Tipping the Guides with TC

[sayhello]

I hit the ATM the last full day. My bank doesn't charge ATM fees, so it was just the fee from the foreign ATM. To me, it was better than shlepping all that cash around all week. I figured, unless I had brought cash, it was either I pay the ATM fee, or the guide pay the Traveler's Check fee.

Sayhello

 

[AndreaJ]

We were able to have our last hotel (Dromoland Castle) give us euros, and they just charged our credit card. We did not have any convenient ATM's around by the last day of our tour.

 

[glassslipper2004]

Bumping. For some reason, not all the threads on this board seem to alert me when new posts are posted. I get lots and lots of alerts of posts on the Tie-dye T-shirt thread (I made some really cool Mickey head t-shirts almost a year ago) but don't always get the ABD notices.

 

[2RGR8]

When tipping the guides do you give them US Dollars or Euros? On the Knights and Lights tour I understand you have one guide in London and another in Paris. How do you handle the tipping for that situation?

 

[KLondon]

Actually.... you'll have 2 ABD Guides with you for the whole tour. You'll also have local (expert) guides in London and Paris. You only need to worry about tipping the ABD Guides - the others are taken care for you by ABD.

You can tip in US dollars or local currency. On the London/Paris tour, we actually tipped with a combination both US and Euros. On the Costa Rica tour, we tipped in US dollars only.

Hope this helps.

 

[grumpy-1]

I called ABD and asked what form of tipping would be the easiest for the guides. They told me that the guides would accept any form .... US currency , travelers checks, or Euro's. But it is the easiest for them if the tip is in Euro's

 

[AndreaJ]

On our trip to Ireland, we tipped in euros.

 

[StaceyA]

Did most of you tip your 2 guides equally? Or if one went above and beyond, did you tip him toward the higher end of the recommended amount? For our family of 6, tipping on the scale of $5-$8/guide/day is $240-$384 PER GUIDE. As this is already an expensive trip, and even more so with 4 kids, we will out of necessity need to tip to the low end of that. But if one of them is exceptional, is it appropriate to give him a little extra? Or should we keep it even?

does each tour have 2 guides always, or do some trips have more then 2?

 

[Skylarr29]

does each tour have 2 guides always, or do some trips have more then 2?

I think all trips have two guides. We have been on two adventures and both times we had two guides.

We tipped in Euros to both guides on our Flavors of France trip.

On our Austria trip since we visited both Austria and the Czech Republic (2 different currencies) I discreetly pulled one of our guides aside when we were walking and asked what their preference was because I wanted it to be easy for them. One of our guides were going back to the USA right after the trip so we tipped her in US currency and the other guide said she preferred the Euros even though anything would be fine.

The guides work very hard and their tips are their paycheck. I know the trip is expensive but it isn't fair to skip the tips.

 

[StaceyA]

I think all trips have two guides. We have been on two adventures and both times we had two guides.

We tipped in Euros to both guides on our Flavors of France trip.

On our Austria trip since we visited both Austria and the Czech Republic (2 different currencies) I discreetly pulled one of our guides aside when we were walking and asked what their preference was because I wanted it to be easy for them. One of our guides were going back to the USA right after the trip so we tipped her in US currency and the other guide said she preferred the Euros even though anything would be fine.

The guides work very hard and their tips are their paycheck. I know the trip is expensive but it isn't fair to skip the tips.

believe me i would never skip on the tips, we will probably give more, but i wanted to know if there were just 2 or more. for some reason I was thinking there are 4.

We are going on Quest for the West so I know the answer is US CASH lol

Thanks so much!

 

[sayhello]

believe me i would never skip on the tips, we will probably give more, but i wanted to know if there were just 2 or more. for some reason I was thinking there are 4.

I think someone mentioned recently that they had "4 guides" on their trip: the 2 guides, and 2 "shadow guides" who were learning the itinerary. Maybe that's where you got that idea. Normally, you have 2 guides on each tour, plus local naturalists/specialists. The naturalists/specialists are tipped by Disney, you only need to worry about the 2 Disney guides.

Sayhello

 

[StaceyA]

I think someone mentioned recently that they had "4 guides" on their trip: the 2 guides, and 2 "shadow guides" who were learning the itinerary. Maybe that's where you got that idea. Normally, you have 2 guides on each tour, plus local naturalists/specialists. The naturalists/specialists are tipped by Disney, you only need to worry about the 2 Disney guides.

Sayhello

You could be right...or it could be the local guides that I was thinking about as well.
Thanks for your help, I always find help here lol

 

[Skylarr29]

We had two shadow guides on our Austria trip as well but we didn't tip them. They were more guests though, they were not helping with the other guests.

And I wasn't implying that you were going to skip the tips Before I went I didn't realize that the only compensation the guides received were tips. Others might not realize as well.

 

[StaceyA]

We had two shadow guides on our Austria trip as well but we didn't tip them. They were more guests though, they were not helping with the other guests.

And I wasn't implying that you were going to skip the tips Before I went I didn't realize that the only compensation the guides received were tips. Others might not realize as well.

no problem I actually didn't know that either, I would have thought they would be paid nicely through disney!

 

[eva]

no problem I actually didn't know that either, I would have thought they would be paid nicely through disney!

I'm beginning to think that the guides for these types of tours are paid similarly to those on cruise ships. The majority of workers on cruise ships also rely mainly on tips.

We plan on tipping in Euros. For some reason DH wants to exchange about $1,500 (will equal about 1,000 Euros) before he goes. So I am sure we will have plenty left for the tips. For two people we are planning to set aside 100 Euros per guide. That would be about $150 per guide. For 9 days thats about $8.30 a day per guest per guide. Does that seem fair?

 

[Skylarr29]

$100 euros a guide is exactly what we did on both of our ABD trips.

 

[KLondon]

That sounds about right. The 'storybook' you get prior to your tour includes guidelines for tipping.

As for what Guides get payed by Disney - I agree that the tips are likely a large chunk of the compensation package. That said, I do know that Guides do get various benefits through Disney (e.g. health) and this is very unusual in the tour guide business.

 

[glassslipper2004]

Having just returned from a fantastic Viva Italia trip, I want to echo the posters who said not to use traveler's checks. I didn't listen, and had no luck getting a bank to cash them - I tried three places, they just refused. I wound up having the hotel cash them and it cost me 15% of their value. I decided to cash them anyway, not wanting our wonderful guides to have to deal with the hassle. So - lesson learned - don't bother with traveler's checks!