Carnival Cruise Lines has raised their standard gratuities to $11.50 a day, up from $10 a day. Even with this small raise, Carnival is still below the $12 a day that most cruise lines charge (Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, Princess etc). The new gratuities are broken up as follows and are charged to each guest’s Sail & Sign account.
- $3.70 per day for stateroom services
- $5.80 per day for dining room services
- $2.00 per day for alternative services: distributed to kitchen, entertainment, guest services and other hotel staff members.
Gratuities for the “Cruises to Nowhere” must be prepaid and are $11.50 per guest.
Cruise lines have switched to the automatic billing of gratuities to a set amount per day and has been extremely popular among guests. The daily fees can be adjusted if you feel that the service that you received was not up to the level of service that you felt should have been offered. Remember, the crew works extremely hard on board 7 day a week for up to 6 months at a time. Some cruisers forget that when they try to get the gratuities completely taken off of their account.
An earlier article from Cruise Fever, Cruise Tipping 101, explains in more detail the process of tipping when taking a cruise.
