P & O to stop Gratuity payment from May 2019

[Rocky of London]

Hi

i was told that P & O will stop adding daily gratuity payments from May, so will cruisers pay tips like the old days.?

[zqvol]

More than likely they will just be added to the cruise fare, like on the luxury lines.

[paul929207]

I would think they would be added to the fare. Could be too many people stiffing the staff

[champagne123]

5 minutes ago, paul929207 said:

I would think they would be added to the fare. Could be too many people stiffing the staff

 

 

Agreed.  

[John Bull]

2 hours ago, Rocky of London said:

so will cruisers pay tips like the old days.?

 

....or more accurately not pay tips, like in the old days.

 

JB 

[NLH Arizona]

52 minutes ago, paul929207 said:

I would think they would be added to the fare. Could be too many people stiffing the staff

That is what happened on NCL.  They are now included in the fare in their cruises out of some countries with a non-tipping culture.  Glad they did it, since too many removed the DSC/automatic gratuities.  What I find funny, is that some from those countries said all along that it should be included in the fare and then when it was, there were complaints that the fare prices were raised.

[Krazy Kruizers]

I would expect that the cruise fares will be higher.  New cruisers won't know any difference but old timers will complain about the higher fares.

[navybankerteacher]

38 minutes ago, John Bull said:

 

....or more accurately not pay tips, like in the old days.

 

JB 

To just WHAT old days do you refer?

 

  Tipping has been customary on ship travel for the past century and a half -- and before then, nobody considered cruising to be recreational.

[John Bull]

39 minutes ago, navybankerteacher said:

To just WHAT old days do you refer?

 

  Tipping has been customary on ship travel for the past century and a half -- and before then, nobody considered cruising to be recreational.

 

You misunderstand my post, NBT.

Not disagreeing about the custom,.

But when cruising came to the great unwashed masses (like JB ), on P&O it was embarrassing how many empty seats there were in the MDR on the last night - the night you traditionally handed over envelopes to the waiters - when tightwad passengers decided to dine in the buffet. 

 

JB 

 

Edited December 1, 2018 by John Bull

[champagne123]

1 hour ago, John Bull said:

 

You misunderstand my post, NBT.

Not disagreeing about the custom,.

But when cruising came to the great unwashed masses (like JB ), on P&O it was embarrassing how many empty seats there were in the MDR on the last night - the night you traditionally handed over envelopes to the waiters - when tightwad passengers decided to dine in the buffet. 

 

JB 

 

 

I made this statement  sometime last year. ...I was BASHED on RCCL threads, with everyone telling me that it did not happen.  Well, I remember distinctly on my first RC  Explorer cruise asking our waiter where everyone was.  The dining room was EMPTY.    

[navybankerteacher]

45 minutes ago, champagne123 said:

 

I made this statement  sometime last year. ...I was BASHED on RCCL threads, with everyone telling me that it did not happen.  Well, I remember distinctly on my first RC  Explorer cruise asking our waiter where everyone was.  The dining room was EMPTY.    

 

I recall my first HAL cruise - the dining room was close to empty on the last night. I had initially naively figured everyone was busy packing - the waiter advised me that it regularly happened.  So much for the reality of people’s clam to prefer to hand tips out individually.

 

Step one was the transition to auto-tips.

 

Step two is underway - with NCL making it as difficult as possible to remove gratuities, while maintaining  their voluntary nature.

 

Step three will be a significant increase in fares, the cancellation of auto-tips, and the outrage at the cost increase expressed by many of those who now  claim they want a “decent living wage” paid to the crew.  

 

I wonder if if there will be a noticeable change in the demographic.

[jocap]

P&O confirmed that fares would not rise, and staff would not be paid less.

Not that I could ever work out the fare system anyway!

[leaveitallbehind]

37 minutes ago, jocap said:

P&O confirmed that fares would not rise, and staff would not be paid less.

Not that I could ever work out the fare system anyway!

 

Good marketing statement, but likely not reality IMO.  The way fares change from week to week on any given itinerary, and between one itinerary to another, how would anyone know if the fare was increased to include the gratuities?   And since this a change planned for a time in the future, there would be no way to know what that base fare was intended to be relative to today's fares.  (I would have to think they mean with new itineraries issued in May and after - not existing itineraries already booked and sailing after May). 

