Onboard credit is spending money credited to your shipboard account, usable for things the fare does not cover — drinks, specialty dining, excursions, the spa and the shops — and the detail that catches people out is that some onboard credit is refundable at the end of the cruise while some simply expires if you do not spend it.
Onboard credit is the most misunderstood thing in a cruise booking. People treat it as a discount, which it is not, or as free money, which it only partly is. It is better understood as a voucher with conditions attached — and the conditions, not the sum, are what decide whether it does you any good.
What onboard credit actually is
A cruise ship is a cashless environment. Your key card is linked to a payment method, every purchase aboard goes onto a running account, and the balance is settled at the end of the sailing. Onboard credit is simply a balance applied to that account before you spend anything, so the first purchases you make draw it down instead of reaching your card.
That is the whole mechanism. It is not applied to your fare, it does not reduce what you paid to book, and it does not exist until you are aboard. It sits on the account and waits for you to spend against the things the fare was never going to cover.
This is why it is genuinely useful rather than a gimmick. The onboard account is where a cruise stops being all-inclusive: drinks beyond the basics, the speciality restaurants, the excursions, the spa, the shops and the photographs. Credit lands in exactly the place the unexpected spending happens.
Where it comes from — and why that matters more than the amount
Onboard credit arrives by four broad routes, and the route determines everything about how it behaves.
Promotional credit is attached to a fare by the cruise line as part of a campaign, usually to make a particular sailing or a particular cabin grade move. Loyalty credit comes from your status in the line’s repeat-guest programme. Shareholder credit is a benefit some cruise groups extend to people who hold a qualifying number of shares in the parent company, claimed by submitting proof of holding before you sail. And agent credit is applied by a travel advisor out of the commission the cruise line pays them.
The reason to care about the source is that promotional, loyalty and shareholder credit are almost always the restrictive kind, while credit you or someone else effectively paid for is more often the flexible kind. Two identical-looking balances on two identical-looking bookings can behave completely differently because they arrived by different doors.
Refundable and non-refundable: the distinction that costs people
This is the detail that catches almost everyone, and it is worth being precise about because most casual advice gets it backwards.
Non-refundable credit is the default across the mainstream lines. The terms are typically explicit: non-transferable, not redeemable for cash, and forfeited after the final night of the sailing. If you do not spend it, it evaporates. Nobody sends you a cheque, nobody rolls it to your next booking, and nobody reminds you on the last sea day.
Refundable credit behaves like money you deposited. Whatever is left when the account is settled comes back to you — usually to the card on file, sometimes as cash from guest services before disembarkation. It is the less common of the two, and it tends to arise where the credit was purchased rather than granted.
The practical instruction is short. Find out which kind you have before you board, not on the last evening. It is stated in the terms of whatever promotion or benefit produced it, and if you booked through an advisor they can tell you in a sentence. Knowing the answer changes how you pace your spending across the week.
What you can spend it on, and the exceptions worth checking
In general, onboard credit covers anything charged to your shipboard account. That is a wide net: bar tabs and drinks packages, speciality dining, shore excursions booked through the ship, spa treatments, the salon, laundry, internet packages, the shops, the photography studio and the arcade.
The exceptions are narrower but real, and they vary by line rather than following a single rule. The casino is the most common carve-out — many lines will not let credit be converted into chips or play, for obvious reasons. Medical-centre charges are sometimes excluded. And gratuities are the genuine grey area: plenty of lines allow the daily service charge to be settled from credit, some do not, and some allow it only for certain credit types.
None of this is hidden. It is in the terms attached to the specific credit, which is a document almost nobody reads and which takes about a minute to check. If you are counting on the credit to cover a particular thing — the drinks package, or the service charge — confirm that before you sail rather than discovering the answer at the desk.
How to spend it so none of it is wasted
If your credit is non-refundable, treat it as a use-by-date budget rather than a windfall, and spend it deliberately.
Front-load the decisions that genuinely improve the holiday. Speciality restaurants and the excursions you actually want to do are worth more to you than a last-day scramble through the gift shop, and both tend to book out. If a drinks package is something you were going to buy anyway, applying credit to it is a clean use — our guide to cruise drink packages is the place to work out whether you were actually going to buy one, because a package you would not otherwise have wanted is not a saving.
