Tip your Guides?

[irishmatthew]

Going on an international expedition later this year. My question is.....Is it standard procedure to tip your guides and if so, how much?

[Fromage]

Tipping on a guided trip is not expected, but it is appreciated. A lot. I have guided on rivers and in the mountains for 9 years and seen a lot of different tipping practices. I have had large groups of Microsofties leave me with naught but a wave, and I have had a team of impoverished waitstaff from a restaurant heap cash upon me, buy me dinner, and drink me under the table.

 

In the mountains the trips tend to cost a lot more as a participant, especially international climbs, which results in a group of clients that tend to be in higher income tax brackets. It takes about a minute for guides to pick up on this, and to some degree the prospect of tips influences how far a guide is willing to go for you. I think to be fair to both client and guide, the decision to tip and how much should be based on how the guides affect the quality of your trip. In my observation, some things that contribute to the quality of a client's experience include

 

1. Does the guide make a genuine effort to befriend you, learn about you, listen to you, and understand you? If your guide centers the conversation around him/herself and stories about how "this one time on Denali...," that is not the best way to take interest in clients.

2. Is the guide committed to your safety? The best tips I have ever received were on a trip where the guides decided to back off from a summit push because we determined the conditions were unsafe. This was a more valuable learning experience for the clients than if we had just gone for it. Client safety should be a paramount priority at all levels of guiding, but you never know. It can vary among companies and guides.

3. Is the guide committed to your personal success? Does the guide ask you what your personal goals are and work to help you achieve them?

4. Is the guide patient with all the clients? Will he or she stand around for 20 minutes in crappy weather working with you until you have mastered the ______ knot, adjusted your crampons, fixed your tent, etc?

5. Does the guide volunteer to do additional work if someone is struggling physically? This could be taking weight from someone's pack, setting up a tent, coiling ropes, whatever.

6. Does the guide make the trip fun for you and the other guides? This might be the most important thing to consider. If you had crystal clear weather, perfect snow conditions, and everyone summitted, but nobody smiled much, that trip might not be as enjoyable as the one with 60mph winds, a whiteout, cold temps, and all the other ingredients for misery, but where everyone laughed the whole time because the guide knew how to extract the fun out of even the most unpleasant situations.

7. Is the guide a good teacher? How much did you learn about the mountain, history, climbing skills, etc.?

 

How much to tip is a totally subjective issue. If you feel that your guides have done a worthy job and deserve a tip, then it is entirely your discretion as to how much to give. Tip according to your willingness and ability. I have had trips where the clients all get together near the end of the trip away from the guides and discuss how much to tip, sort of reaching a consensus, and I have also had trips where people act of their own accord. It can be hard to put a value on the work of the guide staff, so use your best judgment. Here are some more guidelines (no pun intended) you may want to consider-

 

1. Tip all the guides the same amount unless you have a good reason not to.

2. If there is local or nontechnical help like porters, tip them as well. You may want to ask the front office about the best way to do this before you leave on your trip.

3. When you return home, take the time to write a letter to the owner or director of the guide company telling them what you think about your guides. This kind of feedback is valued by everyone, and if you have good things to say it can help secure future work for your guide.

 

Have a great trip.

[cj001f]

They get paid well enough tipping would be an insult to their pride. Instead, ask them to buy beers at the end of the trip.

[layton]

They get paid well enough tipping would be an insult to their pride. Instead, ask them to buy beers at the end of the trip.

 

Which is of course bullshit. Guides don't get paid shit, they work their asses off and it is EXPECTED of you to tip them well.

[sobo]

What the Cheese Guy said. Tip 'em. If you can afford the trip, you can afford to tip!

[Toast]

They get paid well enough tipping would be an insult to their pride. Instead, ask them to buy beers at the end of the trip.

 

why are you such a fucking idiot?

[cj001f]

why are you such a fucking idiot?

 

Says the man who can't understand sarcasm

 

Tip your guide, and any similar employee, well if they worked hard for you.

[chris]

I recommend that you tip your guide like you would tip a waiter. 10-20% of the rate you paid the guide service.

