Curious About Tips

[EngIceDave]

I didn't want to brag, but we usually do $51with a $2 bill... some local Disney souvenirs, local chocolate potato chips from Grimaldi's,... a John Deere hat, a "NASA" t-shirt, a bottle of local hot sauce, can of Black Truffle Pringles and a long distance calling card.

[sparks1093]

43 minutes ago, mz-s said:

 

Yeah JH may just be pandering when he says it but any time gratuities are mentioned he says the number of guests that remove gratuities and pay nothing is quite small.

It is my understanding that if more than 10% of the customers remove the tips on any particular sailing shipboard management has to answer to Corporate and the presumption is that the customers were dissatisfied with the service in some way (I believe passengers are asked the reason for removing/reducing the tips and of course one would expect their answer may be a self-serving one). The impression that I get is that it rarely approaches that number. In any event every cruise line has a pretty good idea what is normal and what is abnormal in this area based on their actual records.

[Lee Cruiser]

3 hours ago, sparks1093 said:

Again, the advantage of a tip pool is that it minimizes the impact to any one employee. 

Now I'm curious about another thing.  Do you know if the individuals stewards / others get to keep all of the extra tips we give them or do they go to a pool as well?

[mz-s]

Just now, Lee Cruiser said:

Now I'm curious about another thing.  Do you know if the individuals stewards / others get to keep all of the extra tips we give them or do they go to a pool as well?

 

The last time that question was asked people offered explanations from other cruise lines but no hard evidence about Carnival's policies. The lack of transparency is concerning and frankly one reason why some people remove their gratuities.

[sparks1093]

17 minutes ago, Lee Cruiser said:

Now I'm curious about another thing.  Do you know if the individuals stewards / others get to keep all of the extra tips we give them or do they go to a pool as well?

 

13 minutes ago, mz-s said:

 

The last time that question was asked people offered explanations from other cruise lines but no hard evidence about Carnival's policies. The lack of transparency is concerning and frankly one reason why some people remove their gratuities.

Actually this is a question that Heald has answered numerous times and it is always that the employee keeps any extra tip. If a customer removes the tips and tips in cash it is my understanding they have to turn that in (and again, that's something discerned from reading a lot). Carnival is transparent at the "point of sale" for anyone who wants to know and removing tips because of lack of transparency is one of the silliest reasons I've heard for doing that. That's like saying "I'm not going to leave a tip for my waitress because I don't know who gets a share of it". 

[Elaine5715]

3 hours ago, mz-s said:

 

Yeah JH may just be pandering when he says it but any time gratuities are mentioned he says the number of guests that remove gratuities and pay nothing is quite small.

Here is what JH wrote on a crew focused site about grats https://crew-center.com/carnivals-senior-cruise-director-we-need-look-closely-removing-crew-gratuities 

[Elaine5715]

1 hour ago, Lee Cruiser said:

Now I'm curious about another thing.  Do you know if the individuals stewards / others get to keep all of the extra tips we give them or do they go to a pool as well?

Yes, if the auto grats are paid, they get to get any additional. 

[SmoothFlying]

3 minutes ago, Elaine5715 said:

Yes, if the auto grats are paid, they get to get any additional. 

I have read here, on this topic, on another thread. That they (the steward) has to report the 'extra' tip. My wife has always given extra, usually between $100-150 on the last night but has never even thought to ask if this is true.. She had just considered this 'extra' besides the auto tip, a personal sign of how much we both appreciated great service. Does anybody know for sure if they do have to report the cash 'gift'. Thanks,

 

Mac

[Elaine5715]

11 minutes ago, SmoothFlying said:

I have read here, on this topic, on another thread. That they (the steward) has to report the 'extra' tip. My wife has always given extra, usually between $100-150 on the last night but has never even thought to ask if this is true.. She had just considered this 'extra' besides the auto tip, a personal sign of how much we both appreciated great service. Does anybody know for sure if they do have to report the cash 'gift'. Thanks,

 

Mac

No, they don't need to do a thing unless the auto tips were removed.  

[SmoothFlying]

3 hours ago, Elaine5715 said:

No, they don't need to do a thing unless the auto tips were removed.  

  Whewwww ! (Sigh of relief) Thank you soo much !! We are so happy that ugly rumor was just that., we couldn't believe it was true. However, you never know when it comes to $$ what people are willing to do 

 

Mac

[mz-s]

I'm not so sure about that because crew are never shown a list of who has removed tips if we are believing what JH says.

 

In any event it doesn't matter. People should do what they want with gratuities and tipping. The money will be split or it will be kept. Once you hand it over to Carnival or the crew you lose control of it at that point.

[Elaine5715]

29 minutes ago, mz-s said:

I'm not so sure about that because crew are never shown a list of who has removed tips if we are believing what JH says.

 

In any event it doesn't matter. People should do what they want with gratuities and tipping. The money will be split or it will be kept. Once you hand it over to Carnival or the crew you lose control of it at that point.

Of course, crew are shown a list. Their list also has your picture. They also live with the people who work Guest Services and you give your friends a "heads up".

[jimbo5544]

4 minutes ago, Elaine5715 said:

Of course, crew are shown a list. Their list also has your picture. They also live with the people who work Guest Services and you give your friends a "heads up".

As they should

[ColeThornton]

So many myths, speculation and "I know how it works for sure" in these tipping threads.  So many people who claim the crew tell them exactly how it works yet another who claims the same thing has different information.

