FAQ

Every rate here, and where it came from

A calculator is only worth the numbers inside it. So we publish all of them: the figure, the page it was read from, the date a person checked it, and whether it has been checked at all. Where the calculator holds no numbers of its own, which is most of what an all-inclusive or a resort will charge you, it says that too.

Cruise line gratuities

Carnival Cruise Line: $17.00 standard, $19.00 suite, per person per day. Assessed on all guests except children under 2, which we do not model, so a party including an infant is overstated by one head. Prepayable at booking, through carnival.com up to two days before sailing, or via a travel agent; otherwise posted automatically to the Sail & Sign account. A separate 20% service charge applies to beverages and specialty dining and is not part of this figure. Port charges: Carnival includes government taxes, fees and port expenses in the advertised fare, not only in the booking total, so the calculator adds no regional estimate on top. Confirmed by a travel advisor rather than read off the page, which is why it is recorded here.

Royal Caribbean: $18.50 for all stateroom categories other than suites, $21.00 for suites. Prepayable at booking; otherwise applied automatically to the SeaPass account each day. Adjustable at Guest Relations any time before the morning of disembarkation, and the page notes the charge does not apply where prohibited by law. Separate gratuities apply to purchases and are not part of this figure: 18% on beverages, dining and room service, 20% on spa and salon. Port charges: Royal Caribbean breaks government taxes, fees and port expenses out of the fare, so a regional estimate does apply. Two real quotes confirm it.

Norwegian Cruise Line: NCL calls this a service charge, not a gratuity. $20.00 for Club Balcony Suite and below, $25.00 for The Haven and Suites, per person per day, for bookings made on or after 2023-01-01. Note that Club Balcony Suite sits in the lower tier despite the name, so our balcony class is the correct mapping for it. Charged to all guests 3 years or older; the under-3 exemption is not modeled, so a party including a toddler is overstated by one head. Prepayable up to 24 hours before sailing and fully refundable if the cruise is cancelled. Hawaii sailings add a 4.275% GET tax on the prepaid charge, which we do not model. Port charges: NCL charges government taxes, fees and port expenses separately, typically $100 to over $400 per person depending on length and itinerary, so a regional estimate applies.

Holland America Line: Holland America calls this Crew Appreciation. $18.00 per guest per day for non-suite staterooms, $20.00 for suites, added automatically to the onboard account. The page states no child or age exemption, so all guests are charged the full rate here. It does not mention prepayment, so that is recorded as unknown rather than assumed. The page also warns the charge is subject to change without notice, which is the case for checking it every season boundary rather than annually. Port charges: Holland America includes government taxes, fees and port expenses inside the advertised base fare rather than as separate line items, so the calculator adds no regional estimate on top.

MSC Cruises: MSC prices by sailing region and publishes one combined tier for Caribbean, Alaska and USA: $17.00 per night, $23.00 in the Yacht Club, for cruises booked from 2026-05-11. Both of our regions in that group carry it. Every other region resolves to unsourced rather than borrowing this figure. In this region children aged 2 and over pay the full adult rate and only under-2s are exempt, so the reduced child pricing MSC applies on Grand Voyages, South Africa and South America does not apply here. Their Mediterranean and North Europe section was empty when read, and their Grand Voyages rates for those waters are quoted in euros, which this schema does not carry. Added automatically to the shipboard account; the page does not mention prepayment. Port charges: MSC includes port fees in the booking price itself, so the taxes and fees line on an MSC quote is government tax alone. A 14 night Sinfonia sailing from Lisbon to Civitavecchia calling at twelve ports quoted $52.30 per person, against $138.00 for a 7 night Royal Caribbean itinerary in the same waters.

Port fees and taxes

No line publishes these as a table, so they come off real booking pages. We record the lowest and highest quote we find and store both. An average would be wrong in both directions on the itineraries people actually search, and you cannot recover a range from one later.

Treat every range below as rough. Lines differ in what they put in this line at all: a 14 night Mediterranean sailing on MSC calling at twelve ports quoted $52.30 per person in taxes and fees, while a 7 night Royal Caribbean itinerary in the same waters quoted $138.00, six times as much per night on half the ports. A gap that size is not itinerary length. MSC includes port fees in the booking price itself, so the taxes line on an MSC quote is government tax alone, while Royal Caribbean breaks port charges out into it. Their advertised fare is the more complete of the two, which is worth saying on a site that usually argues the opposite. A regional range therefore cannot describe your sailing, and the calculator asks for the figure from your own booking page instead.

The same holds inside a single region on a single line. Two Royal Caribbean sailings to Mexico, both calling at three ports with an overnight in Cabo, quoted $196.80 and $162.89 per person. The cheaper one was a night longer. What moved the figure was which ports and which homeport, not how many nights or how many stops. So a range is bounded by the itineraries we happened to quote, and yours can sit outside it.

Mexico and Caribbean overlap. These two are split by tax, not by map. Mexico charges a Non-Resident tax on any voyage calling at a Mexican port, so a Western Caribbean sailing that stops at Cozumel or Costa Maya sits in the Mexico range even though it was sold to you as a Caribbean cruise. The calculator says so at the region picker, because there is no way to guess it.

All-inclusives and resorts

We hold no rates for these, and never will. A cruise line publishes its gratuity rate on a page anyone can read. Nobody publishes what a given resort charges for parking, or which restaurants at a given all-inclusive carry a cover: those are set per property and change per season, so there is no page to read and no figure to verify.

So those modes of the trip calculator do something different. They name the things that get charged on top, which is the part people do not think to ask about, and every figure in them is one you supplied rather than one we sourced. A total there is not a claim we are making about a property.

How we make money

Open Book Journeys is an independent travel agency. If you book a cruise through us, the cruise line pays us a commission. That is worth stating on its own page, in detail, because this site's whole argument is about who a price is really working for.

Travel insurance is different, so it gets its own line

We can arrange travel insurance and we are paid a commission when you buy it through us. That is a second thing we earn on, and it is not like the first one.

Booking commission creates no pressure. You came here to take a trip, you are going to book it somewhere, and what we earn does not change your total. Insurance is optional. Nobody has to buy it, which means there is money in talking someone into it, and that is a real conflict rather than a theoretical one.

So we do not recommend it either way. We will tell you what a policy covers, what it excludes and what it costs, and you decide. The tradeoff is laid out here, with the same disclosure attached to it, because a conflict disclosed only on the page nobody reads is not disclosed.

Who we are, and who holds your booking

Open Book Journeys is an independent travel agency affiliated with WorldVia Travel Group, our host agency. They hold the supplier relationships, the client records and the bookings themselves, which is why they appear in our privacy policy as well.

Commission rates differ by company and by fare type, and they are set by the supplier rather than by us. Ask what we earn on a specific booking and we will tell you, before you decide.

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