Then check the account mid-cruise. Guest services will print your running balance, or it is on the cabin television and the line’s app. Knowing on day four what is left is the difference between spending it on something you wanted and spending it on fridge magnets on the last night.
One more thing worth knowing: credit is usually applied per cabin rather than per person, and where two bookings are linked it does not always pool the way people assume. If you are travelling as a group across several cabins, ask how it has been allocated.
Why onboard credit is the clearest argument for using an advisor
Here is the part that is genuinely worth understanding about how cruise bookings work. The cruise lines pay travel advisors a commission on every booking. That commission is built into the fare structure whether an advisor is involved or not, which means booking direct does not remove it — it simply means the line keeps it.
An advisor can elect to return part of that commission to you as onboard credit. Your fare does not change. The line’s price is the line’s price, and we do not charge you a fee for planning, quoting or booking. What changes is that money which would otherwise have stayed with the line arrives on your shipboard account instead.
That is not a trick and it is not a discount scheme. It is the ordinary economics of a distribution channel, and it is the one concrete, countable reason the advisor route can beat booking direct without altering a single thing about the sailing you chose. Combine it with the timing question — when in the booking cycle the promotions with credit attached actually appear, which we cover in when to book a cruise — and it compounds.
It is also worth saying plainly that credit should never be the reason you pick a sailing. The right ship, the right week and the right itinerary matter more than any balance on an account. Credit is a tiebreaker, not a decision-maker, and any advisor who leads with it is selling you the wrong thing.
Common questions
What can onboard credit be used for?
Most onboard purchases: drinks, dining, excursions, spa and shops.
Does onboard credit expire?
Non-refundable credit does, at the end of the sailing. Refundable credit can be returned to you.
Where does onboard credit come from?
Promotions, loyalty status, shareholder benefits and travel-agent bookings.
Can onboard credit pay gratuities?
On many lines yes, but it varies — check the terms of your specific credit.
Does booking through an agent bring onboard credit?
It is one of the ways it arises, at no additional cost to you, since the lines pay the commission.
What happens to onboard credit if you cancel the cruise?
It disappears with the booking. Onboard credit is attached to a specific sailing rather than to you, so it does not travel to a rebooking automatically and it is not refunded as cash. If you move a booking, ask explicitly whether the credit moves with it — sometimes a promotional credit can be reinstated on the new sailing, and sometimes the promotion has ended and it cannot. Get that answer before you agree to the change rather than after.
Can you use onboard credit before you sail?
On some lines, yes — a portion of credit can be applied in the pre-cruise planner to excursions, drinks packages or speciality dining booked ahead of time, which is genuinely useful because those are the things that sell out. On other lines the credit does not appear until you board. It depends on the line and on the type of credit, so check before you plan around it. If yours can be spent early, the popular excursions are the best possible use of it.
Can two people in the same cabin share onboard credit?
Generally yes, because the credit is applied to the cabin account rather than to an individual, and everyone charging to that account draws from the same balance. Where it gets less predictable is across multiple cabins in a group booking — linked bookings do not always pool the way people assume, even within a family. If you are travelling in several cabins and expecting to share, ask how the credit has been allocated before you start spending it.
What if you have both refundable and non-refundable credit?
Spend the non-refundable portion first, because that is the part you lose. Most lines apply credit in an order set by their own system rather than by you, and it is not always the order that suits you — so it is worth asking guest services early in the sailing which balance is being drawn down first. If the system is spending your refundable credit while the non-refundable sits waiting to expire on the final night, that is worth knowing on day two rather than day seven.
Onboard credit is a small, specific, genuinely useful thing that is easy to waste. Know which kind you have, know what it excludes, spend it on the parts of the holiday you will remember, and check the balance before the last night rather than after it.
When we quote a sailing we tell you what credit is attached, which type it is and what it can be spent on, because a balance you cannot use on the thing you wanted is not a benefit. We sell across ten major cruise lines, our planning costs you nothing, and you can compare what each of them bundles on our cruise lines page.