tipping in italy
 

We are going to italy on a tour, and wondering what is the amount we should tip the tour guide?

You will get scads of advice on this here (see the recent thread about tipping on a tour in Turkey) but I think that you should complete most of the trip before deciding what to tip. Your satisfaction should have an impact on the tip you decide to give, or withold. I think 10 euro per day per person is about average, but this is based more on what I have read than personal experience, as I do not take tours myself.

Hi A,

Ask the tour company what they recommend and reduce it to 1/3 that amount.

((I))

That is great advice. I already have an email to the tour company, we will be with these tour directors for 12 days, and 10 euros a day comes to $300, for 2 people, which I did not think was right
Thanks.

First of all, there is no set formula for tipping a tour guide. As I wrote above, you will get as many opinions on this as there are people answering your question.

Secondly, why would you fix an amount even before you have met the guides in question? What if you are not pleased? Are you going to fix a rate in your mind, as per Ira, and stick to it no matter how pleased or displeased you are with the services? I would take the tour first and then worry about how much to tip; also, you might talk it over with any friends you make on the tour if you need a second opinion....

I agree that the 10 euro per day per person figure is too high in your case.

I thought that there is no tipping in Italy. At least that is what I was told by my Italian friends and family.

Just curious.

Rose

Rose: In restaurants and cafes people usually leave only a few euro or even less, depending on the total check. With a bill of 47 euro, I would leave 50, for example. But on an organized tour many people tip way beyond those percentages. I believe that is a common practice for the group to pass around an envelope for the guide (s) and everyone puts in an amount that he or she feels comfortable with.

Please excuse my ignorance, but I must not understand.
A tip of 50 on a bill of 47 seems like a tip of over 100%. I consider myself a pretty generous tipper, but that seems a little excessive to me.

Hi ernie,

EK would leave a total of 50 - 3E tip.

((I))

I don't think the fact that people don't tip much in Italy (I assume that means restaurants or cabs) has much to do with a tour guide for a tour in Italy. Sure, it may likely be an Italian for the local guide, but tour guides are a whole different profession and I think tips are considered a good chunk of their compensation.

I've taken a couple tours, a long time ago, and think a good guide is wonderful and should be tipped. I would never tip 10 euro a day per person, though. If you have two tour guides, that's a different thing, also, and I don't agree you need to tip them both. My tours didn't have two tour guides, don't understand that unless your group is humongous. The tours I went on, which were fairly mainstream, had one basic den mother tour guide, and then hired local history/archeology, etc experts for individual day tours to some sites.
I wouldn't tip over 5 euro a day per person, and I'd see what these two folks actually did. If there are two just because it's such a large group, you kind of only are obligated to pay for one IMO. So if each one is assigned half the group, you'd tip the one you belong to. If they share duties, I still wouldn't pay them both that much.

On the tours I was on, most folks did tip the local experts a little bit at the end of a day trip if they were really good, but we never saw them again, so your arrangement is different.

The example above of leaving 50 euro on a 47 Euro dinner check is just an example of what I MIGHT do in Italy. If the service was stupendous, perhaps I would leave more. Or perhaps I would just round up to the next euro. The point is that I think it defeats the whole idea of what a tip is supposed to be if you go witih a fixed idea in your mind before you have even taken the tour, (or eaten in the restaurant.)

As I mentioned on the Turkey post, three of us had a private driver for 5 days. We each gave him 50 USD at the end of the trip. We did this because we liked him very much, he was a terrific driver who on two days did some long, hard driving, and went out of his way to help out in any way he was able. We decided this at the end of the trip between us, based on the level of service we received.