What is the reason for prepaid gratuities on select dining?

[AndrewM]

What is the reason for prepaid gratuities on select dining?

[lucky292]

Yes, I have the same question too. Does it mean if I have a dinner in MDR then I have to pay for it? Or if I have main course in MDR and have soup/dessert in Blu, then I have to pay twice?

[Wirral]

In the MDR you will have the same waiters throughout your cruise. It is easy therefore to tip your wait staff. If you opt for select dining you could have different wait staff every day and the prepaid tips are spread across all the wait staff in select. This will be our first time in select and we have prepaid our gratuities.

[AndrewM]

I still don't get it. I did select dining on HAL and NCL and I didn't have to prepay gratuities.

 

Why don't they just charge daily on the cruise instead of 3 months before the cruise?

[Ex-Airbalancer]

I still don't get it. I did select dining on HAL and NCL and I didn't have to prepay gratuities.

 

Why don't they just charge daily on the cruise instead of 3 months before the cruise?

:rolleyes:

If you do not like the system book with another cruise line

Gratuities on a 15 day is $180, the interest on the gratuities is peanut compared to trip

[helpthejuggler]

Perhaps a better question....why is it not pre-pay for everyone?

 

Would that not be a modern luxury?

[dwhe]

:rolleyes:

If you do not like the system book with another cruise line

Gratuities on a 15 day is $180, the interest on the gratuities is peanut compared to trip

 

There's no need for that, he's entitled to ask perfectly reasonable questions.

[MEcruzr]

There is no reason. It's just X's policy. If you choose Select dining, you pre-pay gratuities. You'll drive yourself nuts trying to figure out "why" a company policy is what it is. Someone, somewhere, thought it was a good idea... and enough people agreed.

[vermonter16]

I'm one of those that loves the fact that my grats are already paid. I'd say to change to traditional dining if it is that much of an issue for you though.

[teajak]

There is no reason. It's just X's policy. If you choose Select dining, you pre-pay gratuities. You'll drive yourself nuts trying to figure out "why" a company policy is what it is. Someone, somewhere, thought it was a good idea... and enough people agreed.

Best answer I have ever read.;):D

[Can'tstopcruising]

Could it be that they didn't want everyone to switch to Select dining, so they thought that prepaid tips would deter some pax from this choice???

[Jacs]

Id say it also caters for patrons from counties that dont have a tipping culture and are unsure of the protocols. US patrons would most liekly still tip their multiple servers if they are on select dining, however us Aussies and a lot of Europeans aren't used to tipping for everything, so would most likely forget or just plain choose not to tip if they weren't made mandatory.

 

Lots of Aussies became angry when the policy changed to pre-paid, as it was forcing them to pay tips when usually they wouldn't at all, even for Set seating.

[kyriecat]

I have to admit that I am another one of those people who doesn't get it. I have no issues with paying gratuities so it's not a case of "I don't want to tip." Many times I have onboard credit that I would like to use for gratuities but can't if they must be prepaid.

 

Several people have said that you have to prepay because you might get a different waiter each night and it makes it easier for Celebrity to disperse the gratuities by having them in advance. That would only hold true if Celebrity knew in advance which waiter would be serving you each day. I don't believe that is the case. Unless you make advance reservations, how would Celebrity what time you will show up at the dining room or if you will show up at all? I have opted to eat in the buffet a few times.

 

If you don't prepay your gratuities, Celebrity automatically adds the charge to your Seapass account each day. You have to stop by guest relations if you want the amount adjusted. It seems like Celebrity could do that for passengers with Select dining as well as for those with traditional. If you have prepaid your gratuities but want to add more for some people, you can do that by stopping by guest relations.

 

When I sailed on Silhouette last year, I wanted to book Select dining because we didn't plan to eat in the MDR and didn't want to hold places at a table we weren't going to use. Select dining was fully booked when I inquired and just to get our names added to the waiting list, we had to prepay our gratuities. We were not assigned to Select dining prior to boarding. It seems like they could change their system so you only have to prepay if you are assigned to Select.

 

We had a fabulous cabin steward and I was able to add additional gratuities for him to my Seapass account even though I had prepaid the standard gratuity amount. Since we didn't eat a single meal in the MDR, I didn't add any additional gratuities for those unknown waiters. We added tips to each of our specialty restaurant bills for those waiters since I wasn't sure if they received any of the gratuity amount we had prepaid for waiters. We also left some cash on the table the two evenings that we ate in the buffet.

 

It would be nice if Celebrity would make prepaying of gratuities optional. That would allow those who want to prepay them to do so but allow those of us who would like to use OBC for gratuities to do that. I guess as others have said, Celebrity (and their sister line, Royal Caribbean) has a policy that gratuities must be prepaid and we either have to live with that or take our business elsewhere.

