Service charge – a wonderful additional income for the hospitality industry. While guests do pay a 10% service charge at resorts which is distributed to staff, what other issues are there with this process?

The number one issue is a lack of transparency. While there are resorts that have over time and pressure from staff started to improve on this, many resorts lack the transparency to show staff how service charge has been calculated. Especially through regular intervals throughout the month or year.

We believe resorts should be transparent and inform staff at least weekly of the service charge generated and the approximate service charge they can expect.

Service charge is rightfully the income of the staff and staff drive to be able to make informed decisions based on their expected income for the month.

Moving on to the 1% administrative charge that is taken from the service charge collected by the resorts. What justified this theft? The 10% service charge is taken to be distributed to the staff yet a part of this goes to the resort? What does this administrative charge cover? Why does the governmental law allow for 1% to be taken from the staff? If the law lets an amount of money be taken from the staff, the purpose that this money is being used for should be made clear. The resorts which are taking money from us do not even have the decency to publish service charge amounts and make staff aware of what has been collected. Let’s say you work in a mid-range resort with 400 staff. Your service charge is 1000 USD. This would mean that in that month, the resort made 4 million USD, from which an additional 10% was collected as service charge (USD 400,000) and distributed to 400 staff members equally. If the resort takes 1% as an administrative charge they would have taken away 4,000USD in this month alone. Where each staff would have gotten USD1000, they would be getting USD990. If you are in a resort with 800 staff which makes 3000 USD in a month as service charge, the resort would have taken away 24,000 USD from the staff. What do you think is being done with this money? Do they hire an employee in finance and have them sit there just working on service charge?

For many resort workers, it’s their dream to get a job in a resort that pays high service charge, for many resort workers it does not matter the working conditions and the stress of it if they can earn a significant amount of money with which they are able to support their families back home it is worth it. No matter the resort, at the end of the day when you have spent most of your time away from your family you hope to have made it worth it for them.