| Gratuity — Inside, Oceanview, Veranda | $19.50 per guest, per night |
| Gratuity — Concierge, AquaClass | $20.50 per guest, per night |
| Gratuity — The Retreat | $24.50 per guest, per night |
| 7 nights, two guests (standard) | $273 |
| Service charge on everything else | 20% |
| Classic package per-drink ceiling | $12 |
| Premium package per-drink ceiling | $19 |
| Package break-even | about 7–8 drinks a day |
Takeaway: the gratuity is fixed and unavoidable — budget $273 for two on a week. The 20% is the charge that actually moves your bill, and it applies to anything you buy. The drinks package only wins if you both drink steadily and your drinks stay under $12.
Gratuities land before you order anything, and the 20% rides on everything after. Add your sailing details and see your own total — Celebrity is already selected.
Price this for my Celebrity sailing →What you pay
Celebrity charges a daily gratuity to every guest’s onboard account, banded by stateroom.
| Your stateroom | Per guest, per night | 7 nights, two guests | Was |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inside, Oceanview, Veranda | $19.50 | $273 | $18.00 |
| Concierge, AquaClass | $20.50 | $287 | $19.00 |
| The Retreat | $24.50 | $343 | $23.00 |
Children pay the adult rate. Celebrity publishes no age exemption. For how this charge works across the industry, see our guide to how cruise gratuities work.
The 20% that sits on everything else
The daily gratuity covers your stateroom attendant and dining staff. It touches nothing else you buy.
Celebrity adds 20% to every bar purchase, specialty dining cover, spa treatment and room-service order. A $14 cocktail is $16.80. A $58 specialty dinner is $69.60.
Two specialty dinners for two adds $46 in service charge by itself. The gratuity rise added $21. If you are working out what moves your onboard bill, it is this one, and it is the charge people forget to budget.
What changed, and when
Celebrity’s gratuity page now shows $19.50, $20.50 and $24.50. It gives no effective date. July 29 comes from the letter Celebrity sent guests and from same-day trade reporting, not from Celebrity’s own site.
Guests were told on the day it took effect, so there was no window to prepay at the old rate.
Royal Caribbean, in the same corporate group, did not move at all. If you priced the two lines against each other earlier this summer, the Royal half of that comparison still holds and the Celebrity half does not. Current figures for both, and for every other line, are in our guide to how cruise gratuities work.
If you already prepaid, are you protected?
Celebrity has not said. Its FAQ is silent on whether prepaid gratuities hold at the old rate, and we re-read the page five days after the rise to check the silence was not an oversight. It was not.
So we are not going to answer it either. Ask Celebrity in writing and keep the reply.
Is the drinks package worth it?
Celebrity does not publish one standard package price. It prices by ship and sail date, which is why quoted figures vary so much online. In our tracking, Classic sits around $90 per person per day before the service charge, or about $108 with it. Premium runs roughly $20 a day higher.
Pay as you go, a $12 cocktail costs $14.40. So Classic breaks even at about seven to eight drinks per person per day, every day, including the port days when you are ashore. Both of you have to buy it, because Celebrity will not sell a package to one guest in a stateroom.
Check your own quoted price before you use that number. Ours is a tracked median, not a quote, and Celebrity’s pricing moves by ship and sailing.
Then check what you actually drink, because both packages have a per-drink ceiling. Classic covers drinks up to $12 a serving; Premium up to $19. Above the ceiling Celebrity charges you the difference plus 20% on it, which it states on the beverage-package FAQ rather than burying.
If the cocktails you want sit at $15, Classic does not cover them, and the real question stops being Classic against pay-as-you-go and becomes Classic against Premium.
What Celebrity won’t sell you
There is no drinks package on a one-night sailing, at any price. Celebrity sells them on most sailings of two nights or more. Two- and three-night sailings from Southampton are also excluded.
Celebrity gratuities and drinks: FAQ
How much are Celebrity gratuities in 2026?
$19.50 per guest per night in Inside, Oceanview and Veranda staterooms, $20.50 in Concierge and AquaClass, and $24.50 in The Retreat. Children pay the adult rate.
When did Celebrity raise its gratuities?
July 29, 2026. Every tier went up by $1.50, which costs a couple on a seven-night sailing $21 more than the same cruise in June.
If I prepaid my gratuities, do I still pay the old rate?
Celebrity has not published an answer, so no one can tell you either way with authority. Ask Celebrity in writing and keep the reply.
What is Celebrity’s 20% charge?
20% added to every bar purchase, specialty dining cover, spa treatment and room-service order. It is separate from the daily gratuity, which covers only your stateroom attendant and dining staff.
Is the Celebrity drinks package worth it?
Only if you drink steadily. Classic breaks even at roughly seven to eight drinks per person per day, and both guests in a stateroom have to buy it.
The CruiseClarify verdict
Treat the daily gratuity as fixed and budget the 20% separately.
On the package: two or three drinks a day each, pay as you go. Seven or more each, every day, the package wins. Between those it turns on your own quoted price and whether your drinks clear $12.
If you are weighing the All Included fare rather than the package alone, that is a different calculation.
Add your sailing and see the whole number — gratuities, the 20%, drinks and Wi-Fi together.
See what your Celebrity cruise costsGratuity figures read from Celebrity’s gratuity program page on July 30 and re-verified August 19, 2026. Package ceilings read the same day. Specialty dining covers are our tracked range; Celebrity publishes them only inside its Cruise Planner, to booked guests. Every change to these figures is logged on what changed.