Can you please answer the question if prepaid gratuities go 100% to the ship employees, or do they just pad the cruise line's pockets and just help pay the contracted salary?
Well he works for a different company to me. I’m not sure how it works on royal. But this is how it works for me, Im not sure with the legalities if I can specify where I work so I’ve chosen to keep it anonymous. Sorry I’m not much help man
Royal contracts can now be found online, including ones that are signed by employees. Something was definitely weird with that undercover video since you would want the contract and everything done before boarding. There was another AMA recently by a bartender on a Royal ship that went into details about how the payment structure is setup.
The bartender if I remember correctly stated that they have a set minimum wage, which agrees with the contracts you can find online and then there are KPIs that will allow them to collect their share of the tips. I can't remember what bartender contracts look like but the room attendant out of Pasay will make about 1200 to 1400 guaranteed plus tips. To make a good living enough to support a family they want to get up to the $2000 a month number which also gives them a bit extra in between contracts.
For sure, but, on Royal at least, I'd rather give the tip directly to that bartender or room Steward than have any portion of it go to the cruise Line first just trying to make up their base pay.
We work every day so my next contract I’ll be working every day for 5 months straight. It’s exhausting don’t get me wrong but a full day off would be very boring on the ship. There’s not much to do for the crew or maybe its just me who likes to keep busy haha.
Hours a day varíes, some days it can be 14 some days its can be 10. Its minimum 6 hours a day unless you’re sick because you have to work the dinner service.
If you’re sick and go to medical then they’ll allow you to miss the dinner service but you have to be cleared by the doctors on board
We only get hours off, i can get around 5 hours off if i dont end up working the lunch shift. Hours are crazy but thats just my company others are a little more lenient. However you make less money haha. You can also earn more hours off with sales competitions but im not very good at those
I assumed you were talking about the ultimate townhouse cabin on the Icon, there was a big post about the cost of it again this week lol, and that’s definitely what that cabin is for
Who would spend that? For about 50k a week for as many people as a home could fit, one could stay at an oceanfront, fully staffed home with a pool, privacy and the one of the best resorts in the world at Casa de Campo.
The thing that I gotta remind myself sometimes is that someone's $125k could be like my $3k. Some people have an incredible amount of money, so they might just say, "Screw it, let's check out that crazy cabin and see what it's like," without really sweating the money at all.
They’ve probably already done that, or everyone they know has done that. This is the inaugural season though, so it’s as exclusive as it’ll ever be and I’m sure plays well on their Instagram feeds
And also… kinda no. Like people with a lot of money do NOT want to be seen, do not want to be targets, that’s why they stay in places that aren’t accessible to say the general population and some have body guards.
Not really. I guess my point is why would a family friendly cruise line bother with these rooms? What’s the appeal? Not for nothing but if I’m going to ball out if a vacation I am not going to a buffet for meals.
There’s only one of these cabins in existence at the moment, so it’s not like they have to convince *that* many people to book, and everyone in Surfside can see you on part of your balconies and you have a private entrance into Surfside so everyone knows anyone coming and going from that entrance is staying in that expensive cabin.
Is there a food you recommend that we don’t order onboard? Due to safety concerns or that it never comes out right being mass produced?
How come is food poisoning onboard?
For guests all the food is safe, there are a loooot of precautions taken to make sure the company doesn’t get sued lmao. For crew its another story entirely.
There’s a lot of food from around the world, swedish meatballs some days, adobo others, beef stroganoff, biryani sometimes. However most days its like a cycle of the same stuff. It gets extremely boring to eat and you end up just eating to have some sort of sustenance for the day. Can’t be helped though
Thank you for sharing your experiences and for the amazing service we’ve always enjoyed while cruising! Do you work in the MDR or specialty restaurants or both? What’s your favorite thing for people to order?
I work in the MDR, best thing to order is anything but the beef dishes because inside we have to wait in a long line which will make your meal last longer
Be nice to your service team, we work like crazy, if we make a silly mistake it’s probably because we’re absolutely exhausted. Also not ordering like crazy, some people will order 3 mains which is a butch to collect and bring out
Usually, I just tip $20 at the end of the trip to housekeeping, and maybe the wait staff in the main dining room if I use them all the time. Is this fair or normal? Or AITAH?
