need to make 3 raises in 6 months to keep that crew happy.

You have to understand that cruise ship crew members come from a very different culture than you see in the US/Europe/Canada. They are, by and large, thrilled to have the opportunity to work on the ship and send home much more money than they would have earned at home. They are easily impressed by favors and good news, as they come from a background where there is not much of that. A single raise would cause much elation for NCL crew members. They wouldn't need to do three of them (and anger the clientele) to make the crew happy. The culture of these people is much different than the "what have you done for me lately" attitude that is increasingly seen in the first world. And I mean this as a compliment. I remember visiting an impoverished, isolated village in Indonesia some years ago, and everyone walked around happy and mostly carefree, despite the terrible hot weather and the fact that they lacked almost all modern conveniences. I was impressed, and it gave me an appreciation for how much differently people can see the world when their expectations and surroundings are different.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say here is that I don't believe for a second that NCL is this generous to their crew. The DSC looks pretty obviously a "Hey guys, please reimburse us for what we spend on your crew members" thing, rather than "Hey guys, this is how you tip everyone on board at the same time!" And there's a huge difference between the two.

I find it ironic that NCL raised the DSC after they offered to pay it as a booking bonus. If they are using it as compensation for the crew, it would cost them more money to make up the shortfall from those who chose it as a booking bonus.

That leads me to believe they are using the DSC as a "smoke and mirror" ploy.

I find it ironic that NCL raised the DSC after they offered to pay it as a booking bonus. If they are using it as compensation for the crew, it would cost them more money to make up the shortfall from those who chose it as a booking bonus.

 

That leads me to believe they are using the DSC as a "smoke and mirror" ploy.

That's another good point.

Also, the raise of the DSC was almost immediate, so people who booked when being quoted the former DSC rate were out of luck (and forced into the new rate), unless they prepaid it right away (lol).

Do you think NCL would make this so immediate and so sudden if it were just to benefit the crew?

Of course not.

They would tell the crew, "We are raising the DSC, but in order to be fair to everyone who booked when it was the prior rate, we will be grandfathering them into the old rate. So those people will pay the original rate, but we will charge the new rate to all new bookings, and you will slowly see your pay increase as a result."

There would be dancing in the hallways to this announcement. The crew wouldn't demand, "NO, YOU EITHER MAKE IT HAPPEN IMMEDIATELY OR WE ARE ALL WALKING!"

I mean, unless NCL enjoys getting their clientele angry, there's no way they made abrupt and frequent increases like this simply to give their crew three raises in a six-month period of time.

If you're going to remove it, at least have the guts to do it at the beginning of the cruise so everyone assigned knows who you are. Or, were you planning to take it off the last day?

Actually, I tried on the Sun to adjust mine (due to the removal of the specialty restaurant servers from the DSC) and Guest Services told me I COULD NOT changed the DSC until the last day of the cruise (note: I went back on the last day and had no problem adjusting them).