Help! How much to Tip
 

I am leaving shortly and waould like to know how much to tip the drivers, guides, etc.

Thanks.

Where are you going?

Seems that molly is going to Egypt.

Unless guide and/or driver are terrible, I tip the similarly most everywhere.

For a full day - guide:$10-$15/person/day; half that for half-day sightseeing.

If separate driver, we pool tip amongst participants, of about $10/day total.

Porters and hotel housekeepers, are tipped as they are at home. $1-$2/per bag; housekeeping: $2-5/day.

Restaurant meals, if not included in price, about 10% of bill.

We did not do our own tipping in Egypt. Instead, LadyEgypt gave us the choice of giving them the money and they would handle all the tipping. We "paid" $30.00 per person, for a total of $180.00, which included all the tips for drivers, tour guides, porters, housekeepers. We had drivers and tour guides as follows: 1) 2 separate pickups at Cairo airport, 2 separate transfers to Luxor airport, 2 separate pickups at Sharm El Sheikh and back, and 2 more transfers in Cairo; 2) drivers and tour guide in Cairo (2 days), Aswan (2 days), Luxor (2 days), 4 different hotels for varying numbers of people/rooms. Obviously, if we had paid $10-15 per day per person for the tour guide, we would have been way over the $180 just for him. I'm guessing the tipping was more like $5.00 per driver per day (total $30), porters (total $30 or so), and the rest for the tour guide ($100-120). Again, this is totally a guesstimate, but LadyEgypt has lots of experience, the tour guide is their employee and this was their $$ figure.

Sorry I forgot to say I was going to Egypt.

It will just be my husband and I. We'll probably have some half day tours. Different people will pick up and deliver us to the hotels, airports.

you could select Egypt on the right, in the Topics window, and enter Tipping on the left, and do a search for tipping in Egypt.

Hate to be a cynic, dmlove, but as a long-time denizen of the region, I doubt very much whether Lady Egypt remitted the tips to those concerned without skimming off a good percentage for themselves! That being said, the amount you mention seems fairly modest, so let us presume they know what they're doing!

Phinn, I'm not as much of a cynic as you....it never occurred to me that LadyEgypt might be taking something off the top. I really doubt this happens (again, I'm not much of a cynic) because when we were given the "choice" of tipping ourselves or through them, the tour guide and driver were present. I think during our long days together, something might have been said if that were the case.