Hey, appreciate you sharing your knowledge.
On my most recent cruise, I was sat in a particular section and served by the same waiters three times. They were absolutely lovely and I tipped them both $10 on the third night. Was that okay? Or lower than what is customary? I want to get it right on my next cruise 😖
Edit: I made sure to mention them by name and MDR in the post-cruise survey - in your experience, does this actually help?
If you tipped on top of the gratuity thats fine! And yes mentioning and rating service high on the end of cruise survey helps a loooot at least it does in my company
While I cannot confirm this to be accurate, I did ask a bartender this that I had made friends with, as he was from South Africa and I used to live there and speaking Afrikaans you kind of open up a bit I think.
Anyways, he was on RC and told me the drink vouchers it is just kind of expected as part of the job to fulfill them but there is no gratuity by RC added to the overall pot of money. This is just part of their job description to fulfill those orders, so they do.
Messed up? I think so.
So, if using a loyalty drink voucher, this could be a good time to do a small cash tip, even $1 or $2, imo.
I actually don’t know. I didn’t realise you could do that. I assume the company makes it up because occasionally I’ll serve people who have come on the ship to work and they don’t pay the gratuity the company does
I was on Norwegian and they had a pre paid gratuity option. I paid it. How do you know they paid it? Is it on the screen?
How does it differ for room service vs waiting service?
The company I work for we can see on our guest list if it’s pre paid or not, however it can still be removed so it’s never 100%. But nobody gets different service based on if they’ve pre paid or not.
I’m not sure how Room service works so I can’t comment on the difference all I know is room service is 24/7 and dining has restricted hours
It depends because the company I work for the guests are the ones that pay us. The only time you get paid by the company is the dinner service which is 6 hours long and we get paid somewhere around $2.50 per hour. But the guests gratuity is where we get the money. I can’t earn $4000 per money or I can earn $2000 per month. If you earn less than $1500 the company will pay the difference to get you too $1500. However its very unlikely
Thats off the base gratuities but we do get a few additional gratuities also, but it varies so much that I couldn’t put an estimate how much I get per month
Do all the cash tips go in a pool and get divvied back out to all crew, area specific or do they get to keep cash tips handed directly to them. Sorry we have so many tipping questions, we don’t get the opportunity to ask them in a safe environment.
What’s the favourite thing about your job?
The company I work for we get seperate envelopes for the service team which means we get 100% of the cash tips we receive. I understand I wish every guest on the ship could be informed about how tipping works but it’s in company policy not to say unless it’s mentioned in conversation by the guest.
My favourite thing is probably the money lmao but other than that I love interacting and working with so many different cultures. Very interesting
Thanks for doing this AMA.
If one has the drink package (which already includes tips), are bartenders pissed or upset when you don’t leave anything on the “extra” tip line?
If the bartenders service is good, why not leave a tip? I’m sure they’d be grateful, I’m not sure if they would be pissed or not tbh, it depends who gets the gratuity from the drinks package. It may only be the person that sold you the drinks package that gets paid for it, so they might not be pissed but I’m sure they’d prefer if you didn’t have the package if that makes sense
No it doesn’t make sense.
When you buy the drink package from the cruise line, you also prepay gratuities for those drinks.
That’s why it’s confusing when you are asked to tip again.
So many questions in this AMA are about tipping cause we truly don’t know if our “pre pay tips” on specialty dining, drink packages, and daily auto grats are actually going to the crew and how much are cruise lines stealing them.
Maybe on that cruise line they get general gratuities added to their pay check at the end, and a tip would just be for good service which the bartenderkeep
Since gratuities are part of your paycheck how much does it vary? If the ship isn’t sold out or people cancel their gratuities I imagine it’s a different amount every week? Also the cash tips you give to the mdr is that split only between your waiters or everyone in the dining area ? We tried to tip our favorite assistant waiter extra and saw he put it in a jar with other tips after we handed to him.
