Tipping conventions in British Isles

The tipping protocol in Europe always confuses me. Some say that the bill includes a gratuity and some say that it depends on the country in question. Of course, the advice always is that you tip for exceptional service. But I don't want to look like the silly American tourist by throwing money where it isn't customary.

Here in the US I always give the customary 15%+ and probably much more for a small bill, given that the waiter/waitress has to do the same amount of work for a hamburger and water as for a steak and wine.

Also, I recall that a gratuity is added to the cruise crew following a cruise, and of course you are encouraged to provide more than is charged. Also, if you go on excursions, the bus driver is usually seen accepting tips, and I never know whether or how much to give. Same for hotel personnel. I'm healthy to open my own doors, but sometimes a bell hop grabs your luggage whether you call for them or not.

Any tipping advice for London and the British Isles will be appreciated. We're leaving May 30.

The tipping protocol in Europe always confuses me. Some say that the bill includes a gratuity and some say that it depends on the country in question. Of course, the advice always is that you tip for exceptional service. But I don't want to look like the silly American tourist by throwing money where it isn't customary.

 

Here in the US I always give the customary 15%+ and probably much more for a small bill, given that the waiter/waitress has to do the same amount of work for a hamburger and water as for a steak and wine.

 

Also, I recall that a gratuity is added to the cruise crew following a cruise, and of course you are encouraged to provide more than is charged. Also, if you go on excursions, the bus driver is usually seen accepting tips, and I never know whether or how much to give. Same for hotel personnel. I'm healthy to open my own doors, but sometimes a bell hop grabs your luggage whether you call for them or not.

 

Any tipping advice for London and the British Isles will be appreciated. We're leaving May 30.

I don't know - years ago when I used to work in a resort in the UK our rare "silly American tourist" guests always did get the best service because they were throwing money around and us wait staff were not complaining :D

When I'm in the UK I never calculate percentages of bills - if I go out to a sit down restaurant and the service is good I'll leave a couple of pounds (that's with two of us eating with drinks). Taxis is normally just a case of keep the change - rounding to pounds. And no tipping on drinks in bars or pubs.

Hi There

Tipping is not straight forward take a taxi ride if £10 you pay £10 but if £9,50 you would say keep the change.

Many restruants include a service or tip charge but not all.

In London hotel staff will expect more than rest of UK in tips.

My best advise is folks in the UK expect a tip for service above and beyond not for just doing their jobs.

Yours Shogun

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10% ish in restaurants, if service is rubbish leave nothing.

Taxi's round up to next £ or give an extra £ if rounding up is only a few pence.

Tours - if it's a 50 seater coach, then just a £ per person. If it's a small tour then a couple of £ to £10 depending how many in YOUR group.

If you use a car service, ie. to transport you from London to Southampton then £5-£10 depending on how helpful and polite the driver is.

Don't panic though, no one will come running after you or shout abuse at you if you forget to tip.

The tipping protocol in Europe always confuses me. Some say that the bill includes a gratuity and some say that it depends on the country in question. Of course, the advice always is that you tip for exceptional service. But I don't want to look like the silly American tourist by throwing money where it isn't customary.

 

Here in the US I always give the customary 15%+ and probably much more for a small bill, given that the waiter/waitress has to do the same amount of work for a hamburger and water as for a steak and wine.

 

Also, I recall that a gratuity is added to the cruise crew following a cruise, and of course you are encouraged to provide more than is charged. Also, if you go on excursions, the bus driver is usually seen accepting tips, and I never know whether or how much to give. Same for hotel personnel. I'm healthy to open my own doors, but sometimes a bell hop grabs your luggage whether you call for them or not.

 

Any tipping advice for London and the British Isles will be appreciated. We're leaving May 30.

We are English and live in England, we tip 10% rounded up to whole pounds in restaurants, we tip taxi drivers the same10%, we don't tend to use hotel porters for our wheeled luggage, but of we did would probably tip a pound per case. The only other person that I tip is my hairdresser, I don't really know why as what they charge these days is ridiculous!!!

Enjoy your trip.

One thing that surprised us is that when you tip, often times the severs have to hand it over to the owners and get nothing. We are from the UK (many years ago) and our nieces worked as servers through university - until they got ticked off with having to hand over all their tips. We went for dinner last year as a group of 12 and there was surprisingly no service charge. We tipped as Canadians, our our daughter and daughter in law who both work as servers while in school asked the servers if they got to keep all of it. They had to hand it all over. I think this may vary from restaurant to restaurant but it may be worth checking

Terry

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One thing that surprised us is that when you tip, often times the severs have to hand it over to the owners and get nothing. We are from the UK (many years ago) and our nieces worked as servers through university - until they got ticked off with having to hand over all their tips. We went for dinner last year as a group of 12 and there was surprisingly no service charge. We tipped as Canadians, our our daughter and daughter in law who both work as servers while in school asked the servers if they got to keep all of it. They had to hand it all over. I think this may vary from restaurant to restaurant but it may be worth checking

Terry

 

 

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It will vary from place to place, but usually if tips are to be handed in, its because they are then pooled to be shared by all the staff.