[CantanaLobo]

I think it's the same reason those statutes got built on Easter Island. No one really knows why, but it probably seemed like a good idea at the time, and it's now too much trouble to change. So it just sits there, generating endless questions about why.

[AlaskaGolden]

When we took our first Royal Caribbean cruise, we opted for Fixed Dining since I was totally opposed to paying the gratuities months before the cruise. :eek:

 

Then I realized it really didn't matter; didn't care for Fixed Dining since we tried every specialty restaurant on Oasis. We wished we had pre-paid the gratuities before the cruise and had "Anytime" Dining. Lesson Learned!

 

One positive, it makes the bill at the end of cruise reasonable if you pre-pay gratuities. In addition, you can also pre-pay the ship's excursions, specialty restaurants and drink packages. Of course, if you have a large OBC you may not want to do all of this! :)

[Grumpy100]

We like the prepaid gratutities and also like the select dining. We also always try to get the same waiters every night if we find them to be really good as we always go when they first open and request them again if they were good the previous night. Therefore, if this works out then we usually tip them extra at the end of the cruise to include the waiter and his assistant.

[CPT Trips]

:rolleyes:

If you do not like the system book with another cruise line

Gratuities on a 15 day is $180, the interest on the gratuities is peanut compared to trip

 

And if they switched to prepaid for all cruisers, it would average out to about $1/4 million per ship a week fleet wide. That becomes real money.

 

There is no reason. It's just X's policy. If you choose Select dining, you pre-pay gratuities. You'll drive yourself nuts trying to figure out "why" a company policy is what it is. Someone, somewhere, thought it was a good idea... and enough people agreed.

 

Sounds like a winner . . .

[New Hampshire]

Could it be that they didn't want everyone to switch to Select dining' date=' so they thought that prepaid tips would deter some pax from this choice???[/quote']

 

This is the reason I always suspected was behind the pre-paid gratuities for Select Dining. They have to limit the number of reservations for Select because of the DR space available for it. There are enough people who object to pre- paying that it narrows the population who choose it.

[Oville]

It may be a systems issue. RCI was the first to implement open seating, MTD. Until recently gratuities on RCI were not added to your sea pass account daily so it made since to have MTD prepaid gratuities as you are not guaranteed the same wait team every night. Celebrity piggybacking off their system may be the answer to why.

[jagoffee]

I believe that the main reason that cruise lines do not precharge or make gratuities mandatory (service charges) is for competitive and tax reasons. I suspect that since the Select dining is a choice by the cruiser and it cannot be removed they are still able to not show it when advertising the price for the cruise (competitive reasons) and perhaps avoid the negative tax consequences. I suspect the main reason that it cannot be paid once on board is the possibility of requests to remove the charges.

 

But the real bottom line is that they do it because they can. I personally enjoy Select dining and although I do not have any issue with the mandatory charge I would rather use my OBC to pay for it. But sense I always spend money anyway it does not usually matter. With the 123 drink package it might be more of a challenge for me.

[cruzsnooze]

Best solution is to take an assigned early seating which is in high demand with a wait list. When you board you can easily change to select dining and then you get your dining preference and haven't had to prepay so you could use the OBC. it works for us.

[Lsimon]

There has never been a clear explanation of why the select must be prepaid and I suspect there never will be. It is just simply the policy of the cruise line and providing a "reason" wouldn't benefit Celebrity.

 

This has been a frequent topic of discussion here on Cruise critic and while there has been lots of speculation about the reason there has never been an official explanation.

[Gig103]

Best solution is to take an assigned early seating which is in high demand with a wait list. When you board you can easily change to select dining and then you get your dining preference and haven't had to prepay so you could use the OBC. it works for us.

 

Ooh, clever! :)

 

I feel like we've had this conversation, and it's probably held on Carnival and RCL forums too. It's just a policy they put into place, and my thoughts are that it's to reduce demand, but it might have to do with employee morale in the Select seating - they know they're getting guaranteed tips.

 

Anyone who has dined in Blu knows that it isn't required by their computer system, since AQ guests don't prepay tips but have anytime dining.

[dread_pirate]

Best solution is to take an assigned early seating which is in high demand with a wait list. When you board you can easily change to select dining and then you get your dining preference and haven't had to prepay so you could use the OBC. it works for us.

Is that true? It's easy to move to Select from traditional? The worst that could happen to us would be to get stuck with early seating!

[New Hampshire]

Best solution is to take an assigned early seating which is in high demand with a wait list. When you board you can easily change to select dining and then you get your dining preference and haven't had to prepay so you could use the OBC. it works for us.

 

On some sailings, there is high demand for Select Dining and therefore a wait list. No one can board with he assumption they can choose Select Dining once onboard.