The first one at Heathrow, Gatwick, etc to offer little ‘tip bags’ will clean up.

Change your money as usual and pay a small extra fee (£4.50?) for a packet of coins, say around £4 in value, with a guide to tipping in that country (sorry Matthew).

That way you always arrive in the destination with change for the luggage porter, cabbie, doorman, etc

…and the forex guys get a mark-up way above their going rate.

So:

“This tipping automatically, it’s for the birds.”

When tipping in the UK, we sometimes ask if all the tips are pooled and dished out at the end of the day – you’ll get an honest reply from a waiter unhappy with the system in their restaurant.

For me, tipping becomes harder to justify the more expensive a meal gets: when I can see huge mark up, I tend to keep my money.

Yet when its clear people have taken pride in what they do, making my experience that little bit more special, or live on low wages, I can only offer another quote as my advice:

“Cough up a buck you cheap bastard.”

When people tip less it not only hurts us in our pocket books, but it also makes us feel unappreciated. A less than 15% tip makes us think we did a bad job and makes us wonder what we did wrong.

Tipping is certainly one of the most complicated aspects of travelling. Because you are brought up in a certain way in a given country doesn’t mean it works the same in other places, like this guide just explained. I remember getting out of a black cab in London for the first time and asking the driver if I should tip him or not, trusting his honesty. Too bad I don’t remember what he said.

Also if I receive very good service, I will tip, even though I don’t have to.

I often wonder if this 10% or 15-20% rule counts for everything.
If you eat in a very expensive restaurant, are you expected to give a very large tip?
What about tour guides, if you’ve taken a tour of a couple of days, I don’t think you’re expected to tip 20% of the tour price?

As no-one really knows what they’re doing with tipping, they pay attention to such guides. The problem is that to write these tipping guides (and I’m not picking on Mark’s in particular – it’s a cumulative effect), writers ask people in the service industry what they find a standard tip to be. And, of course, people in the service industry will point to the higher end of the scale.

So people who have been tipping 10% as standard suddenly find themselves told that 15% is standard, and start changing the way they do things. 15% then actually does become standard, and the guides start saying “15% to 20%”. In a few years’ time, 20% will be the quoted standard. It’s already getting that way – New York cab credit card machines are ‘suggesting’ 25% to 30% tips these days.

The guide writer will never quote standard as being at the lower end of the scale, because they know they’ll be howled down for it. Say that you only need to tip 15% max in the States – which is true – and you’ll get a succession of people working in the service industry and idiots wanting to show how generous they are/ how big their balls are saying: “No, that’s wrong. It’s 20%”. Writers don’t want to be seen to know that they don’t know what they’re talking about, so will arse-cover by stating a range or going for an upper estimate.

And since when was more than one dollar a drink standard tipping practice for drinks bought at the bar? Come on now, you’re proving my point.

David,
When I waitered in Toronto (about 20 years ago) 15-20% was considered the norm and it was very much appreciated because Canada had (and perhaps still has) a much lower minimum wage for workers in the catering/restaurant industry. I believe it was about 2 dollars less per hour. I don’t know how things are in the US.