I'd love to hear your input on the amount for tipping a private guide; this will be my first time with one for an extended time (a week at an all-inclusive rainforest lodge) and I'm just curious as to what others would suggest; there are no suggestions on the lodge website, by the way.

Thanks for your input!

A safe suggestion is 15-20%. - that said it really warrants that good service was rendered.

We had a persaonl snorkeling guide for a whole day and we gave 20% of the cost of the tour. We were entertained, educated and fed well!!

How fun for you !!! Hve fun!

Amy, which country are you visiting? Customs do vary from place to place. It may well depend on whether the guide is an employee or self-employed, in which case he or she is presumably at liberty to set a price that returns a fair profit.

Thanks for the responses!

Neil, this is in Peru, and the guide is employed by the lodge. I have, in fact, been to the lodge before, but as part of a group in an extension of a Peru tour. (To make a long story short, I didn't have time to do my own planning that year and opted for OATtours.) This time I'm going on my own for a longer time (and then going on to Panama, not that that's relevant here.)

Whereas I agree with Neil that customs may vary I also believe that the amount of the tip should represent your own SUBJECTIVE evaluation of how good the service was over and above anything that one could reasonably expect.

I hope we aren't going to go back into that "but you'll spoil the natives if you nasty money-heavy Americanos/Yankees start giving them money" routine.

Tipping is personal so who is ever going to be able to tell you that you gave "too much" or "too little?"

Dukey, we're probably in furious agreement, mostly. But to clarify by way of examples - at home I may tip a small amount in a restaurant for service above and beyond the call of duty, but it's quite discretionary, because waiters here are paid a living wage and a tip is a nice-to-have rather than a necessity. As a matter of principle I'd like to see that system continue, so I'd prefer that we don't give employer organisations ammunition to agitate for a reduction in hourly rates. In China I didn't tip at all because (a) the locals don't, and even the recipient would think I'd lost my marbles, (b) Chinese tour guides do very well (as in two-or-three-houses well) from kickbacks.

None of which is the slightest help to Amy, of course. Amy, if you post on the Latin America forum I'm sure you'll get some knowledgeable responses.

Thanks, Neil. I did just post there; it's a very polite section of the forum, I've noticed, but my posts there tend to sink like stones for some reason.

I fully agree with you, by the way, on the China tipping ideas. In fact, in three weeks in China I only had one guide, and didn't tip him as I was already the only non-Chinese in the group and didn't want to stand out from the crowd. <--joke, of course, except about the tipping

I would contact the lodge to see if they could make a rec.
Also, we have asked other guests who've been in the same situation what they do and what the normal tipping protocal is.
For instance, we found out on our last diving trip that those in the know tip according to # tanks per day.

Neil, thanks for your reply and Amy, sorry that my answer didn't agree with you.

I am sure we basically do agree, Neil, however I NEVER base my decision on how much to tip on whether or not the server makes a living wage/decent wage/more or less than I do.

Perhaps this is because I have schlepped too many bags in hotels for others and waited on too many tables working my way through school.

Where i live there are definitely servers in higher end restaurants making 40-50,000 per year but a oot of that comes from tips.

My criteria for tipping remains the same; the quality of the service that I felt I received. So I don't care who they are, or whether or not they are family members or own the place, and since the amount of money they earn in wages doesn't necessarily dictate service levels in my experience, that doesn't figure in either.

I know I'm going to get creamed for this but why would anyone worry about "standing out from the crowd" by tipping more (or less) than someone else?

How do you KNOW how much someone else is tipping? Do you peer into their hand as they hand over the tip?

How does anyone else know what YOU are tipping? What do you CARE?

Admittedly I am baffled by this sort of behavior and I guess I am just different than many others.

Sorry, Amy, don't mean to offend.

Uh, Dukey? What?

I'm not at all offended--I don't think!--but I am confused. I was joking (see <--joke) about standing out from the crowd, as a green eyed blonde American of course was truly standing out in the crowd of Han Chinese--tipping or not had nothing to do with me standing out! (Leading a karaoke version of "We Shall Overcome" as a tribute to Tibet may have, though.)
I do think tipping is a personal thing, but I also try to follow the protocol of the country that I'm visiting; it seems to me to be the most polite thing to do, sorta like not insisting on western style toilets when a trough is what's there.

I'm truly clueless about private guides as I just never have used one, so I was looking for general guidelines from folks who do, and I really do appreciate everybody's point of view!

This is a hard issue for we Australians, where tipping is not customary.

I was very surprised after doing some Context Rome tours that the guides were expecting tips. I thought that at about $100AUD for an average 3 hour tour we were already paying top dollar.

I'm afraid I didn't tip them at all. Then the biggest shock was when our 13 day Trafalgar tour was drawing near an end our tour guide told us how much she thought would be acceptable. Are you kidding me????? There were about 40 odd people on that bus - she would have come out way, way ahead. At least $20/day per person - you do the sums.

I'm not cheap and I will tip here for exceptional service but otherwise I really hate that it's expected.

Hi Amy, I have a very similar feeling to you that tipping is part of following the protocols of another country. I'm another Australian, so I find American tipping customs positively Byzantine in complexity, but I do try to follow them once they are pointed out to me.

I reckon Cybor's advice is really sound, ask the lodge where you are staying.

15 or 20 percent. far too much for a european, max 10 percent for me

We had a private guide in Rome last October. His fee was 240 Euro, and there were six of us.

We had a great time with him, he was very enthusiastic about his beautiful city/home, and kept us entertained and educated us as well.

We tipped him 10 Euro each, 25% in all, and it was well worth every cent!

Amy, we took a day tour to the Great Wall and Ming Tombs and also found ourselves in a distinct minority, most of our fellow tourists being Chinese, a few Thais and a Japanese couple. Same story re tips.

Interestingly, we seemed to be the only Westerners staying at our Beijing hotel, which is where we booked the tour. Chatting with some other foreigners who'd been picked up at fancier Western-type hotels, I discovered that they'd been charged 300 yuan (US$37) each. We were charged the Chinese price - Y160 (US$20).

Dukey, out of curiosity, do you tip a particularly helpful department store assistant or airline check-in agent? The latter is a tiring and often stressful job.

I understand what you're saying, but it still seems to me that the context, which includes local conditions and expectations, matters, and should matter. I may be wrong, but I gained the impression that if a waiter does the bare minimum expected of him or her, most Americans will still tip at least 15%. In fact I saw one party leave a sizeable tip for one of the most slack and unpleasant waitresses I've ever seen. Why? Surely it must have something to do with the remuneration structure.

I'd consider it insensitive and arrogant to bring my Australian-conditioned tipping habits to North America, and I do think the reverse equally applies.

By the way, my two daughters and one of my sons worked a lot of waiting jobs during their university days. One daughter recently waited table in a local "fine dining" restaurant while between admin jobs and thought her pay ($18/hr, $27/hr on Saturdays) quite adequate remuneration for what she was doing. Her fiance is sous-chef at the same restaurant, a job she considers much more difficult and stressful than hers was, and only 10% of the tip pool found its way into the kitchen.