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Cash tipping while on board?


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The pre-paid gratuities include your cabin steward, main dining room staff and everyone else associated with those two areas behind the scenes. Tipping anything additional is always appreciated. 

If you purchased dining or a drink package, gratuities were included there as well. Any food or beverages you pay ala carte for onboard will have an 18% gratuity added.  Again, tipping anything additional is always appreciated.

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Our general guide that we use is

Cabin attendant - $50-100 (more if the kids are with us)

MDR - $20-40/each server

Bartenders - $1/drink, or if we're going to be there a while, $5 with first drink. 

Room Service - $5

We also leave $3-5-ish on the table in the Windjammer if we eat there.

We also tip excursion guides and wait staff at all inclusive resorts. We pack a bunch of different denominations. 

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2 hours ago, new2cruzing said:

So it sounds like $2 a pop on top of the prepaid gratuities wouldn't be considered "too little" just for the heck of it, thanks Ashley.

Correct, for drinks that aren't already compensated (e.g., unlimited beverage packages, if you drink a lot, or Diamond coupons that you use).  If you are paying for a drink a la carte, including coffee or other non-alcoholic drinks, you can just round up on the receipt you sign with your SeaPass.  Anything you pay for has 18% marked up already.

When we calculate the extra tips we may leave for a Stateroom Attendant or Wait Staff, we consider the length of the cruise.  For a 7-night cruise, we tip in the $20-$30 range as we know what the staff are already receiving from the daily gratuities; we are rounding up from 18% to 20-25% for excellent service.

But you don't need to tip extra, and I wouldn't say it is "expected", just appreciated as already noted.  We find it is valuable to get to know Royal staff members, and if we get to know them, we are inclined to tip more.  Other travelers prefer to keep their crew interactions at arm's length.  Many personal and cultural factors come into play.

 

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We always tip cash for our drinks at least a $1 per drink. The staff does not think it is too little and are very eager to find us and collect again (It has given us many a "forgotten" drink charge). We also give "extra" treats in the form of small bags of chocolate bars. These really get us extra service and time with the crew as it is more personal than money and is something they can enjoy alone or share. These get us noticed on repeat cruises which makes our time onboard more enjoyable. When my wife took our younger adult son on a cruise this past spring he was amazed and asked if everyone on the ship knew who she was. For these folks who are serving on a ship for 9 months, any gratuity monetary or otherwise, is greatly appreciated.

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There are lots of different opinions.  If I hit the lottery, I would hand everyone $100 bills.  I have not hit the lottery and I work for a school district, so I am limited on my funds.  Everything you purchase has 18% gratuity added on.  If you give them $1 for a $10 drink, you are increasing their tip to 28%.  If you give them $2 you are tipping 38%.  You can also look at it the other way that $1 or $2 is nothing to you but it means a lot to them.  The short answer is money is relative to how much you have.

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We typically will tip $50 to our cabin steward for a 7 day cruise on top of prepaid tips. We often will greet and give half on the first day as this insures excellent service. We typically tip our wait staff much lower do to inconsistent service. However, we received excellent service during our July cruise on Allure so tipped $40 to the waiter and $30 to the assistant. 

We’re not convinced prepaid tips are allocated accurately for the way we cruise so we like to share a bit extra.

My mother as always tipped extra on drinks and had the similar experience of extra attentiveness.

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On 8/12/2022 at 4:20 PM, Momof4crazytocruise said:

Our general guide that we use is

Cabin attendant - $50-100 (more if the kids are with us)

MDR - $20-40/each server

Bartenders - $1/drink, or if we're going to be there a while, $5 with first drink. 

Room Service - $5

We also leave $3-5-ish on the table in the Windjammer if we eat there.

We also tip excursion guides and wait staff at all inclusive resorts. We pack a bunch of different denominations. 

This is all great advice.

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On 8/14/2022 at 8:42 AM, Bryan S said:

We typically will tip $50 to our cabin steward for a 7 day cruise on top of prepaid tips. We often will greet and give half on the first day as this insures excellent service. We typically tip our wait staff much lower do to inconsistent service. However, we received excellent service during our July cruise on Allure so tipped $40 to the waiter and $30 to the assistant. 

We’re not convinced prepaid tips are allocated accurately for the way we cruise so we like to share a bit extra.

My mother as always tipped extra on drinks and had the similar experience of extra attentiveness.

