Princess Quietly Raised Two Onboard Charges — What It Means for Guests

Cruise fares have a funny habit of looking one way at booking and another by the time you’ve had a few drinks, booked a specialty dinner, and checked your onboard account.

That’s why this latest Princess change matters more than it might sound at first. The line hasn’t just tweaked one small fee. It has raised both daily crew appreciation and onboard service charges, which means the real cost of a cruise can creep up a little faster than some guests expect.

What Just Changed on Princess Cruises

Princess now lists its daily crew appreciation gratuities at $20 per person, per day for suites, $19 for mini suites, cabanas, and Reserve Collection, and $18 for all other stateroom types. That is a $1 per person, per day increase across all stateroom categories.

At the same time, Princess’s current policy says a nonrefundable 20% service charge is automatically added to optional purchases like drinks, dining room and specialty dining charges, private group functions, and other extras that aren’t included in the cruise fare. That is up from the previous 18% charge.

None of this is exactly the kind of update that gets passengers cheering. Even when the increase looks small on paper, people notice fast when the bill at the end of the cruise starts climbing.

Suggested read: 7 Big Changes Coming to Princess Cruises in 2026

Why This Feels Bigger Than a Small Price Increase

A dollar here and a couple of percent there doesn’t sound dramatic. But that’s not how it feels onboard.

Cruise extras stack up quickly. Spend $100 on eligible onboard purchases and the service charge is now $20 instead of $18. On a 7-night sailing, a couple in a standard stateroom is now looking at $252 in crew appreciation instead of $238, based on the current daily rate and the previous $1-lower amount Princess referenced for guests who prepaid before March 8th.

None of that is ruinous on its own. But together, it’s enough to make a guest feel like the cruise got pricier without the fare itself changing.

That’s the part cruise lines sometimes underestimate. Guests don’t just react to the size of the increase. They react to the sense that the price they originally booked no longer feels like the true cost of the trip.

The Difference Between Service Charges and Crew Appreciation

This is where plenty of cruisers get tripped up, because these charges sound similar but they are not the same thing.

Crew appreciation is the daily gratuities amount added to your onboard account based on your stateroom category. Princess says guests can adjust that amount while they are onboard, but only before they settle the account and leave the ship. After the cruise, it’s not refundable.

The service charge works differently. Princess describes it as a nonrefundable percentage added to eligible onboard purchases that are not included in the cruise fare. In other words, if you’re paying separately for drinks, certain dining, or other covered extras, that charge is added automatically.

So yes, both hit your onboard account. But one is a daily crew charge that can be adjusted during the cruise, and the other is an automatic service charge attached to certain purchases.

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Who Will Notice the Increase Most

The guests most likely to feel this are the ones who cruise a little more freely with their wallets once they’re onboard.

If you buy drinks individually instead of using a package, the higher service charge matters. If you like specialty dining, that matters too. And if you’re already in a higher stateroom category, the crew appreciation increase adds a bit more to the daily running total.

On the flip side, the guest who sticks mostly to included dining, doesn’t order many extra drinks, and keeps spending tight probably won’t see this as a huge hit. Annoying? Maybe. Trip-changing? Probably not.

Still, I get why this kind of thing bothers people. It’s rarely just about the money. It’s about the drip-drip effect of one more cruise extra getting more expensive.

Who May Not Have to Pay More Out of Pocket

There is one important catch here, and it softens the blow for some passengers.

Princess says that if crew appreciation or eligible service charges were prepaid as part of an all-inclusive or other applicable package, those payments are bundled into the fare and no additional amount will be added onboard for the covered items.

That means guests who booked Princess Plus or Princess Premier are not necessarily going to feel this the same way as someone paying as they go. Princess’s package terms also say crew appreciation is paid on behalf of guests with those packages, though other service charges are not universally included across every extra outside the package.

That distinction matters, because some headlines make it sound like every single passenger is about to be hit the exact same way. That’s not really the case.

Why More Cruisers Are Frustrated by Fee Creep

This is also landing at a time when many cruisers already feel that the base fare tells only half the story.

And Princess is not moving in a vacuum here. In fact, this service charge increase follows another recent Princess pricing change: higher Medallion shipping fees. Guests in the U.S. and Puerto Rico are now paying $20 per order instead of $10, while Canadian guests are paying $25 instead of $15. That came after Princess had already removed complimentary Medallion shipping from its Plus and Premier packages for updated 2026 sailings.

Elsewhere in the industry, Carnival, Princess’s sister brand, also raised its service charge from 18% to 20% in late 2025. Carnival is also increasing daily gratuities and the price of its Bottomless Bubbles package from April 2, 2026, while Royal Caribbean will begin charging $4.99 from March 15, 2026 for the Coca-Cola Freestyle cup that had previously been included with some drink packages.

Even Norwegian Cruise Line’s new ship, Norwegian Luna, has introduced a $44.99 adults-only show, adding to the sense that more of the cruise experience is being carved into optional paid extras. Put simply, this is not just one cruise line sneaking in one extra charge. It is part of a wider industry pattern where more of the real vacation cost gets pushed into the add-ons.

The cruise itself can still be a great value. I don’t think that changes. But passengers are getting more alert to all the little charges sitting around the edges of the vacation: gratuities, service charges, beverage packages, specialty dining, delivery fees, and the rest of the onboard temptations designed to separate you from your sea-day budget.

That’s why this Princess update feels bigger than a routine pricing tweak. It feeds into a wider frustration that cruising is still fun, still worth it, but also getting harder to price in one quick look.

And for a lot of guests, that’s the real headline.

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