Tipping Guidelines?

[Geoff in Wales]

"They said that the policy was that anyone who did not pay the standard tipping rate with the initial booking would be charged the standard rate to their onboard account, therefore everyone on bard would have paid this in one way or another."

 

Your TA is incorrect - or, at least, this isn't how its structured outside of bookings made in Wales. ;)

 

 

This information I was given about charging to onboard account if not prepaid as stated above was given to me by Celebrity Cruises UK phone helpline and not my travel agent.

 

In any case, I would not stiff but I was trying to to get an accurate picture about how it all worked on Celebrity ships.

[hihandycap]

On another subject I am not happy that the cruise itinerary has been changed and we will now have 4.5 days at sea instead of the 3 advertised in brochure.

 

We just returned from a cruise where Celebrity notified us the day before sailing that they would not be stopping at a scheduled port of call. When we chose Celebrity we were oblivious of their record of unreliability. I wish we had seen a discussion similar to the one at http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=182537&page=1&pp=25 .

 

Fool me once ...

[TPKeller]

We just returned from a cruise where Celebrity notified us the day before sailing that they would not be stopping at a scheduled port of call. When we chose Celebrity we were oblivious of their record of unreliability. I wish we had seen a discussion similar to the one at http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=182537&page=1&pp=25 .

Just FYI, the thread linked here is about a cruise cancelled due to the propulsion pod problems.

 

Only four of Celebrity's nine total ships (not counting the Xpedition) have these pods, and I'm not sure that all four of those have problems. It isn't really accurate to label "Celebrity" as unreliable when this problem pops up. To be fair, I have opined before that it may not be wise to schedule a cruise on one of these ships with pod problems, especially if your vacation time is particularly inflexible. The problems do tend to flare up quite unexpectedly.

 

But it isn't the company, it's the ship. And I'm quite certain they are much more irritated about the situation than you are! They are 300 million dollars worth of upset!

 

Theron

[geoherb]

I got used to charging our tips to our accounts after four Princess cruises. I now prefer to charge them, but appreciate that Celebrity gives its passengers both options.

 

We received receipts for each person when I went to guest relations to put the tips onto our accounts. Our cabin steward brought us envelopes. We included extra in cash for those we felt had given us wonderful service: our waiter, assistant waiter, assistant maitre d', and cabin steward.