 

Not something I'll lose any sleep over.   😉

 

 

[UserAndCruiser]

On 5/23/2023 at 9:08 AM, hard_eight said:

My favorite time is giving everyone at Guest Services the stink eye when they're down there pulling tips on the last night.

There are a lot of reasons to remove tips. For example, we were in a very large group for a wedding party and they charged an automatic 18% gratuity at the time of booking for the entire party - and then on the second to last day of the cruise charged everyone in the party AGAIN! I’m not paying double tips. We had them removed. 

[mz-s]

15 minutes ago, Elaine5715 said:

Of course, crew are shown a list. Their list also has your picture. They also live with the people who work Guest Services and you give your friends a "heads up".

 

You're calling JH a liar? I know this is a source of a source but I can attest to reading the exact same words on Heald's facebook page back when he mentioned it so it is a direct quote. https://www.cruisehive.com/carnival-cruise-line-offers-details-on-how-gratuities-are-shared/99286

[BlerkOne]

7 minutes ago, UserAndCruiser said:

There are a lot of reasons to remove tips. For example, we were in a very large group for a wedding party and they charged an automatic 18% gratuity at the time of booking for the entire party - and then on the second to last day of the cruise charged everyone in the party AGAIN! I’m not paying double tips. We had them removed. 

There is a gratuity associated with the wedding and a gratuity associated with the cruise. The two are not related.

[UserAndCruiser]

1 hour ago, BlerkOne said:

There is a gratuity associated with the wedding and a gratuity associated with the cruise. The two are not related.

Double gratuity? That doesn’t make sense. We paid 18% on our cabin, on drinks, on every specialty restaurant, and tipped our cabin steward and the servers (drinks and dining) cash in addition. Why would we pay more gratuities? Seems like we’re being asked to pay the salaries that carnival doesn’t want to pay. What was the original 18% gratuity for? 

[BlerkOne]

4 minutes ago, UserAndCruiser said:

Double gratuity? That doesn’t make sense. We paid 18% on our cabin, on drinks, on every specialty restaurant, and tipped our cabin steward and the servers (drinks and dining) cash in addition. Why would we pay more gratuities? Seems like we’re being asked to pay the salaries that carnival doesn’t want to pay. What was the original 18% gratuity for? 

Weddings are an extra charge and there is a gratuity associated with that. Why? Because not everyone attending a cruise wedding goes on the cruise.

[UserAndCruiser]

8 minutes ago, BlerkOne said:

Weddings are an extra charge and there is a gratuity associated with that. Why? Because not everyone attending a cruise wedding goes on the cruise.

This was not the wedding ceremony tip. It wasn’t my wedding, i was just a guest. My boyfriend just clarified that we prepaid our gratuities, not 18% but the standard rate. But then they added them again. So that’s why he removed them and they did so without hesitation since it was their mistake. Either way, you never know why someone is removing gratuities. Best not to judge. 

[BlerkOne]

9 hours ago, Lee Cruiser said:

Now I'm curious about another thing.  Do you know if the individuals stewards / others get to keep all of the extra tips we give them or do they go to a pool as well?

We know nothing, but speculate endlessly. Carnival used to provide a breakdown, but then pulled it, probably because of pulled tips. You can be sure that there isn't much difference between how traditional cruise lines deal with gratuities. These are not tips like you might leave in a restaurant, based on a percentage of the bill.

[AHS123]

1 hour ago, UserAndCruiser said:

This was not the wedding ceremony tip. It wasn’t my wedding, i was just a guest. My boyfriend just clarified that we prepaid our gratuities, not 18% but the standard rate. But then they added them again. So that’s why he removed them and they did so without hesitation since it was their mistake. Either way, you never know why someone is removing gratuities. Best not to judge. 

Glad your BF cleared this up. Your story goes to show that tipping can be confusing and it's easy to make assumptions. Thanks

[BlerkOne]

1 hour ago, UserAndCruiser said:

This was not the wedding ceremony tip. It wasn’t my wedding, i was just a guest. My boyfriend just clarified that we prepaid our gratuities, not 18% but the standard rate. But then they added them again. So that’s why he removed them and they did so without hesitation since it was their mistake. Either way, you never know why someone is removing gratuities. Best not to judge. 

If you were double charged, then I wouldn't classify that as pulling tips, but correcting an accounting error.

[imacruiser99]

Question for the group,

If Carnival, or any other cruise line, would totally eliminate the need for tips, gratuities or whatever you want to call them, but raise their base fares to cover them so that the crew could earn a decent wage for the hours they expend to make our cruise experience pleasurable

1) would you still book with the cruise line knowing that the fare you are paying is now increased potentially significantly?

2) Would you still tip additional amounts if the service warranted an extra amount?

3) Be more prone to register complaints on service if the crew was not living up to expectations?

 

 

 

 

[icft]

1 minute ago, imacruiser99 said:

Question for the group,

If Carnival, or any other cruise line, would totally eliminate the need for tips, gratuities or whatever you want to call them, but raise their base fares to cover them so that the crew could earn a decent wage for the hours they expend to make our cruise experience pleasurable

1) would you still book with the cruise line knowing that the fare you are paying is now increased potentially significantly?

2) Would you still tip additional amounts if the service warranted an extra amount?

3) Be more prone to register complaints on service if the crew was not living up to expectations?

 

 

 

 

We already consider them part of the base fare. While we don't consider them tips we still wouldn't want them to build them into the base fare. That would just mean that in a year or two Carnival would start all over again with "tips" on top of the new, higher, base fare. Better to stay with the current game playing than to open up more games.