Norwegian Cruise Line adds a daily service charge to your onboard account. It is US$20 per person per day in a Club Balcony Suite and below, and US$25 per person per day in The Haven and the suites.
It applies to every guest aged three and over, so a family of four in two staterooms is paying four times over rather than twice. Across a week that is US$560 before anyone has bought a drink.
What NCL Charges in 2026
The rate follows the stateroom rather than the passenger:
- Club Balcony Suite and below. US$20 per person per day.
- The Haven and suites. US$25 per person per day.
Both figures are current for August 2026. There is one itinerary-specific addition worth knowing about: sailings to Hawaii carry a further 4.712% General Excise Tax on the pre-paid service charge.
NCL applies the charge to all guests three years or older, at the full rate for the stateroom they are in. It is worth counting the heads in your booking rather than the cabins when you work out what the week will cost.
Service Charge or Gratuity?
NCL is careful with the wording, and the distinction is the source of a good deal of confusion. What goes on your account daily is a service charge, not a gratuity in the tipping sense.
Its purpose, in NCL’s own explanation, is that crew work as a team. Restaurant staff, stateroom stewards and the support staff nobody sees are paid through a mix of salary and incentive programmes, and the service charge feeds that. It is not divided per passenger, and it is not a reward you are choosing to give to a particular person.
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What the Daily Charge Does Not Cover
NCL sets this out plainly in its own terms. The daily charge covers the crew providing direct guest-facing service: stateroom stewards, dining staff and the support teams behind them. It does not stretch to everything with a price on it.
Outside it sit bar and beverage service charges, speciality dining gratuities, spa services, casino gratuities and any other optional onboard service. Each of those carries its own charge when you use it.
The one most people meet is drinks. A 20% gratuity and beverage service charge is added at checkout on beverage packages, and on drinks bought individually. Budgeting the daily figure and stopping there is what leaves people surprised by the final account.
A 20% gratuity and beverage service charge applies to beverage purchases on top of the daily service charge. The two are unrelated, and paying one has no bearing on the other.
Free at Sea Plus and Pre-Paid Service Charges
If your booking includes Free at Sea Plus, the daily service charge is part of the package. NCL states that the pre-paid service charges included cover the standard daily charge for stateroom stewards, dining staff and support teams, and that they apply to every guest aged three and over in the stateroom for the whole cruise.
It does not absorb the rest. The same exclusions apply, so the bar bill and the spa are still yours.
There is also a discount worth knowing about if you have already paid. Guests who hold pre-paid service charges, or received them through a promotion, get US$15 off the Free at Sea Plus package price, or US$20 for a child.
Tipping on Top
Nothing stops you giving more, and a receipt will usually leave a line for it even where the service charge has already been applied. It is worth knowing that you have paid before you decide, rather than adding twice by accident.
Where passengers do add something, it tends to be for the people they have dealt with all week: the steward who has learned the cabin routine by the second morning, or a waiter who has looked after the same table every evening. That is a personal choice rather than an expectation, and the daily charge is designed to stand on its own.
Can You Remove NCL’s Service Charge?
Yes. The guest services desk can take the automatic charge off your account if you ask, and the request is a routine one.
NCL’s own wording puts the conversation in terms of service, and asks that anything going wrong is raised while you are still aboard so it can be put right. That is worth taking at face value, because a problem mentioned on the second day can still be fixed and one mentioned on the last morning cannot.
Plenty of passengers ask for a different reason. They would rather decide themselves who gets what, and hand it over to the steward and the waiters who actually looked after them. Both routes end up with the crew. The pooled charge reaches the people working behind the scenes as well, and handing it over yourself puts it with the faces you recognise by the end of the week.
Either way the desk is the place, and earlier in the voyage is easier than the queue on disembarkation morning.
Prepaying, and Getting It Back
You can pay the service charge before you sail. Your travel agent adds it to the reservation, at any point up to 24 hours before departure. NCL’s own reason for offering it is budgeting. The money is dealt with before you step aboard, rather than building on an account you settle at the end.
If you have not yet made final payment it simply forms part of that. If you have, it is payable when it is added.
Should the cruise not go ahead, the money is not stranded. NCL states that pre-paid service charges are 100% refundable if you cancel.
What It Adds Up To
The service charge per day is easy to overlook at the point of booking and obvious by the end of the voyage. For two people sharing a stateroom below Club Balcony Suite level:
- Seven nights. About US$280.
- Ten nights. About US$400.
- Fourteen nights. About US$560.
In The Haven the same voyages come to roughly US$350, US$500 and US$700. Add a third or fourth person aged three or over and the figure climbs with them.
For how the daily charge works across cruising more widely, see our guide to cruise gratuities, and for who else is worth thanking and roughly how much, tipping etiquette beyond the auto-gratuity.
Frequently Asked Questions
US$20 per person per day in a Club Balcony Suite and below, and US$25 per person per day in The Haven and suites. NCL calls this a service charge rather than a gratuity, and it applies to every guest aged three and over.
Ask at the guest services desk and they will take it off your account. NCL frames the conversation around service and asks that any problem is raised while you are still aboard, but removal itself is a routine request. Passengers who do it usually want to hand something to the crew who looked after them instead.
They are applied automatically and are not presented as optional, but they can be adjusted on board through guest services where there has been a genuine service problem.
The daily service charge is a fixed amount that supports the pay of restaurant crew, stateroom stewards and the behind-the-scenes teams, who are paid through a combination of salary and incentive programmes. It is not a tip in the traditional sense and it is not shared out per passenger. Drinks packages and spa treatments carry their own separate charges on top.
Those are older rates that applied to pre-paid bookings made before 2023. For anyone booking now it is US$20, or US$25 in The Haven and the suites.
Yes. Ask your travel agent to add it to the reservation, which can be done at any point up to 24 hours before sailing. If you have not made final payment it is rolled into that, and if you have, it is payable when it is added.
If you cancel the cruise, yes. NCL states that pre-paid service charges are 100% refundable.
Every guest aged three and over pays it at the full rate for their stateroom category. Under threes do not.
Free at Sea Plus includes the daily service charge for every guest aged three and over in the stateroom. It does not cover bar and beverage service charges, speciality dining gratuities, spa services or casino gratuities, which are charged separately when you use them.
Yes. A 20% gratuity and beverage service charge is added at checkout on beverage packages. It is separate from the daily service charge and paying one does not affect the other.
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