Tipping Guidelines for Mt. Kilimanjaro Trek

Tipping is normal and expected at Kilimanjaro. This might come as a surprise to many, especially if coming from countries and cultures where tipping is not as prevalent or present at all. The amount of tip is also larger than others treks you might have been on perviously. This is because unlike most other treks around the world, trekking on Kilimanjaro requires a big crew. A group of 6 trekkers will have 23 members in the support staff, consisting of senior guide, assistant guides, cooks and porters.

Why is tipping not included in the price?

Tipping is a very cultural thing on Kilimanjaro. The tradition of tipping has evolved over the last two decades to it's current state. As a company, we don't get invovled in the tipping process. We can only give you our guidelines on what the crew is expecting. Tips are given directly by you to the crew.

There is a strong reason we can't include tips in the price itself. If we include the tips in the price, we will be accused of overcharging the clients for tips and underpaying the tips to the crew. Transperency is lost. We will be accused of charging USD 500 in tips from you, and only paying the crew USD 100.

The second reason is that tips vary depending on group size. We don't know ahead of time what the final group size is going to be.

Our tipping guidelines

Although larger tips are always appreciated by our staff, they will be extremely grateful if you follow the guidelines for tipping given below. These amounts given below are for the whole group. For e.g, the whole group tips USD 15 to the cook per day. So these costs will be divided amongst the whole group.

• Senior guide : $20 – 25 per day from the whole group
• Assistant guide : $15 – 20 per day from the whole group
• Cook : $12 – 15 per day from the whole group
• Waiter : $10 – 12 per day from the whole group
• Porter : $8 – 10 per day from the whole group
• Summit porter : $12 – 15 per day from the whole group
• Toilet crew : $10 – 12 per day from the whole group

Crew for various group sizes

To calculate tips, it's important to understand how large your support team is going to be. Below we have listed the crew size from Group of 1 to 10.

• Group of 1 - 1 Senior Guide, 1 Cook, 3 or 4 Porters
• Group of 2 - 1 Senior Guide, 1 Assistant Guide, 1 Cook, 6 Porters
• Group of 3 - 1 Senior Guide, 1 Assistant Guide, 1 Cook, 9 Porters
• Group of 4 - 1 Senior Guide, 1 Assistant Guide, 1 Cook and 12 Porters
• Group of 5 - 1 Senior Guide, 2 Assistant Guides, 1 Cook and 15 Porters
• Group of 6 - 1 Senior Guide, 2 Assistant Guides, 2 Cooks and 18 Porters
• Group of 7 - 1 Senior Guide, 2 Assistant Guides, 2 Cooks and 21 Porters
• Group of 8 - 1 Senior Guide, 3 Assistant Guides, 2 Cooks and 24 Porters
• Group of 9 - 1 Senior Guide, 3 Assistant Guides, 2 Cooks and 27 Porters
• Group of 10 - 1 Senior Guide, 3 Assistant Guides, 2 Cooks and 30 Porters

How to give tips to the crew?

The best way would be to collect the tips from the whole group, and then divide it amongst the whole crew. Tips can be placed in individual envelopes and the climbers can hand them directly to each crew member. You can also prepare two envelopes. One for the guide, assistant guides and cooks. You can hand this envelope to the lead guide. The other envelope is for the porters. You can hand this over to the porters representative.

Expected tip amounts per client for some common routes and group sizes.

To help you calculate, here are the tip amounts broken down for each crew member