Sorry another tipping question

[cerich]

Life isn't fair.

I know that sounds trite but what are ya gonna do?....

 

[LouUK]

Life isn't fair.

I know that sounds trite but what are ya gonna do?....

Hi there - sorry, first post, but Fiona pointed me to this thread as i am supposed to be on this trip with her.

The situation is exactly as Fiona has described. We have received a letter from out tour operators who, in turn, have been told by the US-based agent, that the service charge will no longer be discretionary for British and European guests and that to this end a mandatory charge, equivalent to 10% of the boat fees will be made - in this case this is £206 each.

As to what we can do about it...

1) Take a gamble, pay up and hope we get the service we have paid for. On a holiday that will cost around £3200 each this is a very large gamble.

2) Walk away from the booking. It doesn't depart until later next year and we have yet to pay our major second deposit.

3) Negotiate some mutually beneficial deal that is a combination of mandatory and discretionary tips.

Given that we have such large concerns we are fairly unanimous that 1) won't be a realistic option, and leaves us open to poor service - not what we want on the "holiday of a lifetime".

2 & 3 depend on how reasonable the US owner is. Meanwhile we look to expand our options in other ways.

Best

Lou

 

[cerich]

There are some laws in America that any entity that does booking in the US needs to follow. I know that Cruise Ships add the tip to your bill automatically, however you are permitted to ask it be removed and they can't refuse you.

PM me the company will you? I may know somebody.

You need to do some research.

 

[GalapagosDiveOperator]

Hello everyone
I’m the US based representative of the dive yacht Deep Blue that is mentioned in many of the previous post (although not by name). Although I’ve read all of these threads and many seem to be right on the mark, rather than having all of you trying to figure out what is true and what is not true in 4 previous pages of speculation, I’m going to tell you what is going on.
In Ecuador as in the US, service personnel earn a large percentage of their income from tips. I understand that things probably are not like this in the UK. I’m not saying that this is right or wrong, I am simply saying that this is the way it is. The standard and recommended amount is 10% of the cruise rate. Some people tip more, some people tip less, but 10% is what the crew averages.
When the crew knows that they are going to be compensated appropriately for their efforts in the form of a good tip, it makes for a happy crew. A happy crew will perform over and above what is required of them. This in turn makes for a happier group who have a great time on the trip !
Now regardless of the tip, the crew on the yacht WILL do their jobs, because it is their jobs. However if the crew knows they will be receiving a poor tip at the end of the trip (which is a big part of their compensation) no matter how hard they try to please and accommodate the passengers, they will not go above and beyond what is expected of them. This in turn will effect the group’s attitude which in turn will make the passengers feel that the service is average to below average and make for a less than expected experience.
The Deep Blue has had 2 British groups on board so far in 2006. After the first group, the crew was VERY unhappy with the tip. As a result, I had a long and detailed conversation with the UK based operator and told him that he really needed to emphasize the importance of tipping to his clients. I told him that if the crew knows in advance that no matter how hard they work they will not received a decent tip, they will have no motivation to do anything above and beyond for the passengers and this will effect the experience of the passengers. who in turn will tip less and complain more and the whole thing will spiral down hill from there.
After the second UK group left Galapagos, every single crew member that was on board asked the owner of the yacht when the next UK group was coming so they could ALL request that cruise off ! In fact tip from the second group was so low that here in the US, if I left that percentage of a tip in a restaurant, it would be a way for me to insult the waiter!
This is obviously a SERIOUS problem ! The yacht can not operate without a crew !
After the second group, I had a very long discussion with the owner of the yacht about this issue and the way we see it is there are only 2 solutions to this problem. 1. We could cancel all of the UK groups that are booked far enough out where no one on the cruise could possibly have international airline tickets and refund the UK operator the entire deposit in full or 2. we could pre-collect the tip from the UK groups to insure that the crew receives a proper tip.
Although I personally would prefer the first option and avoid these long and somewhat negative posting on this web site about a “required tip”, I gave the UK operator the option of how he wanted to proceed. He told me he would contact his groups and get back with me.
In the meantime I did locate an alternate vessel for these people. The Lammerlaw is available for a full charter during the same time period as these folks have booked on the Deep Blue. The Lammerlaw is a fine yacht and holds the required 16 passengers. Although the price for a 10 night dive trip on the Lammerlaw will be about $1000 more per person than it would be on the Deep Blue, they will not have a "pre-collected / required tip to deal with. I sincerely encourage them to pursue this as an alternative. I honestly think it will be in everyone’s best interest for them to travel on a different yacht. I hope this clarifies this situation for everyone. Dive safe !

