Gratuities and Tipping

For our upcoming cruise on the Ovation of the Seas, we purchased the non-alcoholic refreshment beverage package and the Unlimited Dining Package. Then one night, around 2:00 am I started wondering about gratuities for the waitstaff and bartenders (or baristas) and how much money I should expect to pay in tips. Should I just charge it to my SeaPass card, to be paid at the end of the cruise; or would the staff prefer cash? But wait. Didn’t I already pay 18% in gratuities when I bought the packages? How is that divided among the staff?

How does any of this work????

We are both numbers people, so let’s break it down. We were able to purchase the Unlimited Dining Package  for $166.99 per person. Royal tacked on an 18% gratuity for $30.05 each. Our total for both of us for a week was $394.08. I feel like it was a killer deal. This dining plan allows us to eat dinner at any specialty restaurant every night, as well as lunch on sea days. This gives us ten opportunities to use the plan. In short, if we use the plan at every opportunity, the specialty meals will cost us about $20 a piece so $40 for the two of us. That includes the added, prepaid gratuity. So if we were to dine in specialty restaurants ten times, our average tip would be $6.00 on a $34.00 meal.

 So, for specialty dining, we will definitely leave a cash tip for our waiter. Cash is king, right?

I realize that I can add gratuities for the restaurants to our bill and pay for them at the end of the cruise and we may well do that. I just like handing someone who has done an outstanding job a bit of cash. Because there are limited specialty dining options onboard the Ovation, we will probably be eating at each restaurant at least twice. I want the wait staff to know they are appreciated.

Now onto the Beverage Refreshment Package. Both of us are on medications that (strongly) discourage alcohol consumption, so we decided to get the Refreshment package instead of the deluxe drink package. It includes juice, soda, coffee drinks and mocktails, as well as bottled water so we should be fine. This package ended up being about a third of the price of the deluxe drink package. We paid $321.86 plus $57.82 for gratuity for the both of us. If we each get 30 specialty coffees / mocktails / smoothies during the week, that is about a buck a drink. To me, that seems reasonable. However, if we find we are getting a lot of drinks at one particular bar or coffee shop, I might be more inclined to hand a dollar or two to the person making our drinks.

Now I have a tipping strategy for our specialty dining and drink package. We always take some cash to hand to our room steward on the last day and of course our Uber drivers, the porters and any of the guides on port excursions.

We prepaid our ship gratuities, so we don’t need to worry about that.

I guess I just want to make sure I can take care of the people who are going to be taking care of me during our vacation.

Talk to me about your tipping strategies. Do you plan for tipping or just tip throughout the cruise like you would anywhere else? I look forward to hearing other approaches to tipping and gratuities.

Let’s CRUISE!