Edited December 1, 2018 by leaveitallbehind

[sloopsailor]

1 hour ago, jocap said:

P&O confirmed that fares would not rise, and staff would not be paid less.

Not that I could ever work out the fare system anyway!

 

If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.

 

Assuming a ship has 3,000 passengers, and each is charged $13 per day, that's $91 per person for a 7 day cruise. Simple math shows that this equals to about $275,000 per cruise. If the passengers aren't going to pay the tips, the cruise line will have to just to retain it's staff. That's over $14,000,000 per year loss per ship. No company would voluntarily give up that much revenue.

 

Nope, never gonna happen.  

Edited December 1, 2018 by sloopsailor

[MicCanberra]

It is likely true that all the fares that had been published at the time of the announcement would stay the same with the tips included, it will be made up in the future cruises and the lack of price drops on the existing cruises. The new cruises have much more strict cancellation and price refaring policies.

[navybankerteacher]

4 hours ago, jocap said:

P&O confirmed that fares would not rise, and staff would not be paid less.

Not that I could ever work out the fare system anyway!

 

This is a truly absurd contention.  But, I suppose credible if you consider it without thinking.  If you read “staff would not be paid less” to ONLY mean that P&O would continue to pay the same base salary, then they would not be PAID less.  Of course, their  total INCOME would be less with tips removed. 

[MicCanberra]

Possibly, but I do not believe that is what will happen. P&O Australia certainly managed fine.

[chris11256]

12 hours ago, sloopsailor said:

 

If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.

 

Assuming a ship has 3,000 passengers, and each is charged $13 per day, that's $91 per person for a 7 day cruise. Simple math shows that this equals to about $275,000 per cruise. If the passengers aren't going to pay the tips, the cruise line will have to just to retain it's staff. That's over $14,000,000 per year loss per ship. No company would voluntarily give up that much revenue.

 

Nope, never gonna happen.  

The thing to consider is that with P&O a very large portion of passengers remove the auto tips anyway.  

[sloopsailor]

4 hours ago, chris11256 said:

The thing to consider is that with P&O a very large portion of passengers remove the auto tips anyway.  

 

So, you are making excuses for a bad idea? Because some cheapskates the staff, change the policy to let all of the passengers stiff them. What a great employee appreciation program they have established. 🙄

Edited December 2, 2018 by sloopsailor

[MicCanberra]

You are arguing against yourself,

Tipping is by definition an extra amount, if the company removes the need to tip, it is not a loss as they never received it to start with, it was the staff that is not getting something that they may have got before. Most cruise lines do not sell their cabins at the brochure price, so they can easily say fares will not rise to cater for this change without rising the fare.

More likely the discounts will not be as large, and contracts with the staff will be renewed as well.

[John Bull]

5 hours ago, sloopsailor said:

 

So, you are making excuses for a bad idea? Because some cheapskates the staff, change the policy to let all of the passengers stiff them. What a great employee appreciation program they have established. 🙄

 

Huh?  

You've got the whole thing back-to-front.

 

Because a lot of P&O passengers cheapskate, the policy has reverted to the policy it had before it was taken over by Carnival. - providing decent basic wages instead of relying on passengers paying what are effectively wages on top of their cruise ticket price. 

Likely it'll be reflected in ticket prices, and P&O saying it won't is bull**** (as per Jocap's post, their pricing is both complicated and fluid so it'd be pretty impossible to spot price increases).

But it's equally possible that P&O will recoup some of the cost in other ways - for instance their drinks prices are waaaaay lower than on US ships, and other extras cheaper too.

 

It's also worth bearing in mind that when daily service charges were introduced after the Carnival takeover they were at about half the level of US ships. The current charge isn't the US average $13 pppd in Chris's post, it's somewhere south of $9.

I've  been told that's because only cabin attendants and waiters are in the pool - which kinda reflects the Brit culture of tipping waiters but not laundry staff, the kitchen brigade, & other hotel-side staff.

 

Since daily charges are at a lower figure and a lot of passengers opt-out anyway, the shortfall to be found will be way less than Chris's $14mil.

 

There's effectively no tipping culture in the country of Oz.

