Tipping on Kilimanjaro

Tipping on Kilimanjaro can be a little tricky, particularly if you are not familiar with tipping. Your travel agent will certainly provide you some information about this, but here's some independent advice.

The thing to remember is that your tip isn't really a 'tip' - it is a supplement for salaries that are far too low for the work being done (see end of post for more info).

At the end of your trek you will be expected to tip your team (guides/porters etc). You will be told that this is 'entirely voluntary' and 'not expected', but unless you have had a completely shit experience that is not true. If you are trekking with an experienced company like African Walking Company (booked through Africa Travel Resource) you will have been extremely well looked after and would be purely nasty not to tip.

Tipping is customary in Tanzania - don't be mean! You earn a lot more than these great people!

How does it work?

On the last morning of your trek your chief guide will hold a 'Tipping Ceremony'. This is when your guides and porters will stand around and receive your group's tips.

At the ceremony your group might choose to say a few words, sing a song or something else short in order to celebrate the moment. We saw people playing harmonica, singing and our group led an all-in 'Heads, shoulders, knees and toes', which was pretty funny (most porters don't speak much English so were following the actions looking a little bewildered).

Prior to this you will have decided how much you are going to tip (this is explained in 'how much...' below). We called up each of our head guide, assistant guides and cook one by one and gave them an envelope (a folded sheet of paper in our case) with their tip inside. We announced what we were giving them to the whole group.

If you are able to (i.e. if you have the exact change) it is also nice to tip the porters and 'helping porters' individually too. We had 30+ porters, so announced to everyone exactly how much we were giving each porter and each helping porter then gave that to the head guide to divide later. It is critical to announce this amount so everyone is clear on how much has been given.

Your guides and porters might then sing, dance and thank you in return. It's all very nice.

How much do we need to contribute?
I want to preface these comments by saying we are not wealthy - we are middle of the road people with middle of the road ideals, working hard and enjoying our traveling. These are suggestions only, but having conquered the mountain this is how we felt (which was different to how we felt prior to climbing).

Our group were given different advice depending on who we booked through. Some were told US$50-70, others US$60-80 and we were told US$80-100. The African Walking Company rep told us US$80-100, but on their 'Tipping Guide Sheet' it advised US$50-80.

Let's set the record straight. You should be tipping US$80-100 (unless you didn't have a good experience or have good reason to tip less) if your group has 6-10 people. If you are fewer you will need to tip more each to make up the total pool.

On the last night we sat around the dinner table and everyone in the group put their money into the middle. We then had to decide how to split it.

AWC had recommended the following breakdowns:
Chief Guide: US$50-70
Cook: US$40-50
Assistant Guides: US$30-50 each
Helping Porters: US$15-20 each (these are the porters who also help around the camp bringing meals, looking after the toilet tent etc)
Regular porters: US$10-15 each

If you have had a good experience, tip at the top of this scale.

Additional Personal Tips
Inevitably someone on your trip will go well beyond the call of duty to help you. A guide might carry your bag on the summit push, an assistant guide might always be there in the mornings with a big smile to get you going and someone has to empty the toilet....

These people make your trip special and you should not hesitate to tip them above and beyond the 'pool'. A few dollars for a porter, $5-10 for an assistant guide (or more) is gratefully received.

One of our assistant guides saved our bacon on summit night by carrying our bag all the way to the summit. Without him we would not have made it so we gave him $20, an extra $10 to the chief guide for keeping an awesome trip going smoothly (they do HEAPS of work, so be generous) and a series of $2-3 tips for the porters who helped most.

Bring up to US$50 per person in smaller denominations extra just in case. Consider all the money you are spending on the trip - if someone made it unreal, or helped you get there, then leave extra behind. Some of these guys only get one trip a month (or less in quiet times), so what you leave behind helps a lot. Let's be honest, the extra $50 won't destroy your bank balance.

Leaving Excess Gear and Leftovers
If you don't want to leave extra money, that's fine. Personal choice.
The other thing you can leave, though, is your spare gear.

By the final day you might realise that you don't need all those leftover energy bars, batteries or spare raincoat. Maybe you are happy to buy new gloves, a new daypack, gaitors, thermal or shirt.
Anything, it doesn't matter what it is - whoever you leave it to will be happy.

We left gloves with a porter, a headtorch with an assistant guide, batteries and energy bars with another guide. Other people left a lot more.

Your excess gear is also like a tip, so give it to people you feel have earned it.

The main thing is be fair.

Salaries aren't big in Tanzania, guides and porters make very little. Porters earn about US$5 a day, assistant guides not much more (US$8-10) and chief guides about US$20 a day (very little for the huge amount of work they do to arrange the trip). Follow your conscience and reward exceptional service.

Tipping in America

An intro to tipping in the USA

Like many before me, by the time I finished uni I was absolutely hanging to get on a plane and get the heck out of Australia. Not that we don’t love our great suntanned country, but travelling just gets in your blood and makes you want to go…

I decided partway through my last year that I was going to bail over to the USA to do a working holiday. I planned that I would go and work in a bar in the little town of Knoxville, Tennessee, where I had a couple of good drinking buddies that I’d met when they were studying in Oz.