 

[samui13]

firstly i would like to say that i was on the 2nd trip of 2006 and the service i recieved from the crew was generally ok. It wasnt excellent. the tip that i left i feel was a fair representation of the service i had been given. the boat itself is an excellent liveaboard except for the crappy entertainment system. . the main tour guide of our trip " jeff " was in my opinion not the slightest intrested in mixing with any of the guests. he used to perch himself down in front of the tv and dvd player inside the salon every night as we were eating our dinner and watch dvd's that were in spanish. ok you might say that is the native tongue, but isn't the tv and dvd player there for the guests to use. not for him to watch all night every night. his dive briefings were almost non existant. he IMHO did not give to @@@@'s about any of us on that trip. i was gutted to find that he was the main tour guide on the deep blue and that antonio, who i had read so much about was not on this trip. i have read that the first trip didnt pay a very good tip and that de motivates the crew when the next load of brits turn up, and they dont give a good service because they might not get a good tip. that might have been what happend on my trip, i dont know, all i know is that i have done several liveabords around the world and the service i had on the deep blue was below the standards i have recieved elsewhere. perhaps antonio didnt get a good tip from the first trip and then decided he would work elsewhere and not be guiding us tight fisted brits. a tip i had always been led to believe was gratuity, and to me, that i should tip according to the level of service that i have received. which is exactly what i did give. what i cannot figure out also is why the crew are not getting paid in the first place. the boat cost £2.5k + per person , surely in that price there is enough money to pay for the crews wages. or does mr big who owns the boat take all the money and deprive his employees of money whilst he makes a fortune. i know there are running costs and fuel is costly but come on. i think i read that the new compulsory tip would mount up to $5000ish for a ten day cruise. 3 of them in a month = $15000 divided by 11 crew is a VERY good monthly wage for that part of the world do you not think. that is probaly the same wage for nurses in the uk.
the boat ran out of coca cola on the 3rd day. i think they brang 72 bottles with them for a 10 day trip. well i know its not the end of the world not having coca cola but hey come on, you americans would not put up with things like that. getting back to the guides, the other guide louis was very good and would always bring a smile to my face. when we were all kitting up we would all rush to try and get into louis's panga and not into jeffs.
i was amazed also to find out once we had anchored at bartolome, were we not allowed to go ashore to climb up and take photos of pinnacle rock. apparently according to jeff we had not been given permission to go ashore. this i found a little strange, and thought that something funny was going on. in all i had a great trip, that was due to the amount of hammerhead action and seeing my first whaleshark plus another 2. my fellow passengers who are also my new friends played a large part of the trips success, but hey i guess that us guys and girls from th uk are a very friendly bunch of people, thats why you americans always want to to take us on holiday with you when you travel to places like iraq and afgahnistan. i was planning a return trip there in 2 years time and am reconsidering now due to the fact that i do not have an option to how much gratuity i should give. ok you will say that i can give more than the compulsory 10% but going on this years trip i would feel very hard done by and would have made a written complaint about the low level of service. I also do not think that if the compulsory 10 % had been paid on our trip that the level of service would have been any different. like i said in my opening comment the service was "ok" not "excellent"

 

[samui13]

I just thought I would mention, booking the trip from the uk we get charged $4500 (£2500) regardless of cabin, so that works out we are already shelling out more than $600 than you pay in the US.

lou

 

[_Bella_]

I remember when Mike Ball from OZ charged US pax more than Euro and Asian, and people were regularly complaining. I believe he finally did away with that policy.
His reasoning was something along the lines of exchange rate fluctuations.
This situation is absolute bullocks, however. Charging UK pax more because the operator believes they MIGHT NOT tip as much as US pax is downright dishonest, especially considering it was added AFTER the initial payments were begun.

I wonder how many US clients would happily accept a trip that suddenly added a 30% surcharge after an agreed upon price had been reached and payments had commenced.

 

[GalapagosDiveOperator]

Let me clarify a few other things and hopefully this will be the end this discussion.

I started out in the dive industry as the owner of a dive shop. The store often times would be very close to going out of business yet my customers would come in and comment on how much money I was making. Ever since those days, I have understood how businesses that look like they are doing so well, end up not surviving. People that have never had their own business will probably not understand this but if you have ever owned your own business, I’m sure you know exactly what I am saying.