I will leave around 10 - 15% in restaurants, but only if I enjoyed the meal and service - taxi's, as others have said "keep the change" - Pubs, nothing expected or required. In London, US tourists will get the best service compared to most as they are well known for tipping far more.

Newport Dave has summed-up the norm.

All staff receive a living wage, tips are the jam rather than the bread&butter.

So if service is poor, leave nothing. Good service in a restaurant deserves up to 10%, more than that would be for something exceptional.

But in some restaurants a service charge is added to the bill. Rare in most of the UK but seems to be the norm in central London & other tourist areas. If there's a service charge it must be shown on the menu, and menus must be displayed outside premises. I try to avoid those places, but if needs must I never leave an extra tip, and most Brits - certainly those from outside London - take the same attitude.

Many pubs don't offer full-service meals. You may be expected to find your own table, to buy your drinks & order your food at the bar, even to pay at the bar. Adjust tipping levels to reflect - so it'll be between zilch & £5 per couple.

We don't tip bar-keeps.

City taxi drivers around £1 to £2.

Tour & transfer coach drivers & guides £1 per passenger.

Small-group (car & van) drivers/guides £5 to £10 per couple.

But you will get different folk telling you different levels. That's because it's a personal decision rather than an expectation.

And its not the big deal that it is in the US.

JB :)

There are some important differences in the way tips are treated for tax.

If customers give cash tips directly to employees or leave them on the table and individual employees keep them without any involvement from the employer, then they do not have to pay tax on them directly, although their tax code may have been adjusted to take account of expected tips.

If the tips (or a voluntary service charge) are pooled and then distributed by a (quaintly named) troncmaster then they will be added to their pay for tax purposes. It is also the case that some unscrupulous restaurant operators use the pooled tips to make wages up to the minimum wage. (Here I disagree with JB in that a minority of waitstaff are very poorly paid, especially in London)

It is always the case that a tip added to a credit card payment is far less beneficial to your waiter, than cash. Whenever I eat out and see a voluntary service charge added to the bill, I invariably cross it off. If I am going to tip, I will give the cash to the individual. Like JB - a mandatory service charge will send me elsewhere.

Don't panic though, no one will come running after you or shout abuse at you if you forget to tip.

Equally, no one will be insulted if you do tip :D

There are some important differences in the way tips are treated for tax.

 

If customers give cash tips directly to employees or leave them on the table and individual employees keep them without any involvement from the employer, then they do not have to pay tax on them directly, although their tax code may have been adjusted to take account of expected tips.

 

If the tips (or a voluntary service charge) are pooled and then distributed by a (quaintly named) troncmaster then they will be added to their pay for tax purposes. It is also the case that some unscrupulous restaurant operators use the pooled tips to make wages up to the minimum wage. (Here I disagree with JB in that a minority of waitstaff are very poorly paid, especially in London)

 

It is always the case that a tip added to a credit card payment is far less beneficial to your waiter, than cash. Whenever I eat out and see a voluntary service charge added to the bill, I invariably cross it off. If I am going to tip, I will give the cash to the individual. Like JB - a mandatory service charge will send me elsewhere.

Decades ago, when I ran a restaurant, the waiting staff chose to pool their tips, and to include the kitchen porter in the pool (chefs were well-paid). When customers added the tip to a credit card payment I put that into the pool in cash (costing me a few pennies in card commission).

I then left the staff to divide up the pool - if I had done it myself I'd have had to deduct that tax from the pool, more work & responsibility for me and less money for them.

But different restaurants, different methods. And I think the taxman has since tightened-up on income from tips for full-time staff, using an artificially- low "assumed" annual income from tips for tax purposes rather than requiring precise accounting & all the bureaucracy that goes with it. Certainly that's how it works for full-time tour drivers.

I recall a legal test-case involving an unscrupulous owner who used tips to bring wages up to the legal minimum wage - that was rightly judged to be illegal.

Not too sure how that works with a service charge.

Misunderstanding on how well waiting staff are paid, Bob.

Agreed the pay is poor, but unlike the USA it is subject to a mandatory living minimum - hence I described tips as "the jam rather than the bread-and-butter."

JB :)

Don't panic though, no one will come running after you or shout abuse at you if you forget to tip.

On my first trip to Australia, I took a van from the cruise port to my B&B. I was very shocked (and pissed) that the driver actually was going to hold my luggage hostage for a tip! :eek:

I already had my Aussie Dollars out, and he only took it to the sidewalk. I had to wait and ring the bell and wait for my Hostess to come out and help me bring in my luggage. What a Loser! I should not have tipped him at all.

Hello Di Princess

Once at US airport l gave the porter all the US money l had left a small hand full of dollars a few minutes later he found me a check in and told me if that was l could afford l needed the money more than him and handed my tip back

Yours Shogun

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Forums mobile app

But in some restaurants a service charge is added to the bill. Rare in most of the UK but seems to be the norm in central London & other tourist areas. If there's a service charge it must be shown on the menu, and menus must be displayed outside premises. I try to avoid those places, but if needs must I never leave an extra tip, and most Brits - certainly those from outside London - take the same attitude.