So P&O Aus have never imposed service charges, and some US lines (certainly Princess) don't add service charges when cruising out of Aus. The crew are happy, so clearly they're decently paid.

 

The UK has a bit of a mixed tipping culture.

It is the norm for restaurants, it is not the norm for drinking in pubs, and it varies for pub meals depending whether they're full-service or somewhere short of full-service.

Whilst most Brits do tip, some Brits choose not to. And all tips are...... 

a) at 5% to 10%, not the 15%+ of the States

b) Voluntary. Even suggesting a level of tipping is despised because it's at the whim of the customer and of course satisfaction with service is the main driver.

(you'll see service charges on restaurant menus in tourist hot-spots, encouraged by the ease of charging extras to unwitting Americans.)

It's while since I last sailed RCI out of Southampton, but they didn't add a drinks service charge. And the bar prices were their standard prices. So they acknowledged that Brits sailing out of a Brit port get riled by that bit of American culture.

 

So the nett result of P&O dispensing with the service charge will be

- P&O will cover the costs, at passengers' expense, one way or another.

- cheapskates will pay the same as everyone else.

- the crew will still receive at least industry-standard total income

- since there'll be no service charge, some passengers will voluntarily open their wallets at the end of the cruise. Just as passengers on "tips-included" Marella ships do.  

 

JB    

 

[MicCanberra]

Nice one.😄

[davecttr]

13 hours ago, John Bull said:

 

Huh?  

You've got the whole thing back-to-front.

 

Because a lot of P&O passengers cheapskate, the policy has reverted to the policy it had before it was taken over by Carnival. - providing decent basic wages instead of relying on passengers paying what are effectively wages on top of their cruise ticket price. 

Likely it'll be reflected in ticket prices, and P&O saying it won't is bull**** (as per Jocap's post, their pricing is both complicated and fluid so it'd be pretty impossible to spot price increases).

But it's equally possible that P&O will recoup some of the cost in other ways - for instance their drinks prices are waaaaay lower than on US ships, and other extras cheaper too.

 

It's also worth bearing in mind that when daily service charges were introduced after the Carnival takeover they were at about half the level of US ships. The current charge isn't the US average $13 pppd in Chris's post, it's somewhere south of $9.

I've  been told that's because only cabin attendants and waiters are in the pool - which kinda reflects the Brit culture of tipping waiters but not laundry staff, the kitchen brigade, & other hotel-side staff.

 

Since daily charges are at a lower figure and a lot of passengers opt-out anyway, the shortfall to be found will be way less than Chris's $14mil.

 

There's effectively no tipping culture in the country of Oz.

So P&O Aus have never imposed service charges, and some US lines (certainly Princess) don't add service charges when cruising out of Aus. The crew are happy, so clearly they're decently paid.

 

The UK has a bit of a mixed tipping culture.

It is the norm for restaurants, it is not the norm for drinking in pubs, and it varies for pub meals depending whether they're full-service or somewhere short of full-service.

Whilst most Brits do tip, some Brits choose not to. And all tips are...... 

a) at 5% to 10%, not the 15%+ of the States

b) Voluntary. Even suggesting a level of tipping is despised because it's at the whim of the customer and of course satisfaction with service is the main driver.

(you'll see service charges on restaurant menus in tourist hot-spots, encouraged by the ease of charging extras to unwitting Americans.)

It's while since I last sailed RCI out of Southampton, but they didn't add a drinks service charge. And the bar prices were their standard prices. So they acknowledged that Brits sailing out of a Brit port get riled by that bit of American culture.

 

So the nett result of P&O dispensing with the service charge will be

- P&O will cover the costs, at passengers' expense, one way or another.

- cheapskates will pay the same as everyone else.

- the crew will still receive at least industry-standard total income

- since there'll be no service charge, some passengers will voluntarily open their wallets at the end of the cruise. Just as passengers on "tips-included" Marella ships do.  

 

JB    

 

Having cruised 22 times with P&O and 20 with Marella I find Marella crew just as happy and efficient as P&O crew. A number come from the Philippines so they must have sorted the tax issue as well. People do give cash tips for exceptional service but there are reminders including on your cruise card that tips are included. Maybe this is to counter the development of a 'tips are expected' peer pressure culture