The topic of tipping on Kilimanjaro is a little ambiguous, much like an elephant herd on an African plain. What is certain is that you will need to pay tips to your crew at the end of the trip in addition to the cost of booking your trek.
This is a contentious issue. Indeed, the subject of tipping on Kilimanjaro is, perhaps, the one subject that we get more emails and letters about than any other.
On Kilimanjaro, the tipping procedure is done in the American manner. That is to say, a tip is more of a required payment to supplement the low wages the porter and guides receive than a bonus to recognize particularly attentive service or honest labor.
Anyone born outside of the Americas may feel that the requirement to tip goes against the very nature of tipping. However, it is very difficult to object to the guides and porters receiving a fair wage for their labor. And withholding the much-needed gratuities from your entourage is not the appropriate way to express your opposition to this system.
There are no rules or formulas for how much of a tip to leave on Kilimanjaro. However, we do caution you to listen to your conscience as much as your wallet when making this decision.
One popular practice is for everyone to pay 10% of the total cost of their trek in tips. Therefore, you should pay US$200 for the tip kitty if you paid US$2000 for your trek. (It would be better to pay a little bit more than 10% if there are only one or two of you.)
The fact that those porters who work for high-end businesses receive more tips is my issue with this. But expensive businesses typically pay their employees well in any case. The majority of malpractice occurs in low-budget businesses, and the employees there are underpaid. However, as I said, that approach is still widely used and does have some advantages.
You can find some excellent tipping advice on the KPAP website, and I strongly advise you to heed it. They contend that $15 per day should be considered a fair wage for a porter. Both their pay and tips are included in this. To make it up to $15 per day in tips, all you have to do is find out how much your company pays a porter.
The only drawback to this strategy is that it is frequently challenging to learn your crew’s salaries. Also take note that some porters perform extra duties not performed by the others, meriting a higher tip. The camp staff, toilet porters, summit porters, and medical porters all deserve a little bit more than their coworkers, as KPAP points out. But let’s not complicate matters at this time.
Another strategy we’ve heard of involves giving a fixed sum to each member of the trekking staff. For instance, each porter might receive US$50, the assistant guides might receive US$100, and the guides might receive US$150–200. Alternately, you can choose a per diem amount such as US$7 per porter per day, US$14 for the assistant guide, and US$20 for the guide. (This is assuming a seven-day trek.) These are merely suggestions, so feel free to change them if you feel, for instance, that a particular porter deserves more than his usual share or if your trek was particularly challenging.
Choosing how much to give your crew is just one aspect of the issue. Additionally, you must determine how and when to deliver it.
The most common time to give out tips is during breakfast on the final morning. Because they originate from the nearby towns and cities, porters often part ways when they arrive at the exit gate. This means that your final camp on Kilimanjaro will be your last time spending time with your entire team.
Once all the money has been collected, the customary procedure is to distribute each porter’s and guide’s individual shares in turn. On how to distribute the advice in the most effective way, the KPAP website offers some great advice. But whatever you do, don’t give the guide all of your advice. If you do, the guide is likely to keep the majority of it for himself.
Of course, you could just avoid all the hassle and choose a respectable business that handles the difficult task of sorting out tips. Because a reputable business will give you both a distribution amount and distribution guidelines. To minimize any worry or concern, they will also have established a procedure to make everything as simple as possible for you.
At the risk of coming across as a salesperson, I genuinely believe that the Kilimanjaro Experts’ tipping system is unrivaled. It is transparent, equitable, and proving to be impenetrable. Additionally, in order to reduce the climbers’ stress, we tried to make it as simple as possible. Even before you begin your trek, we take your tip money from you. We do this to prevent you from hiking Kilimanjaro carrying hundreds of dollars.