Although samui13’s calculations of how much the yacht owners are making sure look impressive, they remind me of those dive store days. The image samui13 paints in his posting of a fat cat owner sitting back lighting his Cuban cigar with a 100 dollar bill while sipping French champagne could not be further from the truth.

The Deep Blue is a multi-million dollar yacht but the owners are not multimillionaires. They are just local Galapagonian people working hard and trying to improve their lives for themselves and their families. Because they are not millionaires, this means that they had to incur a lot of debt in building the Deep Blue and this debt needs to be repaid. When the yacht first began operations in late 2003, it did not have many of the thing on board that many of the other better established and better financed yachts had. After my first trip out on it, I made a huge list of “improvements “ that needed to be made. I handed the list to the managing partner of the yacht. He looked at the list and said to me “Yes, you are right. We need these things but we don’t have the money to buy them right now.” I told him I understood but that without those items, the yacht would not be able compete on the same level as some of the other yachts. I therefore recommended that they enter the market at a much lower price and offer the yacht as a “good” option for those divers that wanted to dive in Galapagos but were either unwilling or unable to afford the Aggressor yachts or the Sky Dancer. When the yacht began full scale operations in the dive industry in mid 2004, the yacht was priced at almost a $1000 less per person per week than the other yachts mentioned here. In these early days, it always perplexed me when passengers would write comments to me about the Deep Blue and compare it to the Aggressor. How they expected a new yacht that was priced $1000 less per person to offer the same services and amenities as one to the Aggressors was beyond me. It was like someone staying at the Days Inn and then complaining that they did not receive the services of Ritz Carlton.

That was just 2 short years ago and since that time the owners of the yacht have reinvested ALL the profits from their trips back into the yacht. I am happy to report that almost every item on my original list has been purchased and is now in place on the yacht. Samui13 commented that he felt the entertainment center of the yacht was below standard. The owner agrees with him and is planning on upgrading it shortly. It’s just that other things like nitrox systems, stabilizers, larger zodiacs, etc were of higher priority. The Deep Blue is currently offering all the services and amenities as all the other top quality yachts in Galapagos and a number of additional improvements are scheduled to be done during the next dry dock in January 2007. Although the price of the yacht has increased over the years, the cost per person in 2007 is still $500 or so less per person per week than any of the other comparable yachts.

Concerning the tipping situation – I understand that in the UK tipping is not a big custom but I seriously doubt that anyone in the service industry anywhere in the world would consider a tip of 2.5% (two and a half percent) to be acceptable. No wonder the crew doesn’t want to work when UK passengers are on board and I honestly can not blame them. Samui13 further states that he found the service on the yacht to be below standard. This is contrary to the reports I get back from the American travelers who all rave about how great the crew is. This further indicates to me that what I stated in my first post holds true – that is, the crew knows that the British groups will be leaving a VERY poor tip and therefore they are not motivated to provide them with outstanding service. This in turn leads to passenger complaints and the whole thing spirals down from there.

Now samui13 did suggestion that the crew should be paid more to prevent this from happening (which by the way I also heard this same suggestion from the UK operator when I spoke with him on the phone about this issue). This sounds like a great idea but the problem is the money has to come from somewhere and as with ANY additional expense in ANY business, the additional expense has to be passed on to the customer. Therefore to pay the crew more, the yacht will need to raise the price of the trips.

After reading all these posts it further strengthens my option that the British groups really need to look for a different yacht – one that they will like better - for their Galapagos tours and we need to stick with our groups from this side of the “pond”. I sincerely hope all of you have a great time in Galapagos regardless of which yacht you end up using.

 

[bayswaterbabe]

