Himself Posted November 21, 2023 #1 Share Posted November 21, 2023 Whay is the current daily Charge for gratuities? The amount added to your bill each day? Please Advise! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Mary229 Posted November 21, 2023 #2 Share Posted November 21, 2023 NON-SUITE Suite $16.00 $17.50. Non-suite, suite 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare 0106 Posted November 21, 2023 #3 Share Posted November 21, 2023 https://www.hollandamerica.com/en/us/crew-incentive 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Himself Posted November 21, 2023 Author #4 Share Posted November 21, 2023 Thank you for the information. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ellieanne Posted November 21, 2023 #5 Share Posted November 21, 2023 If you pre-pay your crew gratuities, you get a slight discount. For my non-suite, I prepaid $155 per person for my 10-day cruise. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oakridger Posted November 21, 2023 #6 Share Posted November 21, 2023 (edited) 40 minutes ago, ellieanne said: If you pre-pay your crew gratuities, you get a slight discount. For my non-suite, I prepaid $155 per person for my 10-day cruise. I have never seen a discount for prepayment on Crew Appreciation! The only time I have seen a lower cost like that would be if one pays it before their cruise and then the price goes up you would not be charged the higher price. The cost was $15.50/day as you paid but went up to $16/day. That may be the situation. Can you provide more information if it was truly a "discount"? ~Nancy Edited November 21, 2023 by oakridger 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Banditswife Posted November 21, 2023 #7 Share Posted November 21, 2023 Yes, I would like clarification as well. We pre paid grats & paid $16 pp, per day- the normal rate for a non suite guest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ellieanne Posted November 21, 2023 #8 Share Posted November 21, 2023 49 minutes ago, oakridger said: I have never seen a discount for prepayment on Crew Appreciation! The only time I have seen a lower cost like that would be if one pays it before their cruise and then the price goes up you would not be charged the higher price. The cost was $15.50/day as you paid but went up to $16/day. That may be the situation. Can you provide more information if it was truly a "discount"? ~Nancy I can't explain. I didn't dig into to it too much. The rate per day was quoted at $16/per person, but then I was charged only $15.50/per person per day. It happened to my parents and younger brother on the same cruise. So we figured it was a discount for early payment. Your mileage may vary. (For reference, the Sept. 2023 cruise was booked in 2021, and all the information indicated the gratuity per person/per day was $16. We pre-paid the gratuities in August 2023, about 3 weeks before sailing.) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare kazu Posted November 21, 2023 #9 Share Posted November 21, 2023 I checked my option to prepay and it is full price. However, as a Canadian, the exchange rate is currently a number of points lower than what I would pay at this moment in time. 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rodndonna Posted November 21, 2023 #10 Share Posted November 21, 2023 13 hours ago, ellieanne said: If you pre-pay your crew gratuities, you get a slight discount. For my non-suite, I prepaid $155 per person for my 10-day cruise. Are you sure that wasn't the result of a "good" currency exchange rate? As pointed out here by another poster, we Canadians generally do better by prepaying for our gratuities as they give us a pretty good deal on on our horrendous (but maybe not as horrendous as yours?) currency exchange rate. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare electro Posted November 21, 2023 #11 Share Posted November 21, 2023 2 hours ago, rodndonna said: Are you sure that wasn't the result of a "good" currency exchange rate? As pointed out here by another poster, we Canadians generally do better by prepaying for our gratuities as they give us a pretty good deal on on our horrendous (but maybe not as horrendous as yours?) currency exchange rate. I am Canadian and book my cruise in CAD. For my last cruise in Sep, I prepaid my gratuities on line and was charged in USD. How do you prepay in CAD? Thanks Lois Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rodndonna Posted November 21, 2023 #12 Share Posted November 21, 2023 (edited) 32 minutes ago, electro said: I am Canadian and book my cruise in CAD. For my last cruise in Sep, I prepaid my gratuities on line and was charged in USD. How do you prepay in CAD? Thanks Lois when they add it onto your booking (which is in CAD$) do you get a seperate charge to your card in US$ or does HAL not convert and charge you in CAD$? On our cruises in CA$, they always convert it and charge us in CAD$. Same as when we have added in HIA after booking - when it was a charge of $50 US/pp/day, it would be converted to a CAD$ value and that value would be better than we could do by a few points (maybe 5 points better was about what I remember on our last booking a while ago) edit: By prepay I am referring to BEFORE you get on the ship. If you get on the ship and go to guest services and prepay grats, you would then be charged in US$. As a side note, this does not apply to excursions, dinners etc. Those are all charges US$ regardless of when you buy them. Edited November 21, 2023 by rodndonna Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare electro Posted November 21, 2023 #13 Share Posted November 21, 2023 23 minutes ago, rodndonna said: when they add it onto your booking (which is in CAD$) do you get a seperate charge to your card in US$ or does HAL not convert and charge you in CAD$? On our cruises in CA$, they always convert it and charge us in CAD$. Same as when we have added in HIA after booking - when it was a charge of $50 US/pp/day, it would be converted to a CAD$ value and that value would be better than we could do by a few points (maybe 5 points better was about what I remember on our last booking a while ago) edit: By prepay I am referring to BEFORE you get on the ship. If you get on the ship and go to guest services and prepay grats, you would then be charged in US$. As a side note, this does not apply to excursions, dinners etc. Those are all charges US$ regardless of when you buy them. I prepaid online before the cruise. It was charged in USD. It actually showed up in my account onboard as OBC and then the gratuities were still added daily which surprised me. HIA added online before cruise was charged in CAD. