We are taking a 6 nigh walking tour. What is an appropriate tip for the guide?<BR><BR>Also we have one day in Rome with a private guide. The cost for the day was $200 which I beliee goes to her completely. What is an appropriate tip?<BR><BR>Thank you

About the same as you would tip the pilot for a $200 flight. As you would tip a doctor or a lawyer for a visit/consultation for which you pay $200.<BR>

I saw this on another thread and thought it very much "on the nose"...<BR><BR><BR>Message: n the States tipping is completely overboard. The whole purpose for a tip is this:<BR><BR>A person has a job and gets paid to do that job. When said person does something for you OVER & BEYOND the normal perimeters of that job they should receive (or not receive) a tip as per the disposition of the person they’re serving.<BR><BR>Contrary to the popular American myth, A tip IS NOT AN ENTITLEMENT. It doesn’t just automatically go with the territory.<BR><BR>Recently we were having a quick meal at a small buffet in Los Angeles. We approached the register, paid for our meals, then did the prison shuffle for a tray, cutlery, our food. We went to our table where we seated ourselves and a perky young lady arrived with our glasses so that we could get up and get our own beverages. She left us her card with the “HI, I’m Amy and I’m you’re server…” crapola.<BR><BR>I couldn’t believe that in small print on the bottom the card read, “our staff appreciates your gratuity.”<BR><BR>For WHAT???<BR><BR>It is odd to me that I might be expected to leave sweet Amy the tip, but I would much rather have tipped the cook who made a hell of a great pot of chili.<BR><BR>People tip postmen, waiters, guys who park their cars, any sort of delivery person. What’s next, I tip the guy who reads my electric meter? For what? For just doing their job? Puh-lease.<BR><BR><BR><BR>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<BR>

You're paying $200 for a guided tour and you want to tip?? <BR><BR>Hey - I'll take you for $100.

the guided tour is for all day. I have checked the Scavi tour is usually $50 each for 3 or so hours. So to have a private tour guide for the whole day and to not get lost getting from place to place we thought was a better use of our time and funds and less overall than Scavi would have been. It's our first time and apart from jet lag day, we only have two days. <BR><BR>I know tips aren't required and we do not tip here if we have bad service but I am assuming that they will do a really good job and did not want to either insult or overtip.<BR><BR>The hiking tour is with a very small company and there will only be 4 of us and the guides. Has anyone done one of the larger hiking or biking tours and been given some guidance here? We would appreciate it.<BR><BR>Thanks

Here's an old rule of thumb for the 6-night type tour--your base should be at least $5 per guide per day per person. If you are the only traveler, then you'd use the amount of $30 as your base from which to add (and if service is really bad, subtract). If there are two of you on the tour, then $60 is your base. Again, this is per guide.<BR><BR>I would say it is very unusual on the 6-day type tour not to tip. I would also add that on many a trip, our "base" was doubled by the quality of the service. On one trip, we subtracted.<BR><BR>On a 1/2 day tour in Rome with 8 other people besides our party of 4, we were the only ones who tipped (and we would gladly do so again). The guide was working for a company, not for himself.

I don't know why you'd want to tip since you're overpaying to begin with. But if you must, pay 10 percent of the price you paid for the tour.<BR><BR>You got totally ripped off, by the way. No one needs to spend $200 seeing Rome, even with a private guide. \<BR><BR><BR>Why do Americans throw their money away like this? It is SO stupid!!!

Many Americans assume that service industry workers like waiters, hairdressers, hotel housekeeping staff & bellmen, etc. are not paid a living wage and need tips to make ends meet. They then extrapolate to other lines of work. When in doubt, they tip rather than not as long as the service has been decent. The fact that Americans may be wrong in their assumptions about who is paid a living wage in other countries (or even in their own!) and who expects "tips" to proivide a reliable part of their regular income does not mean they intend to throw their money away unnecesarily.

Thank you Amy and Vini Vidi for your replies. <BR><BR>To me and my opinion, I am not interested in whether or not you think I am paying too much for a service. I know what my alternatives are and chose to do it this way. I am tired of the rude comments from people. Next time if you can't be helpful, don't bother replying.<BR><BR>Thank you

Karen, here are my opinions. If the guide that you are paying $200 to is the owner (think owner of hair salon that cuts your hair, who I would not tip), since this is a private full day tour, if I were in your position, I would pay for the guide's beverages when you take breaks, lunch, and all entrance fees, and consider that a tip. If the guide gets you a discount or in free on venues that you would normally pay entrance fees, then I would tip accordingly, say 1/3 of what you didn't have to out of pocket. If your guide gives you even more service, then tip up to $20 plus what you were saved.<BR><BR>Regarding the walking tour for 6 days, I don't know how many are in the party, but I might do something similarly to the above, but probably $5-$7/day/person. Possibly, you might want to buy a bottle of wine or a box of chocolate as a token gift if you want to tip less.<BR><BR>I hired a private guide for a full day for a trip I took last fall. She was only charging me $7/hour, which I thought was an extremely low fee per hour, and she received all of the monies. I paid for her beverages and lunch, and all entrance fees. However, she saved me quite a bit of money and her suggestions were wonderful. She even invited me to have dinner with her and her boyfriend on another night, however, I was unable to attend because of a conflict. At one point during our tour she showed me an item in a window that she wanted to buy for her sister's birthday. The item was about $15, and I purchased the item for her and gave it to her as a tip at the end of my tour. In the end, I tipped her slightly less than 50% of the cost of the tour, but her price was so low and she was so good, I wanted to compensate her. In comparison, I saved about $25 over what it would have cost me to join a group tour.

Karen: I wanted to clarify my tipping explanation above. In reading what I wrote, I think my "rule of thumb" could be misconstrued. The tipping on the 6-day tour would only be minimally impacted by the total number people in the actual tour group; the number of people one is personaly tipping for in one's entourage(spouse, mother, kids, etc.), however, has maximum impact. Using the $5-a-day base I mentioned, if you were tipping as a husband and wife, then your base would be $10 a day per guide. A family of four would be considering $20 a day per guide.<BR><BR>But the number of people who are on the trip can impact the number, too, or at least that's happened to us. Like Leslie, we try to look at all the factors. We dramatically increased "the base" on a tour where trip cancellations reduced the total touring party to eight persons. The guides' potential income for that week had already been drastically reduced; we felt we had received well above-and-beyond expected service, too.<BR><BR>On another trip, though, where the guests more or less had to take over the tour (I'm not kidding, either), it was hard to even start with the "base."

In italy tipping is not customary. A small tip is only offered if the person you want to tip offered extra services (for instance if a taxi driver brings your luggage to the hotel door instaed of just opening the car's trunk and waiting for you to pull out the bags). In any other cas, just forget about tipping: it is not expected and sometimes not well accepted.

I can't believe $50 a person for the Scavi tour! We paid $8 each two years ago. There are no private guides for the tour -- they are all provided by the Vatican and the tour takes approximately 1 hour.