Tipping Tour Guides

I don't know if there is an absolute guideline but if he/she did a very good job I will generally give a 5 Euro note for the two of us. For six of you at least 10 and maybe 20. And I know many do nothing.

I just recently re-watched Rick Steves' Travel Skills series on his DVDs, and he says that tour guides get paid very minimal to just provide tours. They get the majority of their money through selling extra trips or specialty dinners that are not included in the tour (though these are only on some types of guided tours), through getting about a 15% commission for whatever people on their tour buy in the stores that they take their groups into, and finally by being tipped.

I think that a tip is a nice gesture, especially if you are very pleased with the tour they have provided you. The amount I would tip would vary based on how long my trip was.

Steven is confusing "tour guides" with "tour managers." And yes, Rick Steves uses the wrong term. The people that run overnight tours are tour managers/tour directors. The people that give you local tours are "tour guides.'

Rick loves to make "tour managers" look bad because he is selling tours. He wants you to think that the tour managers from the others tour companies only care about nickel and diming the passengers. Nothing could be further from the truth. Any optional offered is from the tour company. Any shopping stop made has been approved by the tour company. If a tour manager decides to sell his own optionals they are called "black optionals" and are grounds for immediate dismissal. I know because I used to be tour manager. Every tour company I worked for had a standard policy: if a passenger hands in a bad comment sheet, the tour manager must explain to the tour company why there were negative comments. Too many negatives and you're out of a job.

Kitty, the local tour guide you'll have on your tours will not be making commissions from anything. Frank (the other one) gave a good guideline for a group tour. Of course, you'd give more for an all day tour than one that lasts only a few hours.

So much depends on the quality of the tour guide. For a really good one, my tip might be 10 percent of the cost of the tour. My tip varies down to zero based on what the guide deserves. For an outstanding tour guide, I will tip more than 10 percent.

Personally I like to reward a great guide generously but consider a tip to a poor guide an insult to my intelligence.

Thank you all for your responses. We are on a tight budget but we also do not want to insult anyone.

I was getting the feeling that no one tipped and we really didn't want to do that.

One more thing to feel more organized about! Thanks! We leave Saturday. Ciao!