What is “Cruise Appreciation?l

[c-boy]

well, what ever Princess is doing, it works. At least in this country

[JimmyVWine]

 

2 hours ago, PrincessLuver said:

Outstanding service on Princess is not always guaranteed so neither should a tip be. 

This statement betrays a misunderstanding of Post #16.  If the gratuity is baked in to the basic compensation of the crew member but done in a way that allows the crew member to keep more of their income in their pocket, then the recommended gratuity should be paid for baseline service and not for outstanding service.  Otherwise crew members who are exhibiting "perfectly fine, but not exceptional service" are not receiving the full compensation that is intended.  See comment below.

 

 

17 minutes ago, Princessfan20 said:

It really is a salary supplement and nothing more and there is nothing wrong with that

 

[sloopsailor]

36 minutes ago, Princessfan20 said:

 

With all due respect I doubt anyone knows the corporate intentions of CCL's for Crew Appreciation scheme and also that they do not know the the tax situation or country tax tables for each crew member on the ship.  

 

They do not need to know the tax situation or country tax tables for each crew member on the ship. That is why they choose to pay the base salary, which is taxed in their countries, and not the gratuities, which in many cases are not taxed. That leaves the responsibility on the crew member to report his or her income, which is the way it should be.

 

36 minutes ago, Princessfan20 said:

 

If Princess is so benevolent then why did they change the system from where we were able to tip to who and how much we wanted on each cruise.

 

Because too many people abused that system by removing all tips or giving significantly lower amounts to better keep the money in their own pockets. AKA: greedy people.

 

36 minutes ago, Princessfan20 said:

 

It really is a salary supplement and nothing more and there is nothing wrong with that but they should just lump it in the fare and be transparent.  

 

Again, the reason why has already been described if a person is willing to read it. SMH.

 

36 minutes ago, Princessfan20 said:

 

We know that Princess saves a tremendous amount in corporate taxes by structuring this income in this manner and passing the tax burden on to its' crews.

 

You can believe in any conspiracy theory you wish. 

 

“You are entitled to your own opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”

 

   ― Daniel Patrick Moynihan

 

 

Edited October 3, 2022 by sloopsailor

[Princessfan20]

14 minutes ago, sloopsailor said:

 

Because too many people abused that system by removing all tips or giving significantly lower amounts to better keep the money in their own pockets. AKA: greedy people.

 

All speculation and opinion and not based in reality.  Cruisers are the ones who are greedy????  That is rich!!

 

Passengers still do have the right to remove Crew Appreciation from their folios, give lower amounts or tip privately and personally and maybe even give more so what are you saying?

[sloopsailor]

26 minutes ago, Princessfan20 said:

 

All speculation and opinion and not based in reality.  Cruisers are the ones who are greedy????  That is rich!!

 

Passengers still do have the right to remove Crew Appreciation from their folios, give lower amounts or tip privately and personally and maybe even give more so what are you saying?

 

 

[devonuk]

My recent experience:

Recently travelled on the Sky Princess and had a good reason to remove the Crew Appreciation and therefore tipped as ‘I went along’. Upon giving my stateroom attendant a $100 so that they wouldn’t ‘lose out’ I was informed that as they’re now salaried it didn’t make any difference on a personal level 🤷‍♂️

[antsp]

6 hours ago, SantaFeFan said:

 

FACT:  If the staff's salary included the gratuities instead of them being kept two separate incomes, many of them would be paying much more in income taxes in their home country. Many of the countries the majority of the staff are from only include salary when their annual income taxes become due, while tips earned from service charges are not counted. The staff then pays less to taxes, and keeps more for themselves. If the service charges were included, their taxed salary would be much higher.

 

The fact is that the cruise lines do this to help the crew keep as much of their earnings as possible, something that has been validated by a member here who for years was the purser on various cruise lines. They understand how tips work and how keeping them separated can increase the staff member's annual income.

 

However, when cruising in some countries where the majority of the passengers are of a culture of not tipping and bristle at having to pay them, the cruise lines have had to resort to making the exception to include the gratuities in the base fare because too many people removed the gratuities and the affected crew members did not want to work on the ships cruising there because of the greatly reduced income they ended up with. 

 

If people actually cared about their wellbeing, they would happily pay the service charges separately to help the crew save money.

Incorrect, all tips are pooled across the entire fleet, this makes sense as when a ship is based in the UK the rate of tipping will be less than in the USA. This information is available on about pooling tips is on Princess.com 

[leck57]

20 hours ago, NSWP said:

Tips, I call it the AWS - Automatic Wage Subsidy. In other words Carnival Corp don't want to pay the full amount of the service crew wage, they want another donation from pax.  Should be like Princess ships in Australia and UK I think, daily auto tip of $15 whatever if included in your overall fare and unable to be removed. Thus there is no need for further tipping.

 

I agree with your every word......but did you have to light the fire.