[Lambone]

Fromage has good beta,

I'd add:

Only tip them if they in turn tip the sherpas/porters/camp cook, etc., who actually do all the work and take most of the risk.

 

International guides are basically just liasons between the locals and the clients since the locals are usually shy (maybe not confident in their english) talking to clients.

 

I say this having guding experience in Nepal. The Nepalis do all the work and deserve the tip. The guide basicallyt gets a free trip and some pocket money.

[chris]

I haven't guided in Nepal but I do run trips to South America. I speak spanish and do all the guiding, but hire local staff to assist with reservations, hiring a car and driver, porters, and camp managers/cooks (when necessary).

The rate you paid for your trip included the cost of hiring logistics staff. Likewise, your tip to the guide can be expected to also tip the logistics staff. I tip all my logistics staff - driver, cook, porters, and any local guides I hire to assist. I've had clients tip the staff directly, and also give me a larger tip with instructions on how to disberse it. Otherwise, I tip the staff just like I outlined above. Everyone starts at 20% of their rate, and that tip is only lowered for poor service.

I usually find a good moment to let my clients know on a trip that I intend to tip our staff, and how. Most clients appreciate being involved in the process. Sometime mid-trip I start sounding out my clients' satisfaction with our staff - I don't always see everything.

Talk to your guide about it - a good guide should be polite and comfortable talking about gratuity.

[bstach]

I'd tip the porters, cook etc. personally. That way you know they get it, as opposed to tipping the guide or the tour operator and expecting them to distribute it.

[Lambone]

from experience, tipping the portters doesn't allways work either unless you tip them each privately in their own currancy. Usually they could get arrested having huge loads (like $20 worth) of US dollars. And if you give all the cash to the lead porter/sirdar he will just pocket himself.

[dylan_taylor]

Like other workers in the service industry, guides expect tips. How much depends on the type of work. Guides working in day venues are often tipped proportionally more (~$50/day for a day on rock) than they are on long, multi-week expeditions, probably due to price fatigue, because the work is less consistent, and because the client's fun:suffering ratio is high. On Denali and foreign expeditions, Guides anticipate being tipped in the neigberhood of ~$10-~$30/day (per client), though these tips could be adjusted based on how much technical work the guide did (e.g. Were guide and clients tying into ropes every day? Such as on Denali or in the Alps? or was it only 3 out of 15 days (Ecuador volcanoes).

 

Furthermore, I don't think all guides deserve the same tip amount. There is often a lead guide who, while responsible for the well-being of each client, is also responsible for instruction his/her junior guides on how to guide in that particular environment. To tip all equally is to tell the lead guide that their additional effort is not appreciated, and to tell the junior guides that, upon reaching the status of lead guide, they should not expect any additional reward for their hard work. Tip each guide invidually based on how you feel they contributed to the success of the expedition.

 

I'd add:

 

International guides are basically just liasons between the locals and the clients since the locals are usually shy (maybe not confident in their english) talking to clients. I say this having guding experience in Nepal. The Nepalis do all the work and deserve the tip. The guide basically gets a free trip and some pocket money.

 

For most places in the world, this is bullshit. For something non-technical like Kili, sure, a guide is a logistics liason. But for the majority of foreign guiding work, the guide is the glue that holds the trip together - not some freeloader picking up coin for interpreting between boistrous clients and "shy locals" On south america work in Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina, if I didn't start working my ass off a week ahead of time buying/packing food, paying support staff, confirming hotel reservations, arranging transportation, contracting some arrieros in a village, then the trip would fall apart. This is the invisible work that the clients never see. In third-world venues, the guide is responsible for educating the clients on a little culture, history, etc. The guide needs to teach the clients on appropriate behavior in a cultural environment they are not used to visiting. Yes, the guides should pass on tips to the local staff. On foreign trips I have worked, it is customary to remind clients during the expedition about the hard work the cooks/porters/drivers do and remind them that they deserve a tip from the clients. We as guides are able to instruct the clients on what is an appropriate tip for the locals: too little is insulting to the local staff, too much sets a precedent of laziness and unrealistic expectations. The clients can fill in the blanks - knowing what guide wages in the U.S. are these days - and calculate what is then appropriate for us - the guides.

