Question about automatic gratuities

[Amandine]

Some of my kids will be rooming with their grandparents. I want to cover their share of the gratuities, of course. During online check-in, however, it asked me which people go with whose payment responsibilities, which I hadn't expected.

Will the automatic gratuity charges for the kids be charged to the room they're staying in -- which would make sense -- or to the person I select as responsible for their charges -- which would also make sense?

 

[Amandine]

My apologies for the *second* double post of the night. My internet is awful tonight and persists in not doing anything for 5 minutes at a time, then apparently thinks it should do it twice to make up for lost time. If anyone wants to tell me how to delete the extras I will, but so far I don't see how.

 

[michellekcm]

Gratuities get charged to the person - so whoever is responsible for the accounts of your kids will get charged. On the last day each room will get an itemised bill of all charges by person. So that bill will go to the grandparent's room. However the actual charges will go to whichever credit card is on file for each individual. I always put my card on for my kids in this situation, and whilst my mother gets the itemised bill, I get the charges.

Hope that made sense - I'm a bit tired tonight.

 

[Cackyschmackers]

I'm not sure if this is what you're asking or what you'd want to do, but you can prepay the gratuities. You can also prepay for some shipboard credit. So maybe between those two options, you can prepay your kids' share of the room's gratuities. This isn't exactly the same, but on our upcoming cruise, we have two rooms (both are my own family's) but we have OBC we are splitting up percentage-wise to cover gratuities. We requested putting 40% in one room and 60% in the other, which perfectly covers each person's gratuities. Either way, hope this helps a bit!

 

[Amandine]

Thanks, that is what I was asking and what I wanted to do. I had asked the TA to allocate the onboard credits so that part of my share went to my parents' stateroom instead of mine so as to cover the auto gratuities -- but it sounds like should readjust that since they give me the option of putting the kids on my own charge card. Thank you!

 

[Evoga]

Talking of automatic gratuities, I was just talking with someone last week who told me they are going on their first Disney cruise from Barcelona and the top tip they received from a few veteran cruisers was to straight away head to the main reception and cancel the automatic gratuities.

I hope they have a good cruise.

 

[mmouse37]

I don't understand canceling the automatic gratuities. Unless I have really, really, really, bad service I am still paying the base gratuities. Thank goodness I have never had really, really, really bad service. Quite the opposite....I have always had excellent service so I usually tip above the base gratuities with cash in the envelopes as well as the vouchers.

MJ

 

[elvispursley]

Wow! Did you give this person any additional advice or views on gratuities since they were a first-time cruiser?

 

[wilkeliza]

OP just want to make sure we are all understanding what you mean.

When you say "auto gratuities" do you mean the nightly fee that will go to your servers and room steward or do you mean the things automatically added to bills at like the coffee shop or bars (where kids may pick up soda that costs etc)?

If you mean the flat fee auto gratuities you should say you are paying for your children and then those will be charged to them and thus you. If you are talking about the other types of tips if your parents split the check and put the kids charges under their name and the grandparents charges under grandparents then you'll still be charged the price of whatever they are buying plus the tip.

 

[Amandine]

I meant the nightly fee. Michellecm's reply clarified it for me very well and I have it all set up correctly now

I didn't know that for coffee shop, etc. you could request a split tab. Thanks for the info!

 

[TestingH2O]

Talking of automatic gratuities, I was just talking with someone last week who told me they are going on their first Disney cruise from Barcelona and the top tip they received from a few veteran cruisers was to straight away head to the main reception and cancel the automatic gratuities.

I hope they have a good cruise.

Why did the person consider this a top tip? Did the veteran cruiser explain why s/he made this suggestion?

 

[Kontos]

Why did the person consider this a top tip? Did the veteran cruiser explain why s/he made this suggestion?

Probably feels like the servers/stateroom hosts work harder to please you since they hear about it when tips are removed or reduced

 

[cmwade77]

Probably feels like the servers/stateroom hosts work harder to please you since they hear about it when tips are removed or reduced

They then essentially wonder what they did wrong to deserve removing tips, please don't do this.

That being said, I like some other cruise lines idea of simply including base tips into the cruise price and allowing you to tip extra if you so desire, but not suggesting you do so. They are doing this because of how many travelers they are getting from countries where tipping isn't the norm, but I love the idea.

Really if service is bad enough that you would want to remove tips, talk to guest services and they will fix the problem.

 

[GeneralTso]

We plan on doing the automatic gratuity. Why wouldn't we?

 

[Amandine]

We plan on doing the automatic gratuity. Why wouldn't we?

You should. There are some pretty ugly threads here where people talk about not tipping to save money, but it seems that most people are very firmly in favor of considering the automatic gratuity a minimum.

My post was not intended to stir up that debate at all, but was entirely about logistics, since I will have kids split between 3 different staterooms. My goal was to understand how the automatic gratuities get allocated when a family is in multiple staterooms, so that I could get our onboard credit amounts set up correctly

 

[cmwade77]

We plan on doing the automatic gratuity. Why wouldn't we?

I see no reason not to, the people that get tipped work extremely hard to make sure you have an amazing experience, like I said if service is bad enough that you would want to take gratuities off you should have spoke with guest services before you ever got to feeling like that.

Really it amazes me when I see people saying they are going to take off gratuities, but there are people that do.

 

[Dug720]

You should. There are some pretty ugly threads here where people talk about not tipping to save money, but it seems that most people are very firmly in favor of considering the automatic gratuity a minimum.

My post was not intended to stir up that debate at all, but was entirely about logistics, since I will have kids split between 3 different staterooms. My goal was to understand how the automatic gratuities get allocated when a family is in multiple staterooms, so that I could get our onboard credit amounts set up correctly

Honestly in a set-up like yours, to me that is the perfect time to pre-pay them prior to the cruise. That way there will be no confusion and possible chance of having to take time from your vacation to deal with it at guest services.

 

[MakiraMarlena]

A lot of cruisers prefer not to pay gratuities via the ship and just do them as they go, so they remove all the gratuities that the cruise line adds. The cruise lines started adding them to the bill because passengers were stiffing the crew members, especially those who aren't used to tipping. Not saying that everyone who removes the gratuities right off plans to stiff the crew members; in fact a lot of them may end up tipping more. But knowing how cruises work, I'm partial to leaving the minimum on the bill and adding more if necessary. and if I get abysmal service, I'll deal with it then. The crew shouldn't have to work harder to please me. They should do a good job, and if they work harder, then they'll get more.

 

[Evoga]

Why did the person consider this a top tip? Did the veteran cruiser explain why s/he made this suggestion?

I am only guessing it's because I am from the UK and the regular cruisers here always cruise around Europe. It's still normal here to only tip if you have exceptional service.

Has anyone tried the tip I saw online of writing a certain sentence on the receipt in America so that 100% of the tip goes to the server and the tax man doesn't get any? I wish I could remember the actual sentence that you write on it but my memory is terrible.

 

[MakiraMarlena]

Yeah I understand that reacting in that fashion to the cruise line's added tips is pretty normal in the UK, where tipping isn't generally expected, and many will expect something extraordinary if they are going to tip for it.

As for the sentence I don't think that works. The only way to do that is to pay cash...and the server is still supposed to declare their tip income for taxation.