swafly5909

Ugh, thanks for the heads up. It wasn’t clear to me when we booked WHO was offering the prepaid incentive - if it was the cruise line or the TA. Sounds like it’s most commonly the TA. Our cruise did go down in price some, but the cruise line changed policies and doesn’t give you the lower rate - they gave us future credit for the difference instead. Bummer, but I def see how that’s a better deal for them. Maybe we’ll get a chance to use it…?

This is exactly the reason for my original question - to make sure that our “free prepaid” does NOT mean “unpaid” tips. I was checking if and who was covering that expense on our behalf in efforts to be sure no one was getting stiffed.

Yes, thank you. This is what I was concerned about. I understand what gratuities are and that we ultimately get to decide the % or whether to tip extra. I just wanted to make sure that NCL or the TA is actually paying the original service charge amount - I don’t want our “free prepaid” to mean “unpaid” crew member tips. Especially knowing many of those prepaid tips go to crew members behind the scenes who we will likely not see - not just our cabin steward or table servers we could also tip in person.

One of our incentives on our cruise this fall was "free prepaid services charges" for two people in our cabin. It sounds like that's gratuities. So...how does that work?? Does this incentive end up meaning no tips for the crew members? Or does NCL pay their tips? Or does it simply mean the gratuities are not automatically added to our bill and we get to make the decision about what to tip - making this incentive not really a discount? I want to make sure we're not swindling anyone of hard-earned tips.