How do I Pay for any Spend On Board the Ship ?

Once you are on board your cruise ship – you can put the cash and credit cards away – at least until you are visiting a port of call. All cruise ships operate a cashless system for spend on board with your stateroom key card or fob also acting as your wallet for spending.

At or prior to check in you will be asked to provide a credit card that any on board spend will be charged to at the end of your cruise. During the cruise any spend will be charged to your on board account  and then debited to your credit card at the end of the cruise or when any specific credit limit has been reached. For guests who prefer to pay in cash you can pay cash in advance at Guest Relations and then effectively just top that amount up as you reach the limit on your key card.

At the time of booking your cruise some guests may have been offered what is called ‘on board credit’ as a promotion to encourage you to book. If you have secured any on board credit this will be applied to your on board account and any spend that you incur on ship will firstly exhaust the on board credit before making any direct charge against yourself. Normally you cannot spend any on board credit prior to your cruise sailing – so you couldn’t use it for example to book any shore excursions in advance.

Remember that on virtually every cruise all of your food is included in the cruise fare – unless you want to eat in any of the speciality restaurants that may charge a small supplement. Some guests may also have purchased a drinks package – see our seperate topic with regards to drinks packages so may not have to charge any drinks to your on board account – but you will still need to show your key card at the bars to prove that you have a drinks package.

So what might you spend money on on board. Well we have often heard cruise lines being accused of what the Americans call ‘Nickle & Diming’. In other words constantly trying to encourage you to spend on board. In our experience it is very easy to say no and hard sell tactics are seldomly the order of the day. In fact just to prove a point we once took a 10 day cruise and ended with a zero balance on our account (and no we did not have the benefit of any on board credit). Admitedly we did have a free 2 hour happy hour on drinks as part of our layalty scheme status – see our topic on cruise line loyalty schemes.

Apart from drinks you will no doubt be encouraged to enjoy spa treatments, have your photograph taken – often severak times a day, but a polite no thank you is sufficient to avoid spending any anything that you do not really want.

When you leave the ship of course your cabin key card is not a credit card so you will need some local currency(ies) for your ports of call and / or a credit card.