Cruising Isn't All Inclusive Anymore

First, let's talk about gratuities because they never seem to stop increasing.

The first place you're going to feel all of these changes in the cruise structure and pricing is going to be in gratuities.

And 2026 has started to turn into a year of a wave of gratuity hikes.

Carnival bumped up its daily rate up to $17 a person for a standard room and $19 for a suite.

Princess went to $18 and even more depending on your cabin.

And they also snuck in there an increase in its onboard service charge.

We're seeing a lot of this too.

where it's traditionally been 18% for things like drinks and specialty dining or even spa services.

Well, most of the cruise lines now have quietly increased that to 20%.

Holland America fell right in with its sister brands, with its own increase landing for sailings leaving on or after the 1st of June.

So it's just starting to hit.

MSC raised its hotel service charge too, and up in the yacht club, it now runs $23 per person per day on new bookings.

And those are just the lines that have moved in the span of the last few months.

Now I want to be really clear on something because this topic can get ugly fast online.

I am not anti-gratuity.

I'm very generous.

I keep my tips on and I also tip in cash on top of that.

I actually just made a video about that.

And I'm the first to tell you that the crew on these ships, they work really, really hard, probably harder than most people that I know in real life.

And they're often far away from home for months at a time.

And their base wages are absolutely abominable.

And the cruise lines get away with this.

So that extra money matters to them genuinely.

So my issue here is not the tipping.

My issue is the pace.