tips for guide and driver on trafalgar COSTSAVER tours.

Hi Renmarkable as a guide the prepaid gratuities for your tour in the brochure including both guide and driver is A$179. I believe it's about €4 a day for guide and €2 for driver

Hi Renmarkable,
Tipping is indeed a strange custom for us here in Australia, isn't it? Other than leaving a small tip in restaurants and taxis, it's generally not required and we feel awkward when faced with it overseas. Here are some tips on tipping  :

1. Tipping is appropriate when you have the combination of three things: a) A personal service is provided (e.g. waiters, doormen, bellhops, room service/housekeepers, taxis etc); b) You're in a country where the wages for such people are very low; and c) You're satisfied with the service provided. You don't need to tip in takeaway food outlets because no personal service is provided - you simply lined up to buy something, then took it away instead of being served at a table.

2. As Purvis noted, prepaid gratuities are the new method of tipping on tours. Like you, I dislike it for several reasons: Do they really get the money and know it came from me? What if the service was bad? I also dislike saying goodbye to the tour director (TD) and driver, thanking them for their great work, but not immediately handing a tip. It feels like I'm being cheap and I don't like having to say that I already prepaid the gratuities. I think the practice also creates an opportunity for some meanies to pretend they prepaid when they didn't.

3. The suggested tips are in my opinion, adequate. However, you can add or subtract from it as you see fit. I always bring along a few envelopes for this purpose - I put the cash inside, seal it and write a short note of thanks on the front so they know it came from me. They will say thanks anyway, so by the time they open it, I'm not around for any further thank yous. (Tipping isn't meant to be anonymous; nor is it the conduit for endless appreciation by the recipient). Take more than two envelopes because you will probably have more than one driver (they can't work every day of the tour like the TD often does). You share the driver tip proportionately.

4. The recommended tips are printed on an itinerary that will be included in the paperwork your travel agent gives you. Don't expect to see this until around three weeks before departure. The amounts are usually similar to what Bet said, so you can allow for this in your cash budget. Try to ensure you tip in local currency, not A$ - it takes away a bit of the goodwill if the recipient has to head off to a currency exchange and loses some of the tip in fees etc.

5. You don't have to tip in any included restaurants on the tour. Everyone simply eats their meal and leaves later. You may wish to consider tipping any local guides you have. These are the local experts who join the tour for an hour or two to show you around a city etc. They often miss out on tips due to the short-term nature of the work they do, but as they are indeed paid to do this, it's up to you if you wish to add extra. Being a tourist who asks endless questions of these guides to learn extra about a place, I like to tip them for the additional time they take to answer my queries.

it's obviously changed a lot in 13 years, so when do you get the option to prepay? is it the same time as you get your optionals? I think on my last trip, we had actually done a couple prior to choosing and payment.. I can recall thinking that's incredibly risky for the tour guide...in those olden days we paid, i think, by travellers cheque....I'm assuming it can now be paid by either cash or c card, or a combination ...is that right?
also, now much did you guys budget per day for Europe over and above the optionals? I know the Swiss franc has gone nuts, so I'm hoping that I have enough francs for I think 2 days, if not, the card can have a work out.
thanks for all, your advice guys

I paid the prepaid gratuities with my final payment to my travel agent. Just check that your travel agent hasn't already included the prepaid option in the total cost of your tour, as that happened to some of the people on the tours I did. They didn't realise at the time of booking and paying.
For budgeting I'm quite hopeless at it and wouldn't know what to recommend, so much depends on what sort of a eater, drinker and shopper you are. I'm not a drinker or a fancy eater so I don't spend all that much there but I spend elsewhere, fortunately though there isn't much free time on tour to spend lots of money apart from the usual lunch, snacks and the occasional dinner

It's fairly easy to work out, Renmarkable. First, look at your tour and determine what included meals exist for the Swiss segment. Then decide what optional tours you're doing there and whether they include any lunches and dinners. Assuming all your breakfasts are included (as they are on tours), you'll then know how many lunches, dinners and drinks you have to buy. 

A very rough way of estimating the price of these is to assume that each meal is similar in cost to what you'd pay in A$, except it's in US$, pounds, euros, or in this case, Swiss francs. This means that if you're used to paying A$25 for a main course near home, it'll cost roughly 25 Swiss francs over there. Apply that concept to every non-included lunch and dinner. Then add snacks, drinks and anything else you suspect you might be spending (e.g. souvenirs). You might need more for taxis, buses, trains and entry fees, but only if you think you'll be using them in Switzerland (less likely if you're on a tour).

After doing all this, you might well discover that there's not a huge amount of Swiss currency needed. If so, take enough to cover what you think you'll definitely spend and if you run out, simply convert your euros to Swiss francs - this way you won't be leaving with francs you can't spend elsewhere.

Then turn your mind to the more important budget exercise: euros. You'll be spending these far more than you will francs, so prepare your euro cash budget the same way as I described the Swiss segment. It'll be a trickier exercise because there's more days involved and it's a little uncertain how much you'll be spending.

I prefer to lock in the exchange rate and therefore avoid any adverse surprises. To do this, I buy a debit card with other currencies on it. This way, I load it with euros before leaving home, and when I go to a Eurozone ATM, I withdraw from the euro balance. For padding, I add further funds in A$, this way accepting a FX conversion only if I need to dip into the extra funds. Upon returning home and cancelling the card, the withdrawal of Aussie dollars doesn't incur any FX fees.

we have basically budgeted 100 euros a day whilst on tour, so is the consensus that's heaps?

we will have the credit card for backup, but i have seen too many people getting stranded whilst relying in cards alone... that's just for daily spending money, optionals are already budgeted for.
i only carry accessibly the daily budget of cash, so it's not a safety issue.
that would include any dinners not included in the optionals

thanks guys! easy as!

wow!!! which date departure are you on? we are on the 5th? May departure.  we have a couple days in Dubai and then a week in London. with a few days afterwards in London. it's been almost 14 years since we were in London, and I can't wait.

Hi Renmarkable Well in that case we will see you on the coach as we are on the same tour !!
Can I guess from your user name you are from South Aus.? We are Queenslanders
 I'm sure there will be heaps of Aussies on tour as Trafalgar seems to be popular with us 
I was the only Australian on the Globus tour I did, probably as it was July the other passengers(all from US)  said that was their most popular holiday time 
And yes I agree it was a shame the Trafalgar forum went But I really enjoy this one 

It was indeed baffling. As a group, we provided a network of free marketing for Trafalgar. We spruiked the Trafalgar name, talked endlessly about their tours and helped prospective customers find the Trafalgar tour that best suited them. We asked for nothing in return, yet Trafalgar simply dumped us, with very little warning. Their CEO couldn't even follow through with prearranged phone calls, so something awfully wrong seems to have afflicted them from within.

It was an extraordinary act of corporate stupidity. I have since heard from travel industry insiders that Trafalgar became a bit of a laughing stock over this - apparently their forum drew more people into travel agents around the world than they realised. And a rival tour company couldn't believe their luck when Trafalgar "shot itself in the foot" - and they even wondered whether someone would get fired for such a monumental blunder.

Many people no longer feel any loyalty to Trafalgar and will consider other tour companies if they offer good deals. That's better than being dedicated to just one operator in the industry. For this reason, I like the idea of this forum being open to all sorts of travel ideas, without being aligned to any one company or style of holiday.