Tipping

Tipping in Peru

This is a rough guideline to try and help you work out how much you should tip. Remember that tipping is entirely voluntary and how much you give depends on how you feel about the service you have received. (The main exception to this is Inca trail porters where a tip is expected).

As a background, Peru has a minimum salary of 1025 Nuevo Soles (US$277) monthly for a 6 day 48 hour week. However in many of the lower paid jobs (eg waiters, porters etc) this is not always honoured.

3.7 Peruvian Soles to the US Dollar, this makes S/.1 roughly the equivalent of GBP £0.21, USD$0.27 and EUR 0.24. (GBP £1 : PEN S/. 4.69).

Airport Baggage Handlers

Strictly this is not a tip as these people make their living by carrying your luggage from the carousel to your bus. The general rule is between two to five soles per bag.

Hotel Staff:

If the hotel staff are helpful and friendly a tip of roughly two / three Soles per bag for the porters helping carry bags to your room and for the breakfast staff leave on the breakfast table a tip of roughly five Sol per person per breakfast. In many hotels this is not expected but the staff will be grateful.

Drivers

Generally, drivers doing transfers from the airport to the hotel or vice versa don’t expect tips.

However, if you have a driver for a few days then it is generally expected to tip. Again the service supplied (ie did he drive safely, did he help with luggage, was he friendly) should determine the size of the tip. A reasonable average would be a total of 10-60 Soles a day in total from the group.

Specialist Guides

On many trips you will have a number of specialist guides e.g. jungle, rafting, biking, Colca Canyon or Lake Titicaca guides.

In most instances these guides have spent a number of years studying at Colleges or Universities to qualify as guides. Generally these guides will be with you for a few days but sometimes just for a day trip.

As a general guideline it would be expected to tip each specialist guide 70-170 Soles a day in total from the group.

Again the group size, depth of knowledge of their area or specialist skill, command of English and friendliness should help determine the tip. Any assistant guides should receive roughly half the amount of the main guide’s tip.

Inca Trail

The Inca trail, where you will be supported by a full crew of cooks, assistants and a host of porters etc, is far more complicated to organise in terms of tipping.

We recommend that each client contributes 100-300 soles (30-90 US$) into a pot and following the advice of the guide divide it out between the crew of cooks, waiters and porters.

Note: This is one location where tipping is expected.

The general consensus as a percentage of the pot is approximate:  20% Cook, 17% Head-porter, 15% Waiter, 13% Assistant Cook, 13% Toilet manager, 22% split between the normal porters.

The number of porters varies:

Nº  PAX	Nº Porters	Nº Guide	Total Permits
1	7	1	9
2	8	1	11
3	10	1	14
4	12	1	17
5	13	1	19
6	14	1	21
7	15	1	23
8	16	2	25
9	17	2	28
10	18	2	30
11	19	2	32
12	20	2	34
13	21	2	36
14	22	2	38
15	23	2	40
16	24	2	42

Vehicle or Mule Supporte Treks (Lares, Ausangate, Salkantay, etc)

On treks where there is not the same number of staff as the Inca Trail, but there are muleteers, cooks, cooks assistants etc, we recommend that each client contributes around 25-50s/ per day of trekking.

For example, for a 4 day Lares trek it would be suitable to tip 100-250s/ (30-75 US$), whilst an 8 day Choquequirao trek would warrant around 150-500s/ (45-150 US$) of tips.

This should again be pooled into a central pot and then with the advice of the guide divided between the crew. As on the Inca Trail, the cook and head porter, head muleteer gets a larger percentage of the pot.

For tipping the actual trail guides and assistant guides we recommend following the advice for specialist guides above.

Tour Conductors

On some of our bigger tours you will be accompanied by a Tour Conductor who will help deal with all the small problems that crop up when travelling in a foreign, non-English speaking country.

Again it would be expected that the group would tip the tour conductor around 40-200 soles per day. The group size, their friendliness, patience, availability and ability to resolve your problems should help determine their tip.

Restaurants

As with most places in the world it is normal to tip in restaurants if the service was reasonable and the food good. A tip of 5% would be adequate, 10% is normal and 15% would be considered excellent.

Summary

Airport porters	Minimum 2-5 Soles per bag – compulsory
Hotel staff	5 Soles per bag / per breakfast
Transfer drivers	Generally not expected
Drivers	S/. 10-100  per day total from the group
Specialist guides	S/. 70-200  per day total from the group
Assistant Guides	S/. 35-150 per day total from Group
Inca trail support staff	S/. 100-300 per client, pooled and divided- Very expected
Other treks support staff	S/. 25-60 per client per day pooled and divided
Tour Conductors	S/. 50-300 per day total from the group
Restaurants	5-15% for adequate to excellent food and service

We hope you find the above information useful and do remember this information is a general guide and that tipping is VOLUNTARY.