I agree with you about giving some to the cabin steward on the first day. Then the rest towards the end of the cruise. I have been doing this on the last 3 cruises since the restart. I feet the service has been better. I give the steward between $5 and $15 a day depending on the type of cabin.

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I believe on our last cruise I did the following...  We did my time dining and also specialty dining so never had the same wait staff.

5 dollars at every breakfast

10 dollars at every lunch

20 dollars at every dinner.

Dollar a drink or more at once if we were at the bar for awhile. 

100 dollars to the room attendant.   Seemed to work out well for us. 

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I totally agree about tipping cabin steward on first day.  They've worked hard to turn that room over in a short time.  I always say "Thank you for having everything so perfect for me" and tip about $20.  I think this lets them know their efforts are and will be appreciated over the rest of the cruise, which in turn seems to lead to wonderful service.

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I echo do what you can afford. An extra $1-2 will be enough. My grandmother likes to say, "it's a dollar you didn't have!"........and in retrospect those dollars add up. Some people can afford to do $100 to this person, $50 to that one and $20 each to the dinning staff. While someone else may just have $100 in total for all tips.

I believe that you should do what makes you feel comfortable. I usually give the attendant something the first day as I always want fresh ice. It's the only request I have as I am a pretty low maintenance guest. Then I tip them at the end, everyone else get tipped as I go.

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We have traveled with Mrs Fan's family.  Her parents (now deceased) loved to cruise but were getting feeble in their old age.  The final cruise we went on (another line), they booked into an accessible cabin that was on another floor from the rest of us.  I tipped the steward for their room $50 on day 1 and asked them to keep an eye on them for any needs and to ring me if there were any problems or issues.  The steward was great and checked in on them from time to time, kept their ice bucket filled, brought them bottled water and more. My MIL was like "the cabin steward is the best we've ever had - he is always looking out for us and helping."  My BIL gave him another $50 at the end of the sailing.

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One thing that I love about cruise staff is they are appreciate any extra money you hand them.  A lot of their money they earn they send home.  But when you tip them cash they usually save that and when in port and they get out they can go out and buy snacks, or gifts for their families back home, so they are usually grateful.  If you tip the right person like a bartender that makes you a drink they will remember you and make you a really nice drink the next time you come up and even remember what you drink. 

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I do the following and generally wait to the end of a typical 7-day cruise (note, I am generally on the Deluxe Bev Pckg)

Stateroom attendant (just 2 adults that keep a clean room) - $20 on 1st sea day and then anywhere from $20-$50 on last full day (in evening for turn-down) depending on how good the service was

Waiter / Asst. Waiter - $20-$40 ea (in envelope to avoid alienating the other tablemates as I don't discuss tipping with them typically) depending on how they handled us during the week - fast but efficient (and correct) gets a little more, slow and non-attentive gets less but they always get something (I haven't had consistently bad service on board and if I do during 1st night, I ask to change tables like I did when one of the servers was doused in very cheap aftershave that gave me a headache)

Bartenders / drink waiters - If I park in a lounge for a majority of the week, on the last night I'll go in and spread the tips among the entire staff - again, drink package has the gratuity built in but I will give them extra.  I spread around about $100 in the Boot and Bonnet on Harmony last time including the entertainer.  Otherwise, if I hit a place a few times throughout, they'll get $5-$10 if they remember me (I'm hard to forget) and make the drinks good.

I don't tend to take tours but if I do, depending on the service, $5-20 for two of us.  A bus driver that picks up and drops off gets less.  A guided tour with someone that engages the whole time gets more.

 

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The additional tipping varies for each & every guest. There is no right or wrong answer and I’m sure the crew is grateful for anything in addition to the auto gratuities or the 18% added to your bar tab. To just throw something out there I would say $1 extra per drink with exceptional and attentive service and maybe $100 extra to the stateroom attendant on a 7 day voyage (more for suite attendant and royal genie in star class). I end up tipping more cash up front (maybe $200 or so) to the attendant because my young children make a mess and I feel guilty. I’m actually curious if people tip upfront cash like I do or wait until the end of the cruise? 

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I’m wondering what they get from the included gratuities and since some have indicated staff has no way of knowing if we prepaid gratuities do they not recognize that it’s an additional tip and do they think it’s “cheap” if it is less than what they get from our prepaid gratuities, thinking they aren’t getting those prepaid gratuities too…

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