Tipping

The phone rings. It’s the travel agent we’ve booked the Norwegian cruise with, just ringing to check a few points.

Tipping. Would we prefer paying £4 a day now or £5 a day on ship? Past experience of sea cruises told me that tipping, whilst often not being strictly compulsory, you are made to feel obligated to pay it.

Maybe it’s just that I’ve been brought up in an essentially non-tipping culture. Here in this country, tipping is usually a case of saying to a taxi driver, keep the change. Or, if there’s been particularly good service to waiters/waitresses & bar staff. It is not the expected norm, except possibly for porters.

Something that is compulsory to my mind should be in the headline price of a holiday. When we go on a hotel holiday, we don’t expect an automatic deduction for tips. We do occasionally leave a little extra in our room for staff or pass on a bit. We tend to be more likely to do this in a country where we know wages are very low, or it has a currency which we will just have to change back into sterling when we get home so might as well leave coins in particular with people who might appreciate it.

We’ve certainly never been asked for tips before we’ve even received any service. How do we know what the service is likely to be? We suspect at the end of the day this charge is going to be used to pay staff wages, not tips for excellent or exceptional service.

I know it’s the way things are done in certain countries. The USA seems a much greater tipping culture. But it’s not our way & it irritates us.

I’m trying to tell myself if we’ve paid now, we should not have any further payments later. Just pay & relax about it. Accept it as just part of the price of a cruise. At least this time we were warned before we got on the ship so can take appropriate money or just pay on card now at the lower price. However, that doesn’t stop it causing rancour in the Foxes’ den.