Hello everyone
I’m the US based representative of the dive yacht Deep Blue that is mentioned in many of the previous post (although not by name). Although I’ve read all of these threads and many seem to be right on the mark, rather than having all of you trying to figure out what is true and what is not true in 4 previous pages of speculation, I’m going to tell you what is going on.
In Ecuador as in the US, service personnel earn a large percentage of their income from tips. I understand that things probably are not like this in the UK. I’m not saying that this is right or wrong, I am simply saying that this is the way it is. The standard and recommended amount is 10% of the cruise rate. Some people tip more, some people tip less, but 10% is what the crew averages.
When the crew knows that they are going to be compensated appropriately for their efforts in the form of a good tip, it makes for a happy crew. A happy crew will perform over and above what is required of them. This in turn makes for a happier group who have a great time on the trip !
Now regardless of the tip, the crew on the yacht WILL do their jobs, because it is their jobs. However if the crew knows they will be receiving a poor tip at the end of the trip (which is a big part of their compensation) no matter how hard they try to please and accommodate the passengers, they will not go above and beyond what is expected of them. This in turn will effect the group’s attitude which in turn will make the passengers feel that the service is average to below average and make for a less than expected experience.
The Deep Blue has had 2 British groups on board so far in 2006. After the first group, the crew was VERY unhappy with the tip. As a result, I had a long and detailed conversation with the UK based operator and told him that he really needed to emphasize the importance of tipping to his clients. I told him that if the crew knows in advance that no matter how hard they work they will not received a decent tip, they will have no motivation to do anything above and beyond for the passengers and this will effect the experience of the passengers. who in turn will tip less and complain more and the whole thing will spiral down hill from there.
After the second UK group left Galapagos, every single crew member that was on board asked the owner of the yacht when the next UK group was coming so they could ALL request that cruise off ! In fact tip from the second group was so low that here in the US, if I left that percentage of a tip in a restaurant, it would be a way for me to insult the waiter!
This is obviously a SERIOUS problem ! The yacht can not operate without a crew !
After the second group, I had a very long discussion with the owner of the yacht about this issue and the way we see it is there are only 2 solutions to this problem. 1. We could cancel all of the UK groups that are booked far enough out where no one on the cruise could possibly have international airline tickets and refund the UK operator the entire deposit in full or 2. we could pre-collect the tip from the UK groups to insure that the crew receives a proper tip.
Although I personally would prefer the first option and avoid these long and somewhat negative posting on this web site about a “required tip”, I gave the UK operator the option of how he wanted to proceed. He told me he would contact his groups and get back with me.
In the meantime I did locate an alternate vessel for these people. The Lammerlaw is available for a full charter during the same time period as these folks have booked on the Deep Blue. The Lammerlaw is a fine yacht and holds the required 16 passengers. Although the price for a 10 night dive trip on the Lammerlaw will be about $1000 more per person than it would be on the Deep Blue, they will not have a "pre-collected / required tip to deal with. I sincerely encourage them to pursue this as an alternative. I honestly think it will be in everyone’s best interest for them to travel on a different yacht. I hope this clarifies this situation for everyone. Dive safe !

The above post, coming from the representative of the boat in question, is as astonishing as it is shocking, not only for what it actually states but also for what is implicit by the writer's comments.

After reading the post very thoroughly, a) I will certainly not be booking any trips on the Deep Blue - no matter how many other positive posts appear in relation to that boat - as it is now abundantly clear that the crew chooses when and for whom they will perform their duties well, and I don't want to take the risk of being on a trip where the crew decide to withhold their goodwill, b) I will not be booking any trips on any of the other liveaboards run by the same operators of Deep Blue, as it is again abundantly clear that this sort of behaviour by the crews of their boats is tolerated (would be unthinkable in the UK), and c) I will not be using the services of the tour operator who sold the trip to my fellow Brits, as they appear to have failed to take robust action in the interests of their clients. A statement from the tour operator to the effect that they will no longer be acting as agents for the owners of the Deep Blue might change my mind, but I can't see that happening. Naturally, I will be making sure that all my diving friends and dive clubs I am associated with are well aware of this situation.

As a frequent customer of liveaboards in the Red Sea, Maldives and the Far East, I have never encountered such a problem before. My fellow Brits and I always tip, but the amount is always commensurate with the service received. This particular issue is the most blatant case of discrimination I have ever come across. I am sad to see that it is being allowed to proceed unchallenged either by a regulatory body or by a court of law.

 

[Web Monkey]

The above post, coming from the representative of the boat in question, is as astonishing as it is shocking, not only for what it actually states but also for what is implicit by the writer's comments.

. . .

As a frequent customer of liveaboards in the Red Sea, Maldives and the Far East, I have never encountered such a problem before. My fellow Brits and I always tip, but the amount is always commensurate with the service received. This particular issue is the most blatant case of discrimination I have ever come across. I am sad to see that it is being allowed to proceed unchallenged either by a regulatory body or by a court of law.

Maybe that's the problem.

You get poor service because the crew expects a poor tip, which they then receive. Everybody gets what they expect.

Just get your money back and book with a tour operator that suits you. Then everybody's happy.

Terry