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Gratuities on Australian cruises?


sandman82
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Someone told me that gratuities would not be charged on cruises to Australia. Is this true?

 

Most cruises to Australia originating from some other country, ie repositioning cruises from the USA for example, you will probably have gratuities to pay.

 

Some cruise lines sailing out of Australia {and returning to an Australian port - but not always the case) now include the gratuities within the inclusive fare (Princess is one that do this now)

 

You really need to check with your particular cruise line to find out what policy they have in place for your particular cruise.

 

You may also like to have a look at the Tipping in Australia thread on this forum - hot topic and generally tipping is not expected for services etc in Australia and New Zealand as it say for the USA.,

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We are on the Sun Princess Sydney to Sydney 10 nights and I would be interested as well to know if I will be charged gratuities on my on board account.

You can check in your Cruise Personaliser. If you have to pay gratuities you will find a prepay option under Payments and Credits.

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On Princess if you book in Australia and cruise from or to Australia (including repositioning cruises - this changed about a year ago) then there are no additional gratuities. I'm not certain what the case is if you book from overseas though.

 

On RCI and Celebrity the gratuities are now built into the fare for Australian bookings, not sure about repositioning cruises or overseas bookings.

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You can check in your Cruise Personaliser. If you have to pay gratuities you will find a prepay option under Payments and Credits.

 

Not sure that can be relied on. Even on Australian cruises, it still used to display the option to pay gratuities there. Unless this was recently fixed?

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Not sure that can be relied on. Even on Australian cruises, it still used to display the option to pay gratuities there. Unless this was recently fixed?

If the cruise starts and finishes in an Australian port the gratuities are included and don't appear as a prepay option.

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If the cruise starts and finishes in an Australian port the gratuities are included and don't appear as a prepay option.

 

Not sure why you repeated that when I said they had been appearing as an option, even when starting and finishing in an Australian port.

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On Princess if you book in Australia and cruise from or to Australia (including repositioning cruises - this changed about a year ago) then there are no additional gratuities. I'm not certain what the case is if you book from overseas though.

 

If you book from overseas, for example from the US, even if the onboard cruise currency will be AUD it is most likely that gratuities will be auto-charged to your account since they are not built into the fare. Comparing the AUD and USD costs for a cruise will reflect that the gratuities are built into the AUD pricing.

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If you book from overseas, for example from the US, even if the onboard cruise currency will be AUD it is most likely that gratuities will be auto-charged to your account since they are not built into the fare. Comparing the AUD and USD costs for a cruise will reflect that the gratuities are built into the AUD pricing.

 

Thanks for clarifying that, trabeler. I thought that was the case but wasn't 100% certain.

 

I did notice that the price for our next Celebrity cruise was higher than the one we did earlier this year ... by about the cost of the gratuities, which Celebrity are now bundling into the fare for Aussie region cruises.

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I can only refer to my experience on RCL and Celebrity. Have booked 5 cruises since the mid December 2016 changes. Just booked 3 on Ovation. 2 were through a USA agent and 1 with an Aussie TA. All of them are for cruises outside of Australia.

 

USA fares DO NOT include grats. You can pre pay them or have the autograts acruse on board. Aussie fares DO INCLUDE grats. No choice.

 

There is also no relationship between the price in USD + Forex conversion + grats = AUD price.

 

The 2 cruises in China I booked in USD were about half the price of what they were advertised at in Australia when all taxes, grats, forex were accounted for.

 

The one I just booked in Australia was $1776pp AUD with grats Vs $ 2706pp AUD when all is factored in if I booked in the USA (although a USA TA would probably throw in grats or OBC).

 

It always pays to check all options.

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  • 1 month later...
If the cruise starts and finishes in an Australian port the gratuities are included and don't appear as a prepay option.

 

That's not the case with Holland America. We did an NZ cruise round trip from Sydney and we had the daily service charge/gratuities added to our bill. Celebrity include the service charge, including for our next cruise which is Auckland to Fremantle. Not sure about Princess as I've never sailed with them, but people do need to be aware that on HAL you will find that daily charge added to your account.

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Not sure why you repeated that when I said they had been appearing as an option, even when starting and finishing in an Australian port.

 

HAL, even when round trip from an Australian port, add in that daily charge to your account. Celebrity include the service fee in the fare.

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If you book from overseas, for example from the US, even if the onboard cruise currency will be AUD it is most likely that gratuities will be auto-charged to your account since they are not built into the fare. Comparing the AUD and USD costs for a cruise will reflect that the gratuities are built into the AUD pricing.

 

We are on the Sun sailing Sydney to Sydney next March/April and there is an option to prepay the gratuities.

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OP hadn't mentioned any particular cruise line.

 

The comment line I replied to certainly did: "We are on the Sun Princess Sydney to Sydney 10 nights and I would be interested as well to know if I will be charged gratuities on my on board account. "

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  • 5 months later...

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