About that 15% service charge on drinks ...

[Sundagger]

"The Hotel Service Charge is paid entirely to Holland America Line crewmembers, and represents an important part of their compensation. A 15% service charge is automatically added to bar charges and dining room wine purchases."

 

No question about the disposition of the Hotel Service Charge. Does anyone know for sure about the 15% service charge? If you get a drink at the bar, does the entire amount go to the bartender? If a waitress brings you the drink, who gets the 15%? The waitress even though the bartender does the same amount of work as giving you the drink directly? Or would they split it? Seems inadequate for that situation.

 

Does the wine steward get the entire 15%? I was going to tip extra to the steward on the last cruise, but he seemed to have lost track of me the last half of the cruise, therefore ....

[Krazy Kruizers]

The bar tender, the server nor the wine stweard do not get the entire 15% gratuity. The bar tender gets a certain percentage and the server also gets a certain percentage. Same thing with the wine steward.

 

Know what you mean about the wine stweard - same thing happen to us a few cruises ago - good the first few days and couldn't get us his attention the last few days. We rarely order wine. But we will order a double cocktail with dinner -- bill isn't cheap - but I guess he thouht is was compared to people ordering a glass of wine and using the wine card to pay for it.

[jtl513]

Does anyone know for sure about the 15% service charge? Does the wine steward get the entire 15%?

On our last cruise we had a gift wine card. When I handed the wine steward an envelope at the end, I asked about the 15% that is charged when the cards are ordered on-line. He said - and who knows if I got a totally honest and correct answer - that all of the 15% charges go into a pool to be shared ... which jibes with what KK just said.

 

This was on the Statendam, and I don't know that makes a difference either - whether some ships pool tips and others do not.

 

Sungoddess: do you have any info to contribute here?

[Krazy Kruizers]

From what we have been told - the wine cards that are ordered on line - 15% gratuity goes into a pool.

 

But a wine steward told us that if we wait and buy the card from someone on the ship, they get a bigger percentage of that 15% gratuity.

[hammybee]

The politics of tipping............

 

It is increasingly common in land based restaurants for there to be an arrangment of tip pooling. Sometimes it's formal and sometimes, not.

 

My DD works part time at big name corporate-owned restaurants. It is understood that at the end of a shift, certain behind the scenes people get tipped by the servers. If one does not do this, chances are that server is going meet some resistance, on their next shift. And that resistance carries the ability to impact customer service.

 

The point of this is that none of us know, with certainty, where tips go anywhere we tip. It's none of our business.

 

I do not see any merit in pre-ordering beverage cards. It's an opportunity for something to go astray between the home office and the ship. There is no savings associated with pre-ordering and by golly, one will certainly be given ample and easy opportunity to purchase a card, once onboard, regardless if they pre-ordered or not.

[sungoddess]

I'm pretty sure that all of the 15% goes into a pool; I think compensation is based on their sales.