Tipping in Egypt
 

Our trip is 3 weeks away! I have read previous threads regarding tipping. Most of these were from last year. I wonder if guidelines have changed due to the drop in tourism. Can anyone who has recently visited Egypt tell me what they paid in tips for a guide, driver, tour rep,and cruise staff? Also, are there places to exchange money in Aswan and Luxor? I would hate to have to exhange everything in Cairo. Thanks for your help.

Haven't been there recently, but lived there six years ago. Tipping one Egyptian pound (about 20 cents) was very acceptable. (I once made the comment that that didn't seem like a lot -- the reply was "it's a lot to ME.") If we tipped any more than that, we'd have a swarm of beggars around us. :-(

We were in Cairo and Alexandria last Oct. Of course, this was before the unrest. We tipped our guide 10% and our driver 5%. This was based on the cost of the tour. We paid in US dollars.

We were there 3 years ago, again before the unrest, but we found there was ready access to ATMs in all the places we visited (Cairo, Luxor, Aswan, and Sharm El Sheikh).

I'll pull my notes and write up the guidelines we went by for our trip in March/April 2011. The tipping thing was a stressful part of the planning for our trip and I once there I was really glad to have written down the recommended amounts...No one complained about how much we tipped so I guess we did ok.

I didn't have any issue finding places to exchange USD into Egyptian LE when I was in Answan and Luxor last year. In Answan, in particular, there are banks and money exchange offices readily available along the corniche.

If I was travelling in Egypt today I would probably feel compelled to tip more than the recommended guidelines, but I wouldn't feel the need to go overboad though. I agree that the tipping - and the aggressive touts - were the most stressful part of being a tourist in Egypt. I had one episode with a donkey driver where I thought I had tip him well, but he said that I didn't gave him too little for what he provided; He claimed that he had received 100 LE tip and more for the same trip from previous clients. I thought it was rather tactless for him to say that, and I certainly wasn't going to be intimidated into forking out more money at that moment either.

I culled this list from different posts on Fodor's and TripAdvisors.

This is per couple not per person

Driver to hotel 10-30LE Cairo; 10-20 LE in other towns
Tour Rep 20-30LE
Luggage man at hotel 3-5LE
Housekeeping 5-10LE/night
Driver: Full Day 50LE; half day 25LE
Guide Full day 80-100LE; half day 40-50LE
Cruise Boat staff 20LE/day
Waiter/waitress 5-10LE; or a percentage of bill if service not included
Felucca captain for 1 hour sail 10LE
Guards around the sites 1-2LE
Bathroom attendants .50c-1LE
Pool attendant 5-10LE

We tipped in a combination of dollars and LE. We didn't adhere perfectly strictly to this guide, especially for our guides and drivers since they were with us for so long and did such a great job for us.


I hope this helps. I hope you enjoy your trip as much as we did! Cheers.

I think the schedules given here are fine, except, I like to put in a plea for a higher tip for drivers. They work hard (especially if you have loads of luggage to handle) and they are very poorly paid in general. They rely on payments and commissions made by stores and restaurants they take you to, when available, to offset the low salary they are paid. Guides make more and get more commission off your purchases, so think about that when you are purchasing anything at a Carpet School, Papyrus Shop or other store your group tour goes to.

I agree about the extra tip for drivers. I would even give them 100 LE for very short trips such as Aswan airport to my hotel. I figured that when they had to collect me in the middle of the day they were not able to be out with another car load of tourists who would pay them for the day. Someone ran in to our driver at the airport so the car wouldn't go and he had to catch the bus home whilst we waited for another driver. I still paid our original driver because he was married and I assume would of had children and I thought of him having to go home to them and say that he hadn't made any money that day. We this same driver (who was very handsome.. as are many Egyptian men) for about 7 days around Cairo, and although he didn't understand very much English he was always pleasant to us and would happy say hello how are you in the morning and would giggle with us when we attempted to speak Arabic!

Although I tipped more than what was expected, my biggest regret during Egypt was not that I wished I had seen more sights, but I wished I had tipped larger amounts to the fabulous people who looked after me so well even though they were only going to possibly receive a very low pay at the end of the week from the tour company.

I say please please if you can, tip more.

Thanks for all the advice. This part of the planning was starting to be quite stressful and unenjoyable and I don't want to arrive in Egypt feeling this way. I'll keep the list handy and prepare tip $$ as required. Many thanks!

We were there in January and everyone only wanted US dollars. I went to the trouble of getting Egyptian money and what a waste. People were practically angry to get their own money.
Also, beware of tipping children - they are pulled out of school to work, so know that you are supporting that when you tip them (our guide who has her PhD and is from a middle class Egyptian family told us this....).

I totally agree about tipping more if you can to the people who take good care of you. They really do need the money and it's a comparably small amount to us. We also took pens and pencils and gave those out along with the tip (for example, I left pencils/pens on the bed along with $ for housekeeping; we gave lots of pencils/pens to our driver in Luxor--he had a few kids; we gave out pencils/pens to the guards at sites. I never gave them to the children directly because you'd get mobbed).

I'm not sure who tahitijess worked with, but the vast majority of Egyptians working in the tour business that I know would NEVER get angry over receiving EGP as a tip. The ONLY reason right now someone might want USD or EUR is if they plan to travel. There is NO black market exchange for them to receive more money at, so it makes no sense to me that people showed that much disdain for EGP. I wonder who these people were. I'd like to ask them or at least inform them that this is how their guests are perceiving what they are doing, so they can right the wrong.