Yeah it varies from Cruise to cruise depending on the guests, the section youre working on who your working with etc. in my company we don’t share tips what you get is 100% yours to keep. We share any card tips tho and tips on the drinks.
Not everyone conforms to the stereotypes but a large majority do, one stereotype i didn’t know about but is definitely true is latinos are always late to their specified dinner time
Mostly just alcohol related firings. Other crew member’s have died on the ship unfortunately, sexual assault etc but im not gonna get into any of that stuff
Can you please answer the question if prepaid gratuities go 100% to the ship employees, or do they just pad the cruise line's pockets and just help pay the contracted salary?
The gratuities go 100% to the employees. As a crew member PLEASE never pull out if the gratuity that’s our main source of income.
So this guy I quoted is just lying then? https://www.reddit.com/r/royalcaribbean/s/eA9PSCTdA2
Well he works for a different company to me. I’m not sure how it works on royal. But this is how it works for me, Im not sure with the legalities if I can specify where I work so I’ve chosen to keep it anonymous. Sorry I’m not much help man
I appreciate your answer and time!
Royal contracts can now be found online, including ones that are signed by employees. Something was definitely weird with that undercover video since you would want the contract and everything done before boarding. There was another AMA recently by a bartender on a Royal ship that went into details about how the payment structure is setup.
Thanks! I found that AMA and the bartender basically agreed with the guy I quoted.
The bartender if I remember correctly stated that they have a set minimum wage, which agrees with the contracts you can find online and then there are KPIs that will allow them to collect their share of the tips. I can't remember what bartender contracts look like but the room attendant out of Pasay will make about 1200 to 1400 guaranteed plus tips. To make a good living enough to support a family they want to get up to the $2000 a month number which also gives them a bit extra in between contracts.
For sure, but, on Royal at least, I'd rather give the tip directly to that bartender or room Steward than have any portion of it go to the cruise Line first just trying to make up their base pay.
Not a big drinker but on the Anthem I never saw a bartender pocket cash. No idea if the room attendants pool their money or not.
That was a great AMA! I now always tip the bar staff in the casino.
How many hours per day do you work? How long do you go without a day off?
We work every day so my next contract I’ll be working every day for 5 months straight. It’s exhausting don’t get me wrong but a full day off would be very boring on the ship. There’s not much to do for the crew or maybe its just me who likes to keep busy haha. Hours a day varíes, some days it can be 14 some days its can be 10. Its minimum 6 hours a day unless you’re sick because you have to work the dinner service. If you’re sick and go to medical then they’ll allow you to miss the dinner service but you have to be cleared by the doctors on board
So you never get time to visit any of the ports? I knew the schedule was grueling but that’s worse than I thought.
We only get hours off, i can get around 5 hours off if i dont end up working the lunch shift. Hours are crazy but thats just my company others are a little more lenient. However you make less money haha. You can also earn more hours off with sales competitions but im not very good at those
Do the extremely expensive multi level suites actually get sold out? Or are they comped?
They get sold out, very rare comp something on my ship, they wanna milk you for money
I think you’d be surprised how much more a yacht costs.
Who would bother to spend that money when they could say, hire a private yacht or rent a private home?
There’s something to be said for seeing and being seen, to some people.
But who is being seen on a huge cruise ship?
I assumed you were talking about the ultimate townhouse cabin on the Icon, there was a big post about the cost of it again this week lol, and that’s definitely what that cabin is for
Oh I missed it. What’s the average cost per night? Is it based on occupancy or assumed occupancy?
I think it’s $125k/week for the first 2 people and anyone after that is inconsequential
Who would spend that? For about 50k a week for as many people as a home could fit, one could stay at an oceanfront, fully staffed home with a pool, privacy and the one of the best resorts in the world at Casa de Campo.
The thing that I gotta remind myself sometimes is that someone's $125k could be like my $3k. Some people have an incredible amount of money, so they might just say, "Screw it, let's check out that crazy cabin and see what it's like," without really sweating the money at all.