After arriving in Los Angeles on a group flight with about a hundred other Aussies, we were promptly loaded onto buses and taken to a hostel located in Inglewood, one of LA’s main ‘ghetto’ areas. I could tell you lots of stories about that particular stay, but the one that’s most relevant was that it was where I got my first introduction to tipping in the USA.

So here goes….

Americans love to tip. It’s part of the culture and any cultural ‘orientation’ to the country will certainly cover the topic. You can just imagine 100 of us Aussies all crammed into one little hostel in an LA ghetto, too afraid to go outside on the streets, deciding we’d just drink at the hostel bar.

And you can also imagine the sheer pleasure of a bartender, absolutely stoked to be over-tipped by 100 Aussies all wanting to look like they knew what they were doing.
We didn’t and they were, if you get my meaning.

For the uninitiated, tipping in the USA can be a complex, counter-intuitive process, carefully linked to percentages of the bill, quality of the service, type of the establishment and your future intentions.

I worked in a restaurant/bar for 5 months and came to understand the system well, so let me try to explain.

General Rules

Minimum wage in the US in some service industries (waiting, bartending etc) is absolutely crap and these people rely on your tips to make a living.

Here are some of the services you should expect to tip for and an indicative amount:

• Restaurants – 15% tip required
• Bars – Tip of a dollar or two per drink, depending on the cost: More expensive = Higher Tip
• Taxis – Round upwards up to 10% of the fare.
• Hairdressers – Up to 10%
• Anyone carrying your luggage/bags/groceries - $1-2

Remember – the more expensive the establishment, the more you are likely expected to tip (in % terms).

Restaurants

When you go to a restaurant, ‘service’ is not included in the cost of your bill i.e. the waiters basically aren’t being paid by the restaurant but directly by you. You should always tip 15% of the bill to the waiter unless they were genuinely rude, terrible or truly diabolical….and I do mean truly diabolical. Tipping less than 10% will probably see you chased out of the restaurant, so if you do leave less than 10% be sure to make a quick, discrete exit!

If you get great service then consider tipping more – 20% is a good tip, 25% is very generous and 30% is awesome. Tip service accordingly. Yes, it’s painful to begin with but you do get used to it – just bear in mind when you’re ordering that everything on the menu is at least 15% more than what you see.

The easy way to work out 15%? Round the bill to the nearest dollar, divide by 10, then halve that amount and multiply by 3 and round up or down according to taste. Sound stupid?

1. $26.80 - Round up to $27
2. Divide by 10 = $2.70
3. Divide by 2 = $1.35
4. Multiply by 3 = $4.05 or rounded to a nice $4 tip

Bars

When I was in New York I met a couple of Aussies who had been out boozing all afternoon and well into the evening. I remember asking them how much they tipped after each drink and they told me,
‘Nah we didn’t do that – we just left a couple of bucks on the bar at the end of the night!’

Tipping in bars can be the most difficult of all, so here’s my advice.

Tip as you go
Unless you are running a tab, you need to tip after each drink. Drinks less than $10 you generally round up to the dollar, or extra dollar.

If it’s busy and you don’t tip, or don’t tip well, you might find it difficult to get your next drink.

Be generous upfront
If you are likely to go to one place many times (i.e. it’s your local bar), be generous! Bartenders will always reward the best tippers with the best service. On a crazy busy Friday night at your local joint this cannot be underestimated!

My favourite tactic when I knew I was going to be drinking in the same bar all evening was to hit the bartender with an awesome tip when I bought my first drink.

I would give them a $10 tip on a $10 round – at which point any bartender would raise their eyebrows when I refused their change. I then would say ‘Keep it, but just keep an eye out for me tonight’. Guaranteed that bartender would spot me even if it was 5 deep at the bar.

You still need to tip on each subsequent drink, but just leaving the standard dollar or two is fine.

It might sound like heaps of cash, but over the course of a long evening, you’ll save plenty of time and hassles at the bar – guaranteed. And if you’re ever back, you’re guaranteed first class service from that bartender.

If you want to play it even smarter, pool with your mates for a great tip at the start of the night with one of the roaming waiters/waitresses that work the floors of busy nightclubs. Tables at bars mean big money for them – tip big at the start of the night and you’ll always be well looked after.

Taxis

I always found tipping taxi drivers the most irritating, since they already do okay from driving and you don’t always get great service. Taxis are one place where if they weren’t a good driver they got a crap tip – let’s be honest, unless it is a very small town you’re in it’s unlikely you’ll ever get that driver again.

Less that $5 – round it up to the nearest $ or 50c.
$5-10 - $1 tip
$10-20 - $2 tip
$20-30 - $2-3 depending on how friendly they were
$30+ leave up to 10%. More if they were really great or if you’ve asked for special assistance (i.e. they had to wait for you, helped you with bags etc).

Final words

Tipping takes a bit of practice and a little bit of maths to get right. Consider it like a tax that’s not written on the menu or meter but that has to be paid – nobody likes a tax cheat and a good tip is the best reward for good service.