You tip nothing on one of our trips, because we do not accept tips. Not the guides, not the mechanic, not me. Everyone working on a Velo Escapes trip is paid a fair amount before the trip starts, and if a tip is owed to somebody outside the company, a driver, a hotel, a local vendor, we pay it out of what you already paid us. The price on the page is the price. There is no envelope at the end of the week.
I will say the rest plainly, because it is the reason for the rule. I hate tipping. A company that needs its guests to top up the wages should raise the wages and put the real number on the website. What tipping actually does is move a cost off the price you compared against other trips and onto an awkward conversation on the last night, when you have no idea what the right number is and nobody will tell you. It is a hidden charge, and on a week-long trip it is a few hundred dollars of hidden charge.
Now the part you probably came here for, because you are almost certainly asking about somebody else's trip.
Every other bike tour company expects a tip
That is not a dig, it is how the industry runs. What none of them agree on is the number.
Trek Travel does not include gratuities in the trip price, says they are shared among the guide team, and points you at your trip page for the amount. On the page it uses to recruit guides it is far more specific, telling would-be employees that each guest is encouraged to tip an average of 40 to 50 dollars per day.
Backroads includes every gratuity in the trip price except the one for your trip leaders. It does give you a recommended number, but only inside your Travel Planner, after you have booked and paid. It is one total per guest, children included, split among the leader team.
Western Spirit Cycling publishes the widest range and the plainest reasoning: a gratuity of 10 to 20 percent of your trip price, which it calls the standard range for outdoor guiding. Its own worked example is a four-day trip at 1,345 dollars, which puts the tip between 135 and 270 dollars.
ExperiencePlus! Bicycle Tours suggests 5 to 8 percent of the tour cost per traveler for the whole leader team, and includes leader gratuities outright on its Expedition trips.
VBT covers gratuities for luggage handling, housekeeping, included meals and scheduled transport, and leaves you the trip leaders and the drivers.
So the published guidance runs from 5 percent to 20 percent, with one company quietly pointing its own staff at 40 to 50 dollars a day. That is a fourfold spread on the same question. Nobody can find the number because there is no number.
Notice what that does to the price you compared
Take a 3,000 dollar trip. At 10 percent you are 300 dollars over the price you were quoted. Two of you on that trip, and the trip cost 3,600 dollars, not 3,000, and you found that out on the last night. Run that against every trip you shortlisted and the cheapest one on the page is often not the cheapest one you pay.
This is the whole reason we do it differently. Compare our number to their number plus the tip, not to their number.
If you are riding with one of them, here is what to give
You are on their trip, not mine, and the guides did not write the policy. Do not take my opinion out on them.
- Full-service road tour, support vehicle, two or more staff: 25 to 40 dollars per rider per day, for the whole team.
- Smaller operation, one guide, simpler lodging: 15 to 25 dollars per rider per day.
- A single day of local guiding inside a bigger trip: 20 to 40 dollars for that day, to that person, on the day.
- A mechanic who rescued your week: something separate, in their hand, worth whatever it was worth to you.
Then check the total against the trip price. Between 8 and 15 percent of what you paid is the normal range, and once you are in it you can stop thinking about it.
The mistakes people make with it
Tipping per room instead of per person. Recommended amounts are per guest. Two riders on a five-day trip at 30 dollars a day is 300 dollars for the trip, not 150. Backroads spells this out, and counts children too.
Forgetting that a small group costs each rider more. The guide team is paid out of a pool and the pool is per rider. A team on a trip of six is splitting six tips. A team on a trip of twenty is splitting twenty, often for an easier job, because a big group runs on a schedule and a small one gets improvised around. If your trip was small and it was good, use the top of the range.
Paying twice for the same thing. Gratuities tend to be included for the people you never see and left open for the people who are with you all day. Hotel staff, housekeeping, luggage handling, included meals and scheduled transfers are usually covered. Your guides, a dedicated support driver and any local guide brought in for a day usually are not. Read the inclusions before you go.
How to hand it over
Cash still works everywhere, in local currency. In the US, Venmo is normal now, and Trek Travel says its guides also take PayPal. Backroads uses its leaders' email addresses as their PayPal IDs and takes personal checks inside the US.
One payment to any one guide is fine. They split it themselves, and every company above says so. Do it at the final dinner or on the last morning, not from an airport gate three hours later.
If you would rather not, or cannot
A tip is not a bill. If the guiding was bad, do not pay for it, and tell the company why instead of swallowing it.
If the money is not there, write the review instead and put the guide's name in it. Guides get rehired on reviews and they get the better trips because of them. Naming a person publicly is worth real money to their next season, and almost no guest ever does it.
What we do, one more time
No tipping. Not expected, not accepted, not part of how we run. Staff are paid properly before the wheels turn, vendor tips come out of our end, and the number you see when you book is the number you pay. If you want to know what a trip costs, start with what a guided bike tour actually costs and then ask every company on your list what they expect you to hand over at the end. The answers will tell you something.