Cruise Guests Now Face a €60 Fine for Taking Food From Buffets and Restaurants
If you're sailing with Costa Cruises, know that taking food from the buffet or restaurants to your cabin, a public area, or the pool zone now risks a €60 charge. Room service is still available around the clock, but it's only free if you're booked in a suite or premium cabin — otherwise expect a fee. Only trained Room Service staff can deliver or pick up cabin meals going forward, so plan to eat where you're served or budget for room service charges.
Costa's stated rationale is hygiene — contamination, cleanliness, pest control — not cost-cutting, and that's worth taking at face value since the line's US ships already score well on CDC sanitation inspections. My read: this is as much about crew accountability as guest behavior, since only trained Room Service staff can now handle cabin deliveries. The losers are guests without free room service (non-suite bookings) who used to grab a snack for later; the winners are housekeeping teams tired of trash on stairs, per the guest complaints cited. It's telling that Costa is the only Carnival Corporation brand doing this so far — Carnival, Princess, and Holland America still let guests self-serve to their cabins. If I were sailing Costa without a suite upgrade, I'd budget for room service fees rather than risk the €60 cleaning charge.