What's buried in those "Port taxes & fees"?

[Canuker]

What, exactly, is in those port fees that get tacked on to everyone's cruise bill?

I'm guessing some costs have to do with the ship (mooring, piloting, etc. charges) which are split among us, the payload.

Then some must be passenger specific. For example, quite by chance, I've just discovered that all cruise ship passengers arriving in Bonaire (southern Caribbean) are charged US$10, which is paid to the authorities by the cruise line.

This got me wondering, what fees are charged by which commonly visited cruise ports? This is just a WAG but I'm guessing, from the colossal number of vessels that call there, Cozumel must have relatively low government/port fees?

Bermuda, on the other hand appears to have variable charges, depending on duration of stay and even time of year.

Lastly, presumably these fees are pre-charged to passengers by the cruise lines assuming the ship sails full. What if it doesn't? Does a cruise ship pay fees based on passenger capacity or on the actual manifest of passengers at the time of docking? There would seem to be some wiggle room here.

Lastly, what might be the breakdown of what a cruise line pays for a port visit. Again, my guess, is that shipping, mooring, pilotage and tug work (i.e. vessel-focused charges) far outweight whatever the head tax on passengers might be?

[ldubs]

Good question even if my head is kind of spinning!  Haha.   

 

Considering the new pricing regulations, the part about how the fees per passenger are calculated before a headcount is known is especially interesting.

 

I look forward to reading the responses.   

[zqvol]

You can find the port charges using google and some digging. As to other fees, that’s a good question. 

[wcook]

Random trivia: By far the biggest fee a cruise ship will experience is the Panama Canal toll 

[Donald]

Those fees that are added to your cruise fare are often approximations. Many of the fees are based on actual occupancy on the day the ship visits the port. It is generally impossible to guess in advance exactly what those numbers will be.

The cruise lines use historical data from previous voyages to predict the current occupancy. They are normally very close to the actual number.

If they guess wrong, and have to pay additional amounts for the fees, they do not go to the guests and ask for more money.

[chengkp75]

This is changing dramatically with the new California pricing law.  Under the old model, the cruise lines tried to pack as much into the "port taxes and fees" as they could, since it was allowed to be broken out and not be listed as part of the advertised fare, in order to keep the advertised fare as low as possible, for marketing reasons.  This led to a class action lawsuit a couple decades ago against NCL, which limited what cruise lines could include in this "broken out" "taxes and fees".  Only charges that were true "pass through" charges from passenger to a third party could be included, and the charges needed to be "instrumental to the voyage".  This meant that charges to enter a port (pilotage, tugs, wharfage) or governmental taxes (passenger head tax) could be included, but optional things like garbage removal charges or charges for fresh water, or even port security could not be included.

 

Under the new law, since all mandatory "taxes and fees" have to be included in the advertised fare, there is less incentive for the cruise lines to "pack" the "taxes and fees".  And, since the "port taxes and fees" are refundable when a port is missed, there is now an incentive, and a way, to minimize these "port taxes and fees".  The cruise lines under Carnival Corp have now apparently reduced the "port taxes and fees" to only the charges actually paid to a governmental agency (like a port authority) such as wharfage and head tax, so that only those are refundable.  They have now created a new category "required fees and expenses", which encompasses things like tugs, pilots, and likely a lot of what was not allowed under the old "port taxes and fees".  Notice that there is no mention of "port" in this new category, so these charges are not specific to any port, and are subject to penalty if the cruise is canceled.  While everything is still listed under the full advertised price (base fare, "required fees and expenses", and "port taxes and fees"), this allows the cruise line to raise "required fees and expenses" as needed, while keeping the base fare as low as possible, and blaming the increase in cost on "others" who impose these "fees and expenses".  And, since they are no longer allowed to be broken out as "pass through" charges, there is no regulation of what these "required fees and expenses" are.

 

As to what the "port taxes and fees" used to be, and what the "port taxes and fees" + "required fees and expenses" are, some are flat rate based on ship size (length or tonnage) like wharfage or pilotage, some are based on passenger count, but all are divided up by the number of passengers.  As a previous poster has stated, if the ship does not charge passengers enough to cover the flat rate fees, they swallow the loss, but if they charge too much, sometimes they adjust these by refunds during the cruise. Breaking down what is exactly included in these charges is way too much like work for this retired mariner to do.