Tipping Guidelines for Safaris
Here are our tipping guidelines for the Safari guide.
- Private safari tour: USD 20-35 per day (from everyone in the vehicle combined)
- Group safari tour(in Tanzania): USD 10 per day per client.
You can tip the amount in USD or in local currency (Kenyan Shillings in Kenya or Tanzanian shillings in Tanzania0 and as with all tours in East Africa, tipping happens only on the last day, after your tour has concluded and when you are about to say goodbye to your guide.
You can also consider paying tip to the staff At accommodations but we usually don't share a suggested amount for this. Clients put their tip at a common tip box at reception.
FAQs on Tipping
1. Why should I tip?
At Monkey Adventures, our crew are paid above the minimum wages. However, to sustain a fair quality of life, safari staff need your generosity to keep on delivering outstanding service. The tipping system in the East African service industry follows the American-style. In essence, a tip is not merely a reward for exceptionally attentive service or hard work, but rather a highly anticipated payment intended to bridge the gap between the modest wages received by crew vs ever increasing cost of living in cities and towns of East Africa.
2. Why don't you pay higher salaries to your staff and do away with tipping?
While this is possible, it will increase your tour price quite a bit.
One of the important reasons why tour operators don't increase crew members' salaries and do away with the tipping custom is that the crew are strongly in favour of the tipping. This is because the tipping system allows them to earn a liveable wage while staying below the tax threshold.
To give you an idea, if you pay $100 as a tip to your guide after safari, he gets entire $100 for himself. If you wish for this amount to be included as part of salary, we might have to charge you well over $150 as various deductions and costs apply between what you pay to tour operator and what tour operator can pay as salary to the staff (VAT, PAYE or withholding tax, WCCF, banking charges, accounting charges etc).
Given how price competitive the market is, it is not within our capacity to go against the tipping customs that are followed by 99.9% of operators and increase our prices to account for tipping and associated taxes and costs and still attract business.
Plus, tipping acts as a strong motivating factor for guides to deliver their best performance on each tour. Fixed salary is not as motivating as a rewards based one.
3. Can I prepay the tips?
Unfortunately this is not possible at the moment. Even if it were possible, please note over 30% of what you pay will be deducted from what guides receive because of various taxes and costs associated, if the tour operators are involved in the process. So we prefer not to get involved in the tipping process.
4. When should I pay the tip?
At the end of your tour with the guide, which is usually the last day of your safari.