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Cash/tips


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We are going on a 7 day eastern Caribbean cruise on Harmony in August. The gratuities are pre paid along with most of everything we can prepay. At the start of the cruise we want to tip the head wait staff, our wait staff, and our cabin steward. We also want to tip the bartenders beyond the gratuities on the deluxe drink package. We are also doing two excursions. The problem is we don’t know what is a decent tip beyond what is already paid. We don’t want to offend anyone with a tip that is too low. Also how much cash need to have on hand do you think is typical for a 7 day Caribbean cruise?

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Most people tip at the end but that's up to you. Many prefer to base their tips on quality of service.

I don't think you can offend anyone as not everyone will tip anything extra to some of these crew members so they are likely appreciative of anything reasonable.

I don't want to suggest amounts as I feel that's a very personal decision based on various factors other than the $1/drink for bartenders is fairly standard.

EDIT: Matt beat me to most of what I said. (Must be a Horizon West thing. 🙂)

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40 minutes ago, OCSC Mike said:

Most people tip at the end but that's up to you. Many prefer to base their tips on quality of service.

I could tip the extra at the end. I’m a little rusty. I don’t think I’ve been on Royal Caribbean since they got rid of skeet shooting. I also plan on tipping extra no matter the quality of service. There could be reasons if the service is not the very best, they could be having a bad day or maybe they’re homesick and no matter what, they are assisting me and the least I can do is appreciate the effort.

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I normally tip the porters $2/bag which is usually 2 smallish bags, we don't pack crazy. That's cash I have to bring. If there is a shuttle driver I'll tip them $2 as well if it is a group of people they are transporting.

Bartenders 75% of the time I'll let the auto grat stand. It is 18%, so that's over $2 already automatically. If I'm really hammering them or if they are extra nice to me or funny I'll tip more on the slips.

Tour shuttle drivers I'll tip $5, tour guide $5. 

Then I'll have like $50 in cash that I'll split somehow between my waiters in MDR and cabin steward, depending on who I think did more on like a sliding scale. 

I'm no star class passenger so I don't have a ton extra to throw around but I do budget like $75-$100 in cash just for tips.

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