It is also the case that some unscrupulous restaurant operators use the pooled tips to make wages up to the minimum wage. (Here I disagree with JB in that a minority of waitstaff are very poorly paid, especially in London)

 

It is always the case that a tip added to a credit card payment is far less beneficial to your waiter, than cash. Whenever I eat out and see a voluntary service charge added to the bill, I invariably cross it off. If I am going to tip, I will give the cash to the individual. Like JB - a mandatory service charge will send me elsewhere.

Similarly, if there is a voluntary gratuity/service charge, there will be no extra tip. The main reason why these are "voluntary" is because VAT is not chargeable on a voluntary amount, so the restaurant owner does not have to pay a chunk of that amount to the taxman. This means that the voluntary percentage is (typically) 12.5% when it would have to be about 15% if it was mandatory. Therefore there are now few places that always levy a mandatory service charge. It is relatively seldom an indication that the restaurant owner is unscrupulous.

Taking hard line on mandatory service charges can be a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. There are many places that impose a mandatory charge on groups, in some places starting from a group size of six (so it could be relevant to many cruise-related groups, particularly a group of friends cruising together or a group that's met up on a roll call). The reason that this is done is because experience demonstrates that groups tend to under-tip, and imposing a mandatory charge is a measure taken by the restaurant owner in order to get tip levels up to par. Generally, I would expect that to a measure that benefits the staff. Avoiding restaurants that impose a mandatory service charge for these reasons because of dogma does nobody any good.

This is not my field, but ISTR that it's now illegal to use tips to make pay up to the minimum wage. The minimum wage must be paid before any tips (pooled or otherwise) are added on.

Hello Di Princess,

Once at US airport l gave the porter all the US money l had left a small hand full of dollars a few minutes later he found me a check in and told me if that was l could afford l needed the money more than him and handed my tip back.

Yours Shogun

Hi, Steve,

That is hilarious. Sounds like me, a Scots-Irish Lass in G.B.

http://www.visitlondon.com/traveller-information/essential-information/money/tipping

From experience, restaurant menus will mention somewhere if a service charge is included in the prices. Sometimes this will also (or ONLY) be mentioned on the bill.

especially high end restaurants love the latter.

"A discretionary service charge of xxx% has been added to this bill for your convenience".

Also be carefull that most credit card slips will have a line for "tips", even if there already IS a service charge on the bill.

Up to you, of course if you pay even more...

:-)

Also be carefull that most credit card slips will have a line for "tips", even if there already IS a service charge on the bill.

There are some unscrupulous restaurants which still do leave an extra line, so you do need to check the bill before you use the machine or sign the credit card slip. But I don't think that it would be accurate to say that "most" plcaes do this.

I have organized a tour from Portland in Dorset to Stonehenge. We have 24 on a bus and each person's share is ~ 20 GBP. What type of tip would you pay? Would you tip the driver and the tour guide?

Probably around £1 for each the driver and guide.

Probably around £1 for each the driver and guide.

Yes, thereabouts. But more if you want to. And often the driver gets omitted.

JB :)

IME this is an overstatement. The inclusion of a service charge or discretionary gratuities on the bill has increased recently because of the introduction of chip and PIN machines. It's much easier for the customer to be presented with the machine stating the final total so that they only have to enter their PIN. Many customers have trouble using the machine to add a tip to a pre-tip total. Hence many restaurants that previously did not include service charges or a pre-calculated gratuity have changed to doing this.

 

There are some unscrupulous restaurants which still do leave an extra line, so you do need to check the bill before you use the machine or sign the credit card slip. But I don't think that it would be accurate to say that "most" plcaes do this.

Most credit card slips, not most places.

:-)

The inclusion of a service charge or discretionary gratuities on the bill has increased recently because of the introduction of chip and PIN machines. It's much easier for the customer to be presented with the machine stating the final total so that they only have to enter their PIN. Many customers have trouble using the machine to add a tip to a pre-tip total. Hence many restaurants that previously did not include service charges or a pre-calculated gratuity have changed to doing this.

 

.

As I mentioned in a similar thread, G, you gotta get out of the big bad city :D

Service charges, whether mandatory or added to the bill "as a a convenience to the customer" :rolleyes: are a rarity in the UK's leafier parts.

As indeed they have been in my limited experience in the USA, where plastic is king.

IMHO those restaurants which add a service charge do so for the benefit of the cash register. ;)

JB :)

(in cynical mood ;))

As I mentioned in a similar thread, G, you gotta get out of the big bad city :D

Maybe there is something in the adage that London is a different country. (But that's probably a topic for Floataway.)

Fair enough, although most CCers reading this will be spending some time in this big bad city.

 

Maybe there is something in the adage that London is a different country. (But that's probably a topic for Floataway.)

Can't argue with that, G. :)

And it's the same as a Frenchman & a Parisian being two different breeds.;)

JB :)

Probably around £1 for each the driver and guide.

Yes, thereabouts. But more if you want to. And often the driver gets omitted.

 

JB :)

Thank you for your help. :)