Are gratuities right for the Brits?

As a Brit I am fully aware of our nations opinion as a whole on tipping.

It has never been in our culture, and unlike most US trends it has not yet filtered it’s way across the Atlantic as other trends do, not yet anyway.

There are some cruise companies that do not charge at any point for gratuities such as Thomson cruises, about as British as you can get.

Another British company, P&O however do charge gratuities and from feed back clients find it hard to have it taken off their on board account. Gratuities should always be optional so to have the purser dig their heels when asking for this to be removed is quite wrong.

Our big American friends at sea will always charge.

Princess charge $11.50pppd, Oceania $15pppd (although quite often have a campaign that pays for this free), Royal Caribbean charge $12pppd and Celebrity $11.50pppd. All these prices are based on the lead cabin.

Should gratuities be charged per person per day? A big reason why I think not is when you have a family of 4. For example Celebrity charge of $11.50pppd, times by a 14 night cruise equals $644 for a family, regardless of how old the passengers may be, you could have an infant being charged the same amount as the adults. Now the cabin next door may only have 2 passengers, have exactly the same size cabin, have the same cabin boy and yet pay $322 for their gratuities for the duration of the cruise. Does not seem right to me.

Here’s another ingredient to add to this mix.

From March 1st all NCL passengers will see their bill for gratuities rise from $12pppd to $12.95pppd. Is inflation not going down?

Will this set the trend for all the other cruise lines to start increasing their gratuity fee?

Don’t get me wrong, I always pay gratuities but never on my account. The ship staff I encounter are excellent and work so hard for their small salary, It should not be up to the passenger to subsidize the staffs salary but unfortunately that is the way it is.

What do you think to paying gratuities?

Is the system right?

Is it time that gratuities are increased?

Let me know.