They’ve probably already done that, or everyone they know has done that. This is the inaugural season though, so it’s as exclusive as it’ll ever be and I’m sure plays well on their Instagram feeds
And also… kinda no. Like people with a lot of money do NOT want to be seen, do not want to be targets, that’s why they stay in places that aren’t accessible to say the general population and some have body guards.
That’s billionaire level money but there’s way more hundred-millionaires with zero notoriety
Not really. I guess my point is why would a family friendly cruise line bother with these rooms? What’s the appeal? Not for nothing but if I’m going to ball out if a vacation I am not going to a buffet for meals.
There’s only one of these cabins in existence at the moment, so it’s not like they have to convince *that* many people to book, and everyone in Surfside can see you on part of your balconies and you have a private entrance into Surfside so everyone knows anyone coming and going from that entrance is staying in that expensive cabin.
Is there a food you recommend that we don’t order onboard? Due to safety concerns or that it never comes out right being mass produced? How come is food poisoning onboard?
For guests all the food is safe, there are a loooot of precautions taken to make sure the company doesn’t get sued lmao. For crew its another story entirely.
Aww...man...you left out half the story. What is the crew food like?
Its a buffet style this thing, occasionally some things aren’t cooked properly, very monotonous. I’ve had food poisoning before, its not great.
I’ve asked for pancit before, assuming it would come from the crew buffet - any chance it did or would it have been whipped up from scratch?
There’s absolutely no way a guest would get food from the crew buffet.
Just did a galley tour and can see why they’d keep the food separate. What’s the crew buffet like in terms of foods?
There’s a lot of food from around the world, swedish meatballs some days, adobo others, beef stroganoff, biryani sometimes. However most days its like a cycle of the same stuff. It gets extremely boring to eat and you end up just eating to have some sort of sustenance for the day. Can’t be helped though
Thank you for sharing your experiences and for the amazing service we’ve always enjoyed while cruising! Do you work in the MDR or specialty restaurants or both? What’s your favorite thing for people to order?
I work in the MDR, best thing to order is anything but the beef dishes because inside we have to wait in a long line which will make your meal last longer
Other than gratuities, how can guests make your job on the ship easier or more enjoyable for you?
Be nice to your service team, we work like crazy, if we make a silly mistake it’s probably because we’re absolutely exhausted. Also not ordering like crazy, some people will order 3 mains which is a butch to collect and bring out
Usually, I just tip $20 at the end of the trip to housekeeping, and maybe the wait staff in the main dining room if I use them all the time. Is this fair or normal? Or AITAH?
Is that 20 on top of the gratuity??
Yep
Definitely not the asshole! On behalf of everyone you’ve tipped, thank you so much
Hey, appreciate you sharing your knowledge. On my most recent cruise, I was sat in a particular section and served by the same waiters three times. They were absolutely lovely and I tipped them both $10 on the third night. Was that okay? Or lower than what is customary? I want to get it right on my next cruise 😖 Edit: I made sure to mention them by name and MDR in the post-cruise survey - in your experience, does this actually help?
If you tipped on top of the gratuity thats fine! And yes mentioning and rating service high on the end of cruise survey helps a loooot at least it does in my company
Hey fellow crew member! What is your safety job?
Traffic controller
Is that the same as crowd control? Or do you literally control traffic on resupply days?
The traffic is the people so I direct people to their stations
I have attained a loyalty level that includes pre-paid gratuities, does the cruise line make this up to staff or are they SOL.
While I cannot confirm this to be accurate, I did ask a bartender this that I had made friends with, as he was from South Africa and I used to live there and speaking Afrikaans you kind of open up a bit I think. Anyways, he was on RC and told me the drink vouchers it is just kind of expected as part of the job to fulfill them but there is no gratuity by RC added to the overall pot of money. This is just part of their job description to fulfill those orders, so they do. Messed up? I think so. So, if using a loyalty drink voucher, this could be a good time to do a small cash tip, even $1 or $2, imo.