[sloopsailor]

26 minutes ago, antsp said:

Incorrect, all tips are pooled across the entire fleet, this makes sense as when a ship is based in the UK the rate of tipping will be less than in the USA. This information is available on about pooling tips is on Princess.com 

 

Here is the Princess information you referred to (hint: providing source material to support an argument is always helpful):

 

"All of the Crew Appreciation and Service Charge payments made by all guests on all ships in our fleet are pooled, net of credit card transaction fees. The pooled funds are distributed throughout the year in the form of compensation, including bonuses, to crewmembers fleetwide who interact directly with guests and/or behind the scenes throughout every cruise, including those in the Bar, Dining, Entertainment, Housekeeping, Guest Services, Galley and Onboard Revenue areas."

 

Note that this doesn't say "pooled between all ships" or something to that effect. It does, however, lend itself to misinterpretation. 

 

I based my comment on what had been reported on Princess forums in the past by someone who's responsibility was handling the collection of all gratuities, including tips given in cash. His job title was a purser, the person responsible for the accounting on a ship. At the time he indicated that the gratuities were collected per ship and distributed throughout that same ship and were not spread throughout the fleet. The goal was to reward, and incentivize, a ship's crew to perform at their highest level, which higher gratuity collections would indicate. There were even bonuses given out to the highest performing ship. 

 

This was pre-pandemic. Perhaps things have changed, but my reading of the Princess quotation matches with what I have read in the past.

 

 

Edited October 3, 2022 by sloopsailor

[SantaFeFan]

13 minutes ago, leck57 said:

 

I agree with your every word......but did you have to light the fire.

 

Of course you do. 🙄

[chengkp75]

8 hours ago, SantaFeFan said:

If the staff's salary included the gratuities instead of them being kept two separate incomes, many of them would be paying much more in income taxes in their home country.

Which countries are these?  Both Philippines and Indonesia treat gratuities, received from the employer, as opposed to directly from the customer, as normal income.  India does as well.

 

The real fact as to why the cruise lines do this is two fold.  One it allows them to advertise the absolute minimum fare they can.  Two, it gives a "stick and carrot" approach to team building for good customer service.  It ties them all into a team that shares the rewards of the DSC if they all perform well, and that suffers the consequences of one or two poor performers resulting in decreased DSC.  It is a way to remove management responsibility from the lower level managers, by making the crew "team" police themselves.

 

As for cruise lines avoiding taxes by having a DSC plan, the cruise lines pay almost no corporate tax anyway, so this argument does not pass the sniff test.

Edited October 3, 2022 by chengkp75

[Wakepatrol]

Build it into the fare they say!.

who are you kidding? This way the cheapskates can put  the money back in their pockets. Building it into the fares they can’t.

I’ve got an idea, a simple sign a document prior to boarding, no sign no sail. Please sign here that you’re paying x amount in tips etc.

People wanting to remove tips, 

Bring water, soda and wine aboard free of charge. Get onboard credit if the fair drops after final payment. The inmates are running the asylum. The cruise lines need to simply grow a pair.

[getting older slowly]

Another point.... fromr down under... here tipping is not a given....

 

One tips for great service    not mediocre service

 

Just saying    Don.

 

[david63]

7 hours ago, Wakepatrol said:

Build it into the fare they say!.

Not a problem - P&O (UK), another Carnival brand, did it several years ago and if anything service improved in the expectation of more tips.

[caribill]

14 hours ago, Princessfan20 said:

If Princess is so benevolent then why did they change the system from where we were able to tip to who and how much we wanted on each cruise.  

 

 

Before Anytime Dining (AT) existed, passengers in the dining rooms had the same waitstaff each evening.  Princess had a suggested amount for tipping waitstaff and cabin stewards. Passengers would tip in cash on the last evening often using envelopes available at the Purser's Desk. (Often the last evening had less people eating in the dining room so people could avoid the embarrassment of not tipping that evening.)

 

When AT was introduced, those doing AT might have different waitstaff each evening and thus tipping the last evening could mean the staff receiving the cash tip had only served the passenger that one evening. So the answer to this was to set up the Auto-tip with the initial amount being the sum of the amounts suggested by Princess before AT existed. If someone reduced or removed the auto-tip, then the cash tips could not be kept by the recipients but were instead turned into to the pool for eligible employees.

 

But there have been several recent changes:

 

a) The Plus (and now also the Premier) package was introduced. These packages included the tips and the passenger could not have these tips reduced or eliminated.

 

b) Princess expects 75% of the passengers to have one of these packages, and staff no longer have to have cash tips checked to see if tips have been removed or reduced and thus can keep any cash tips they are given. My guess it was not worth the efforts to check 100% of cash tips to verify that the tipper had a package or did not have a package  but kept the Auto-tip at the full  amount in order to find the relatively few passengers who reduced or eliminated the Auto-tip.

 

c) The tipping pool was changed from individual ships to sharing fleetwide. So if someone removed auto-tips to "punish" a cabin steward for poor service, the cabin steward would receive about a penny a day less or about 7 cents less for a week long cruise. Of course staff fleetwide would also get the same reduced income.

 

14 hours ago, Princessfan20 said:

 

We know that Princess saves a tremendous amount in corporate taxes by structuring this income in this manner and passing the tax burden on to its' crews.

