This thread reminded me a conversation with a friend last week. She said that she heard that the housekeeping staff on cruise ships are only paid a token $1.50/week, and that they make most of their money on tips. She said a cruise operator said that having the housekeeping staff make their money from tips instead of actually being paid lets them keep fares low. My friend said that if she ever takes a cruise, she’ll leave a $20 tip every day.
What’s the Straight Dope on cruise ship housekeeping salaries?
I can’t speak to cruise ships, but the staff at this Mexican all-inclusive resort get $5.00/day. That’s what several of them told me last November. They have to pay for their own transport to and from work (the bus costs them about a buck a day), and for their food. The latter really surprised me, since the place laid out seemingly the world’s biggest buffet 3 times a day, and there must have been huge amounts of food uneaten. My friends and I think that’s why you don’t find all inclusive resorts in the US – there’s just no way to compete against those labor costs.
Just back from the sunny southern Caribbean aboard Celebrity Cruise Line’s Constellation. I do not know the exact pay, but the stateroom attendants, waiters, assistant waiters, etc do rely on tips. The suggested rate was $3.50 per person per day. My stateroom attendant was worth 20 times that!
I don’t see why they get paid anything. They get to spend all their time on cruise boats just sailing the oceans, taking it all in, living the high life.
I realize you are joking, but I was amazed by how hard they work. On a 7 day cruise they are lucky to get on shore one day. They work close to 24/7 and when they are not working they are sleeping. Their personal hygiene has to be perfect, yet they pay for their own haircuts/etc.
I don’t know about the housekeepers, but the water-coffee guy at our table last year on Holland America says the Filipino crew makes about $500 a month (room and board included) unless they’re, say, section waiter or whatever. They’re away from home for months at a time and work extremely long hours, live in close quarters, and rarely get a day off. They have to look immaculate at all times and smile, too. Dino said he and most of the other dining guys wanted to be cabin stewards, because the tips are better - I took him to mean that a lot of people don’t think to tip the water guy or the bartenders or whoever as well as they do their cabin steward. Sweet guy, Dino.
I did note that Dino and the other Filipino crew members did give me a wink and a snicker the day after I’d spent, ahem, considerable time with the Dutch chief electrician. There was a real gap between the Filipino crew and the Dutch officers, but evidently news travels like a freaking wildfire on a ship.
On Celebrity cruises the bartenders make out great. Each drink you buy has a 15% tip added on. And I spent a small fortune on alcohol. Also, my “water guy” was labeled “assistant waiter” and there was a suggested minimum tip for him also.
My friend said she saw an interview with an Eastern European couple who were part of the housekeeping staff on a cuise ship. The woman said that meals were only served at certain times, and she often missed them because she was working so long and hard. She and her husband barely saw each other.
Each cruise line handles tipping differently - I hear from my parents who just took another one with Holland America that they’ve changed their policy to automatically putting some percentage of an amount that’s included in your fees to certain people, plus encouraging voluntary tipping. I don’t believe there was a tip included on drinks, but I could be wrong. (At any rate, the bartenders all had extremely good English and were extra-good at the friendly customer service, so I assumed that was a premium job you worked up to like section waiter.)
Oh, and Mr. Electrician told me that staff (including, I assumed, the Filipino crew as well as his Dutch buddies) were welcome to eat in the buffet-style secondary dining room whenever they liked, but they had to be wearing their nice uniforms (not the formal ones, but for him the nice white clean and pressed ones, as opposed to the greasy overalls I saw him around the ship doing his job in) and clean and showered and everything, and that generally they were too tired for all that, so they ate in the crew dining facilities which evidently kept some odd hours and didn’t have as nice a food selection as what they gave the guests.
I don’t know when some of these people ever got to eat - I saw Dino at almost every meal working in some food service position, morning, noon, afternoon, second breakfast, etc.
There was a special on PBS - I never learned the title, but I think it’s part of a series just like this - where a Vice President or something from Celebrity goes and does all of these jobs for a day - he wears the uniform, wakes up at whatever hour, and does the real job with someone else. (They also had the same show where the new CEO of Burger King in England does the same thing.) I had just been on a cruise and it was fascinating.
Yes, they really do make next to nothing - it’s all tips. So be kind!
They showed the VP (or whoever he was) doing a few different jobs. One was the cabin steward. These people work really f—ing hard. They have to get up early to get all their supplies together, then they go from cabin to cabin in the morning cleaning things up, making beds, etc. They usually don’t have time to eat - the woman the VP was working with always seemed to miss the crew mess hall times. Then, they start all over again in the evenings, turning down the beds, putting chocolate on the pillows, etc. It was pretty brutal. Sometimes, they had to hire other workers (like mechanics, engine crew) to help them or else they wouldn’t get done.
They also showed him being a waiter for the bar. They wore polyester uniforms - and he sweated like a pig. Somehow, the real waiters didn’t sweat.
The changes they made as a result were to increase the amount of time the crew mess hall stayed open, and to switch to poly-cotton uniforms. I don’t remember too much of the rest. It was a very interesting show, though.
Jgroub…The PBS show was “Back to the Floor” and the guy you saw was my boss, Bob Dickinson. He’s head of Carnival Cruise lines.
I work at Port of Galveston for two Carnival ships and yes, the onboard staff work their *sses off for passengers who have no idea how hard the job is. From what I recall, they make $45 a MONTH and live off of tips.
Carnival has a tips-included policy in place so that the first $150 to $200 of your Sail & Sign card (onboard charges) goes to cover the tips for the floor steward. If you travel with small children there is an add-on fee. All of this information is in the ticket book and at the website but you would be amazed (or maybe not) at how many people lose their freaking minds when they find out they have to pay the people who spend 6 - 10 months away from their families to tend to the passenger’s every whim.
People like that are why I read the Customers Suck website.
Perhaps that’d be because it is not made particularly prominent when the cruise is sold that the price of the cruise doesn’t actually include you know, like, the staff?
Wow, neat! Thanks for the name of the show; and your boss worked his *ss off too!
We were subjected to the tips included policy when we went on Celebrity Cruises. We felt like it was a scam, as in, the ship will keep the money and not give it to the workers, or they’ll be taxed on it, or the ship will keep a percentage as a finders’ fee, etc., so we opted out of it. (They offer that option.) Instead, we tipped the people who served us directly by giving them envelopes filled with cash. This was much more satisfying anyway, as we got the satisfaction of telling them what a great job they had done.