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rodndonna Posted November 21, 2023 #14 Share Posted November 21, 2023 13 minutes ago, electro said: I prepaid online before the cruise. It was charged in USD. It actually showed up in my account onboard as OBC and then the gratuities were still added daily which surprised me. HIA added online before cruise was charged in CAD. Maybe that has changed (for the gratuities). Not a huge deal, but kind of a bummer, I know they used to add and then remove the gratuities everyday on the account, but I "thought" on our last cruise (Sept/Oct) that was not the case anymore but could be remembering that wrong. I don't recall it ever showing up as some form of OBC though. It would show up as a charge and then add a credit to reverse (forget how they labelled that credit back, but not OBC). It makes sense if it was considered OBC that it was charged in US$, as OBC is strictly US$. ...Weird ....things are always changing though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare VMax1700 Posted November 21, 2023 #15 Share Posted November 21, 2023 For our last cruise the process was as follows: I pre paid online the gratuities. The price quoted was in Euro (our booking was in euro as we live in the euro area). Our payment was processed in euros. The rate used by HAL was very beneficial to us and much better than paying USD onboard. When we arrived onboard our statement showed credit for the gratuities of $224 ($16 x 14 days) for each of us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vicd1969 Posted November 21, 2023 #16 Share Posted November 21, 2023 Guess this is a good time to remind that the AARP HAL gift card costs 10% less than face value, which effectively means if you buy enough OBC, your gratuities are basically 10% off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare sunviking90 Posted November 21, 2023 #17 Share Posted November 21, 2023 We were able to prepay gratuities in CAD for our cruise leaving tomorrow. Paid them about 3 weeks ago. The exchange rate they used when I calculated it was 1.30, so much better than waiting. Oddly enough buying OBC is in USD so would cost much more. Consistently inconsistent is HAL. @electro’s experience sounds unusual but I don’t doubt it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rodndonna Posted November 21, 2023 #18 Share Posted November 21, 2023 18 minutes ago, sunviking90 said: We were able to prepay gratuities in CAD for our cruise leaving tomorrow. Paid them about 3 weeks ago. The exchange rate they used when I calculated it was 1.30, so much better than waiting. Oddly enough buying OBC is in USD so would cost much more. Consistently inconsistent is HAL. @electro’s experience sounds unusual but I don’t doubt it. The 1.30 rate was the last rate I remember from summer, so good to see they are still holding that rate 😃 I wonder if Electro's experience in having to purchase and use OBC was handled differently for some odd (but maybe legitimate?) reason? Can't think of any reason why they would have charged it that way though.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare electro Posted November 21, 2023 #19 Share Posted November 21, 2023 1 hour ago, sunviking90 said: We were able to prepay gratuities in CAD for our cruise leaving tomorrow. Paid them about 3 weeks ago. The exchange rate they used when I calculated it was 1.30, so much better than waiting. Oddly enough buying OBC is in USD so would cost much more. Consistently inconsistent is HAL. @electro’s experience sounds unusual but I don’t doubt it. Did you prepay online or through a PCC/TA? Maybe that is the difference? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Nickelpenny Posted November 21, 2023 #20 Share Posted November 21, 2023 2 hours ago, vicd1969 said: Guess this is a good time to remind that the AARP HAL gift card costs 10% less than face value, which effectively means if you buy enough OBC, your gratuities are basically 10% off. Now you must be an AARP member to buy the gift cards. It just recently changed. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ellieanne Posted November 21, 2023 #21 Share Posted November 21, 2023 7 hours ago, rodndonna said: Are you sure that wasn't the result of a "good" currency exchange rate? As pointed out here by another poster, we Canadians generally do better by prepaying for our gratuities as they give us a pretty good deal on on our horrendous (but maybe not as horrendous as yours?) currency exchange rate. No, no exchange rate. It was quoted as $16/per person/per day. I paid in US $ with a US credit card, but my credit card was only charged $15.50/per person/per day. Like another poster, the pre-payment was applied to my account as a credit and the gratuity was added to the account daily. I cannot explain the discount I got. It showed up as $16/per person/per day on the account, but at the end of the cruise, with the pre-payment, the on-board-credit, and the credit for 2 missed cruises, HAL actually owed me money. I got just over $100 refunded to my credit card. My parents and brother got over $300 refunded to theirs. I'm not questioning it -- I checked the math and it all works out, even the discrepancy in the pre-payment and daily charge -- and I did get the refund quoted within a week of the end of the cruise, though the initial hold on my credit card when I boarded took over a month to clear. I can only speak to my experience. And your experience may differ. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Banditswife Posted November 22, 2023 #22 Share Posted November 22, 2023 When I have prepaid gratuities in the past, it showed on our account as OBC, then deducted daily as a charge to our on board account. I think ellieanne just got lucky with a discount or possibly error. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare sunviking90 Posted November 22, 2023 #23 Share Posted November 22, 2023 3 hours ago, electro said: Did you prepay online or through a PCC/TA? Maybe that is the difference? My booking was through a TA, but I went in myself and paid the tips. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare sunviking90 Posted November 22, 2023 #24 Share Posted November 22, 2023 (edited) I went in to see what it showed for our 7 day January cruise, and it reads as $16 day, but the total is in CAD even though it doesn’t say that. It works out to $1.30 exchange rate still. Edited November 22, 2023 by sunviking90 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare POA1 Posted November 22, 2023 #25 Share Posted November 22, 2023 Just did ours. We're in a suite in December and it was $17.50/pp/day. Our cruise in the Spring is $16/pp/day for a balcony. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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