 

If the trip runs safely, smoothly, and efficiently, if clients have fun, regardless the outcome, if the support staff is able to do their work well, then chances are the guide(s) did an excellent job of keeping it together and they deserve a gratuity from you.

[JayB]

I don't think I'll ever take a guided climbing trip so take this for what it's worth, but unless you have a gross annual income of something north of $200K, the odds are pretty good that a guided trip will represent a significant expense that you worked long and hard to save up for, possibly for years. I am not sure what the financial situation of the average guided client looks like, and if everyone who takes guided trips is someone who won the stock-options lottery, or works as an investment banker, big-firm law partner, MD in a high-yielding specialty then the average guided client will probably shrug off an extra grand or two like nothing. However, if we're talking about an average guy/gal with a mortgage, tuition-bills, retirement savings, etc to worry about the odds are pretty good that how you handle getting them to chip in the extra 20% will matter quite a bit.

 

I may not speak for everyone, but I'd much rather have all of this stuff explained and put in writing before the trip, so that I'd be aware of them and could work the cultural norms and financial outlays into my expectations and my budget ahead of time. I'd even go for working the guides personal tip/bonus into the contract price, with the expectation that I'd pay the guide an additional amount when the trip is over, unless I was unsatisfied with something and was willing to document what that something was. However, if I were a week into a trip and had someone casually tell me "by the way, you'll need to tip persons X, Y, Z, A,B, C, D, E, and then of course there's my 20%," that would not go over nearly as well.

 

But maybe these precise tipping protocols are so well known that anyone who's pondering a guided climbing trip overseas already works them into the amount that they set aside for the trip.

[Raindawg]

Like other workers in the service industry, guides expect tips.

 

I guided professionally for several years...I never asked for, expected or accepted monetary tips. I considered myself a professional, I wasn't working for minimum wage (although the money wasn't great), and I wouldn't tip my physician, professor or dentist either.

The closest I'd come to a tip was accepting invitations to dinner and beers after the work was completed with satisfaction.

[G-spotter]

just send joe a pm, or read his FAQ list here

Things You Should Know about Guides - Guide FAQ

[Raindawg]

just send joe a pm, or read his FAQ list here

Things You Should Know about Guides - Guide FAQ

 

Yah, and don't forget to look at his "Alpine News" page where you can find a prominently displayed link to that goofy 9/11 conspiracy site:

9-11 Alpine News!

[Jason_Martin]

Like other workers in the service industry, guides expect tips.

 

I guided professionally for several years...I never asked for, expected or accepted monetary tips. I considered myself a professional, I wasn't working for minimum wage (although the money wasn't great), and I wouldn't tip my physician, professor or dentist either.

The closest I'd come to a tip was accepting invitations to dinner and beers after the work was completed with satisfaction.

 

I've been guiding professionally for seven years and have guided year round since 2002. The cultural norm is that guides do expect tips. This is because they are tipped in every venue where guides exist, whether they are a fishing guide, a hunting guide or a mountain guide...tipping is the norm.

 

I do believe that Raindawg didn't accept tips and that's his perogative. But I also expect that he wasn't trying to pay his mortgage on a guides wage. I don't know any mountain guides who won't accept a tip.

 

Jason

[Bigtree]

Don't know if its std procedure for others or not but for what its worth I've used guides on two occaisions over the years - once in Washington State and once in Ecuador. I don't make alot of dough but felt that $50 was appropriate in both cases. Both trips were 4 days in length and the services limited to guiding (i.e., no food, accommodation etc.). I didn't begrudge the tips given that I was pleased with the competent service and had the impression that both guides lived a pretty humble existence.

[Arc]

....never mind.

Edited October 16, 2006 by Arc

[brian_m]

IMHO... if you are rich enough to afford a guide to drag you up a mountain... you should have no problem forking over a "generous" tip.

[Bug]

Here's a tip; "Get a real job!"