Interliners and their family & friends sailing on Norwegian Cruise Line will now find it harder to remove the daily service charge from their onboard accounts.
Previously passengers could have the daily service charge removed at their request by visiting the Guest Relations desk.
Effective immediately guests will be required to pay the daily service charge upfront and email guest services with NCL when they get home to have the gratuities rebated back if unsatisfied and state the issues they had that require the refund.
To get your gratuities adjusted Guest Services will deal with those passengers who actually have service issues and not have to put up with those that want to reduce the amount they pay out because they don’t want to pay for service.
The daily service charges is for the workers on the ships such as cabin stewards, waiters, bar tenders and other employees and is distributed to all of the the crew after the sailing is over.
Currently Norwegian’s daily service charge is set at $13.50 per person, per day on all ships.
The change of policy applies to everyone sailing Norwegian Cruise Lines, not just interliners.
For more information on the interline rates on Norwegian Cruise Lines click here.
If you have questions or want to book an NCL cruise contact InterlineTravel.com at 800 766-2911 and as usual there are NO Booking Fees!
$13.50×7=94.50 per person for a 7 night cruise. Let’s say there is 1,000 crew, each crew member would get $0.09. Why would someone begrudge that?
Not sure all crew get to split the tips but unfortunately a lot of people will stiff the crew on the tips and many walk off the ship paying nothing.
Why would anyone take a cruise and think they should not tip. Don’t these people tip in restaurants either..???
If there is a particular employee that you had a problem with, that should be addressed to guest services desk, don’t deny the entire ship of tips earned…!!!!!
I have seen people tell the desk they choose not to tip. Disgraceful.
If you HAVE to pay it, it’s not a “gratuity”, it’s just an element of the fare. I automatically figure the “tips” into the cost of a cruise.
Frankly, we have had some really bad service by various employees in different areas over the years. It has been my policy to opt out of the auto tip and tip those handsomely, that I am directly involved with on a daily basis…usually give the room staff, depending on length of cruise $100 or $200 up front…and the other half at the end. We mostly, being old, stay in the room and eat there a lot too. Ledo staff we leave with the Purser desk, written instructions what to charge to our card. NO MORE NCLs for us.
I prefer to tip individually as we may not even use the dining room and yet my mandatory “tip” goes to a maitre d? Its false advertising and a misleading practice that is unfortunately used in more and more industries. “resort fee” at a 2 star hotel, “dealer fee” at a car dealer, and the fee’s airlines charge are embarrassing too. It’s all just added profit on top of a low advertised price. The mandatory tip has gone up much faster than inflation over the last 5 yrs! The cruise lines get away with paying no social security tax, no unemployment tax, no pensions or 401k, no workers comp, and little us corp income tax as their profits are deemed outside the usa…
I always add in the gratuities when calculating the total cost of my cruise. We’ve been on 50 cruises and have never had a reason not to tip. I think the cruise lines should just add the gratuities to the fare and call it a day. That should solve the problem for those that are against the mandatory up front tipping.
my wife and I have cruised more than 50 times, almost half of them on ncl. i have been very pleased generally. we have eaten in the dining room about a dozen times all total. just don’t like the “dining room experience.” we love the buffet and the generally very new employees who work there, and we don’t want our gratuities to go heavily weighted to the more senior (and higher paid) dining room waiters and maître d. we typically take the suggested daily gratuity figure from the cruise company and leave 25% on the account to contribute to the behind the scenes folks who certainly do much to make the cruise pleasant. approx. 40% goes to the room steward and the remaining 35% is distributed from $5-$20 per person among those who have made a positive impact on us during the cruise, primarily those in front of and behind the serving lines in the buffet area.
this new ncl policy was enacted midway thru our last back-to-back Alaska cruise. we were grandfathered in, but that wasn’t positively determined until the last day of the first of the cruises. it will be interesting to see if we are able to continue having the latitude (no pun intended) to continue cruising the “freestyle” way.
btw, I would always opt to place the tips in the hands of an employee who makes an effort, than into the coffers of a conglomerate who claims to be doing the “right thing” for its employees…most of whom are from 3rd (or 4th) world countries.