excursion tipping

Do you typically tip the bus or van driver and tour guide on the Regent free shore excursions? How much?

Yes, the tour guides and drivers are not regent employees. How much depends on quality of the tour. If the guide is terrible, forces non scheduled shopping stops, or drones on constantly, no tip. Of if the driver gets lost and drives us around aimlessly for 2 hours as happened to me outside of Rome once or the bus is filthy, no tip.

Otherwise, 5-10 euro or dollar or the equivalent local currency for 1/2 day and twice as much for a full day. Half as much for driver generally. Use your judgment though.

Concur with RachelG above.

Also, forgot to add, but sometimes the driver gets a tip and the guide gets none, or vice versa. We have had a couple of tours where I felt sorry for the driver having to listen to such a horrible guide.

Yes - we do tip the guide and driver. We are currently in Russia and noticed a tip basket for the driver in the bus. We handed the tip to the guide (the guides in St. Petersburg have all been excellent). It was so nice of you to ask this question. Unfortunately, many people feel that since the excursion is included that the tip is as well.

Enjoy your cruise.

Concur with RachelG above as to amounts to each. So many passengers leave the bus giving nothing. I have watched that many times. They are so appreciative, and this amount never was included, but some people think it is. In the whole scheme of what we pay, it is a pittance.

Agree with all above.

It was so nice of you to ask this question. Unfortunately, many people feel that since the excursion is included that the tip is as well.

 

Enjoy your cruise.

Thank you all for your replies. When we went on the Alaska cruise last summer, it was easy to figure out how much to tip; since we will be in the UK this summer, I didn't want to be seen as the "ugly American."

I'm glad to know my husband and I have been doing the right thing except for one item. We thought the driver and tour guide would have an arrangement for sharing. Can't go back to correct our mistake but can do better in the future. We will be on voyager out of London in August so timely info.

Thanks!

I've seen on other threads that it is best to tip the guides and drivers in the local currency.

However, on the Baltic cruises almost every port will have a different currency. Since I don't really plan to spend anything off the ship other than tips, is it ok to tip with Euros (or dollars) in these countries?

TravelCat, I noticed on your cruise blog thread that you didn't have opportunity in St. Petersberg to get local currency? What did you do for tips there?

Hope you all can help with this one, since I don't want to be the "Ugly American" either!

Martha

A tip in euros would probably be be better than no tip at all, but do not tip with euro coins unless that is the local currency. They can't exchange the coins.

However, I have done 3 Baltic cruises and have always obtained some local currency except in Latvia and Estonia. In those two countries, euros are almost universally accepted in restaurants, etc. in Russia, I used rubles which I had obtained prior to the trip from Bank of America.

In a lot of places the driver and guide have a sharing arrangement, but not always. If the driver has a basket for tips, I tip separately.

The Eurozone (countries where the euro is the national currency) consists of:

Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain.

rairn2go:

thanks for this!

Peggy

Just re-read TravelCat's current Voyager blog and realized that the comments about having no opportunity to get money in Russia were from experiences several years ago.

Hoping someone who has been this year (like TC) will be able to comment. We are only taking included excursions in St. Petersburg so am wondering if we will stop at an ATM.

Thanks for the tip about Euro coins.

And thanks for the info on which countries are in the EU as far as money goes.

Hi, we were in St. Petersburg about 10 years ago and I remember the guides were fine with American dollars. Generally I agree that it is better to give the tips in the local currency, but dollars or euros are certainly better than not giving a tip at all - or driving yourself crazy trying to get some local money!

Hi, we were in St. Petersburg about 10 years ago and I remember the guides were fine with American dollars. Generally I agree that it is better to give the tips in the local currency, but dollars or euros are certainly better than not giving a tip at all - or driving yourself crazy trying to get some local money!

We were in St. Petersburg last year, and USD were gladly accepted by vendors and the guides.

RJ2002, U.S. dollars are still welcome in Russia. This is what we used to tip.

We were on a 20 person escorted bus tour of Lisbon some years back and our group of strangers discussed how we would reward the guide and driver for what we generally agreed had been below average services. The suggested amounts per person differed greatly. A few admitted they were tipping to avoid the eye contact with the guide. We were at lunch and away from both men at the time. We decided we would pass the basket we found sitting on the dashboard. Before the bus stopped the basket had made its way from front to back and to the people in the seat behind the driver. The passenger in the front seat made it known to both driver and guide they were to share cash in the basket. None of us knew the amount of cash in the basket or what individuals gave. We did see that the basket contained a good amount of strange paper money and odd shaped coinage. The passenger with the basket held it until everyone had departed. No guilt feelings or 'ugly American' slights as the bus moved back into traffic.