Welcome to the Royal Caribbean Blog Podcasts.

We look into the world of Royal Caribbean Cruising.

I'm your host, Matt Hotsberg, and this is episode number 521. We are back again doing listening

emails. I really want to start off 2024 with like a very manageable email inbox. So I want to

make sure that we're getting all those out there. So this week it's all about you. Here we go.

Alright, I'm going to answer some emails. And the first email is from Jim Koontz.

Hey there, I've tried to disseminate some information that I received over the past few months

I believe is important for passengers pre-purchasing specially dining packages.

I have learned from multiple servers in the specialty restaurants

that they don't receive any of the gratuities prepaid through the crew's plato.

It was shocking to me as many passengers believe they've already paid gratuities to the servers.

I questioned Royal Caribbean on the matter and after some 10 emails I have the entire chain,

they stated that the gratuities go to staff members like Royal Caribbean does for the dailyilley Gratuity's charge, but stated the percentages for each staff member, quote, is proprietary, it will not be disclosed, end quote. Clearly, as the multiple servers on multiple ships disclosed to me, they don't get any of the prepaid gratuities and only the additional gratuities paid to them. That was very disturbing and really made me feel terrible for the servers in the specialty

restaurant.

I think this is an important topic for passengers as more and more are purchasing the limited

dining package or multi-night plants.

Jim, thanks to the email, you know, it's interesting topic.

Or tutuies in general, people always get very interested about in terms of, you know,

does it go to the right people?

Here's what I've always thought about this, and I understand that you got the email chain from somebody at Royal Caribbean. Honestly, I don't know what to believe when it comes to this stuff, because, let's face it, the servers aren't dumb. They understand that people think they're going in there and being paid these things. It's hard to imagine that's not the case. to any special restaurant, you know at the very bottom of the receipt, it says the something, I'm paraphrasing here, but part of the cost of your meal goes towards the gratuity and that's what you get there with the meal. Now in the old day's pre-dodding package, if you paid, you know, $30 to go to chops, again, back then it was $30 to go to chops. You know, it would have been a percentage that was for the server, a percentage that was for the extra cost of the food. Obviously, the prices have gone up considerably. I am sure there's much more of a profit center related to that. But the servers know that everybody coming into that restaurant, and most of them do have a dining package, are expecting that's the case to be. I mean, it's not like they're going in there

blind. Like, what? You guys all paid money that's supposed to come to us? I don't know. Maybe I'm

naive on that front. I'm not honestly sure. The other thing to consider is I don't really have a crew

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