Maltese cruise line passengers who travelled on the SuperStar Libra last month have expressed indignation that the gratuities they paid as part of a package holiday never made it to the cabin and restaurant crew as intended.

Contacting The Malta Independent on Sunday, Maltese passengers explained how incredulous they were when staff on board the ship informed them that they had not received any tips, despite the fact that the passengers they had paid Lm25 each in advance as a tips charge, along with port charges and the cost of the cruise, as advertised in the local press.

Describing the case as “high seas exploitation”, the Maltese passengers are also furious that, after filing a complaint, the Lm25 tip charge was simply reimbursed and did not find its way to the intended recipients.

They are also dumbstruck by the fact that both SMS Travel and Mondial persisted in advertising the one-week cruise for a lump sum with “no tips to be paid”, after passengers had raised the matter with them.

The state of affairs was brought to the attention of Maltese passengers when they struck up conversations with cabin and restaurant staff. When the subject of tips cropped up, the passengers were told that staff had received no such tips from the Maltese. They had expressed surprise that tips were included in the overall package, as such gratuities had never actually been passed on to them. The standard practice aboard cruise liners is for an envelope to be left discreetly in the cabin, with the amount left to the passenger’s discretion – usually US$100, roughly Lm35.

On realising the state of affairs was more than a little unusual, the Maltese passengers immediately organised a petition, which they handed to the ship’s captain with the intention of ensuring that the crew received their tips at the end of the day. The tips, according to the Maltese, were well-deserved as the mainly Asian staff were “lovely, provided great service and really made the holiday for us” – just the type of staff that would under normal circumstances have been tipped generously.

Apart from recoiling at the thought of possibly being viewed as a stingy lot that did not deem it fit to leave tips, suspicions were also raised that, at Lm25 per head being charged for tips and with hundreds of Maltese taking up the cruise packages, the “missing” gratuities run into thousands.

The petition was accepted by the captain and within an hour of arriving in Malta after a cruise that left something of a sour taste in the mouth, Maltese passengers started receiving apologetic calls from their respective travel agents – SMS Travel or Mondial – putting the matter down to an administrative error. The passengers were informed that their Lm25 tip payment would be reimbursed and they received their cheques within days.

The Maltese agents also stressed that the ship’s operators, Star Cruises, knew nothing of the oversight and that the problem was purely of a local nature. Advertisements by a British travel agent with the same tip payment structure were also seen in the UK’s Daily Mail.

Although the Maltese have been refunded for their tip payments, the question of how many times tips had bypassed the intended recipients in the past, with no remedial action in the form of reimbursements being taken, and where the tips actually ended up, still linger.

Nor have the Maltese been placated by the reimbursement. One passenger speaking to this newspaper commented, “If an account were to be opened, we would love to give them their well-deserved tips. In fact we would be happy to tip them more than Lm25. These people work 10 months a year, seven days a week, and, with low basic wages, they literally depend on tips.”