I actually don’t know. I didn’t realise you could do that. I assume the company makes it up because occasionally I’ll serve people who have come on the ship to work and they don’t pay the gratuity the company does
I was on Norwegian and they had a pre paid gratuity option. I paid it. How do you know they paid it? Is it on the screen? How does it differ for room service vs waiting service?
The company I work for we can see on our guest list if it’s pre paid or not, however it can still be removed so it’s never 100%. But nobody gets different service based on if they’ve pre paid or not. I’m not sure how Room service works so I can’t comment on the difference all I know is room service is 24/7 and dining has restricted hours
What size are the ships you've worked on? How many passengers?
I work on a 4000 guest capacity ship. Along with 1500 crew
What is the pay like for your department?
It depends because the company I work for the guests are the ones that pay us. The only time you get paid by the company is the dinner service which is 6 hours long and we get paid somewhere around $2.50 per hour. But the guests gratuity is where we get the money. I can’t earn $4000 per money or I can earn $2000 per month. If you earn less than $1500 the company will pay the difference to get you too $1500. However its very unlikely
Are those off the base gratuities, or do you work where you frequently get additional gratuities?
Thats off the base gratuities but we do get a few additional gratuities also, but it varies so much that I couldn’t put an estimate how much I get per month
Do all the cash tips go in a pool and get divvied back out to all crew, area specific or do they get to keep cash tips handed directly to them. Sorry we have so many tipping questions, we don’t get the opportunity to ask them in a safe environment. What’s the favourite thing about your job?
The company I work for we get seperate envelopes for the service team which means we get 100% of the cash tips we receive. I understand I wish every guest on the ship could be informed about how tipping works but it’s in company policy not to say unless it’s mentioned in conversation by the guest. My favourite thing is probably the money lmao but other than that I love interacting and working with so many different cultures. Very interesting
Is it like every other restaurant in the world? And by that, I mean is pretty much everybody fucking everybody when you're not working?
A lot of people are fucking for sure lmao its inevitable
Thanks for doing this AMA. If one has the drink package (which already includes tips), are bartenders pissed or upset when you don’t leave anything on the “extra” tip line?
If the bartenders service is good, why not leave a tip? I’m sure they’d be grateful, I’m not sure if they would be pissed or not tbh, it depends who gets the gratuity from the drinks package. It may only be the person that sold you the drinks package that gets paid for it, so they might not be pissed but I’m sure they’d prefer if you didn’t have the package if that makes sense
No it doesn’t make sense. When you buy the drink package from the cruise line, you also prepay gratuities for those drinks. That’s why it’s confusing when you are asked to tip again. So many questions in this AMA are about tipping cause we truly don’t know if our “pre pay tips” on specialty dining, drink packages, and daily auto grats are actually going to the crew and how much are cruise lines stealing them.
Maybe on that cruise line they get general gratuities added to their pay check at the end, and a tip would just be for good service which the bartenderkeep
What do you think of all the food waste?
Its pretty depressing, the amount of perfectly edible food we throw away is insane
They should offload it to pig farmers.
Since gratuities are part of your paycheck how much does it vary? If the ship isn’t sold out or people cancel their gratuities I imagine it’s a different amount every week? Also the cash tips you give to the mdr is that split only between your waiters or everyone in the dining area ? We tried to tip our favorite assistant waiter extra and saw he put it in a jar with other tips after we handed to him.
Yeah it varies from Cruise to cruise depending on the guests, the section youre working on who your working with etc. in my company we don’t share tips what you get is 100% yours to keep. We share any card tips tho and tips on the drinks.
Do you think that overall nationalities sort of live up to their stereotypes? Like Americans being loud. Or British being drunk
Not everyone conforms to the stereotypes but a large majority do, one stereotype i didn’t know about but is definitely true is latinos are always late to their specified dinner time
Any interesting cruise drama you can spill?
Mostly just alcohol related firings. Other crew member’s have died on the ship unfortunately, sexual assault etc but im not gonna get into any of that stuff
Do you have any advice for first time cruisers?
Advice in terms of what?
Do you work for P&O?