 

Since the income from tips would go to the staff, there would be no effect on taxes since the tip money would not be income to Princess.

[caribill]

14 hours ago, Princessfan20 said:

 

 

Passengers still do have the right to remove Crew Appreciation from their folios, give lower amounts or tip privately and personally and maybe even give more so what are you saying?

 

Passengers with the Plus or Premier package cannot remove Crew Appreciation from their folios or reduce the Crew Appreciation amount. They can tip additional amounts privately if they wish.

 

Princess expects 75% of passengers will have one of these packages.

[Wakepatrol]

Such a dislike of the crew on these threads,, and they wonder why the ships can’t find help, or they can’t get a room steward to deliver ice five times a day to their cabin

[PrincessLuver]

3 hours ago, Wakepatrol said:

Such a dislike of the crew on these threads,, and they wonder why the ships can’t find help, or they can’t get a room steward to deliver ice five times a day to their cabin

 

I think it is a dislike of being hood winked into giving a tip before allowing the person receiving the service to decide if they feel a tip is warranted.  

 

Nothing more.  No crew hate.  No cheap and greedy passengers.  Just a basic right to spend our money how we see fit and not be forced to spend it by a cruise line to supplement their wage deficiencies..  

 

But please feel free to continue the manipulative guilt tripping. Here's a TIP.  It does not work!!  🙂

Edited October 4, 2022 by PrincessLuver

[Wakepatrol]

29 minutes ago, PrincessLuver said:

 

I think it is a dislike of being hood winked into giving a tip before allowing the person receiving the service to decide if they feel a tip is warranted.  

 

Nothing more.  No crew hate.  No cheap and greedy passengers.  Just a basic right to spend our money how we see fit and not be forced to spend it by a cruise line to supplement their wage deficiencies..  

 

But please feel free to continue the manipulative guilt tripping. Here's a TIP.  It does not work!!  🙂

Not hoodwinked. It’s all in the  documents before you sail on the ship. Hoodwinked is not knowing about it and then getting charged. Dice it slice it any way you want, it still spells CHEAP

[sloopsailor]

53 minutes ago, Wakepatrol said:

Not hoodwinked. It’s all in the  documents before you sail on the ship. Hoodwinked is not knowing about it and then getting charged. Dice it slice it any way you want, it still spells CHEAP

 

And we know by their posts who these people are. 😁

[Wakepatrol]

9 hours ago, sloopsailor said:

 

And we know by their posts who these people are. 😁

I know pounding their chests and screaming I’m CHEAP 

[trinitygirl]

I am confused by all the statements above, that Princess Plus includes the crew appreciation fee. 

 

All cruises originating in NZ and Australia (not just Princess) include tipping in the cruise fare.  This doesn't have anything to do with Princess Plus, it's just part of the standard fare (as explained to me, this is cultural difference; we downunder don't really understand tipping and expect to pay higher fares to properly compensate staff). Anyway, my point is that for Australian and NZ cruises, Princess Plus  includes drinks, wifi, and OBC. 

 

I have three cruises booked in Europe next year (one out of Rome, two out of Southhampton), two with Princess Plus.  Nowhere in my contract or the personaliser, does it say that crew appreciation is covered - just drinks, wifi and the OBC.  These were all booked on the Australian website but as they are not out of Australia, my understanding is that I have to pay the crew appreciation fee separately. On the payment tab for each cruise, there is a 'prepay crew appreciation tab' with the cost in AUD. 

 

So my question is:  are the people above, saying that tips are included in Princess Plus, talking about a particular market where tips are included in PP?  Or have I misunderstood something?

 

many thanks for any clarification

Emma

[Princessfan20]

17 hours ago, caribill said:

 

Passengers with the Plus or Premier package cannot remove Crew Appreciation from their folios or reduce the Crew Appreciation amount. They can tip additional amounts privately if they wish.

 

Princess expects 75% of passengers will have one of these packages.

Sounds like there is no problem then.  75% of passengers are on board with Auto Tip and Princess allows others to make a choice to participate or not.  Win/Win!

[sloopsailor]

1 hour ago, trinitygirl said:

...we downunder don't really understand tipping and expect to pay higher fares to properly compensate staff.....

 

The phrase "properly compensate" is so vague as to be pointless. What is proper compensation? Is it how much the people in your country are compensated? Or is it how much the people are compensated in the country and state that Princess company headquarters are located in (FYI: California, USA)? Or the country that each staff member is from, who are from many different countries, all with a different standard of living? Which is it? If you want to push the "properly compensate" expectation, then you need to clarify EXACTLY what that compensation actually is and why THAT one is the baseline that you are basing it on or that phrase is totally meaningless. 

[sloopsailor]

13 minutes ago, Princessfan20 said:

Sounds like there is no problem then.  75% of passengers are on board with Auto Tip and Princess allows others to make a choice to participate or not.  Win/Win!

 

It's not Win/Win for the crew members who get stiffed when people remove the gratuities because they don't believe in it where they are from. Yes, the people who remove the gratuities "Win", but the crew who see a reduction in their income certainly don't.

 

Edited October 5, 2022 by sloopsailor