My husband and I were visiting Maui and decided to take one of the major morning van tours to Hana. We paid I think around $75 each for the tour. Shortly after everyone was picked up for the trip the driver passed around a book and asked us to sign it and include our home addresses as he liked to know where everyone was from. Then he called everyone by first names and attempted to make a lot of jokes. Soon after our departure he proceeded to tell us that tour
drivers were providing a service just like hotel and restaurant employees and deserved to be tipped generously like them. He then told us the minimum amount we should tip him was $25 each. He emphasized that most of us were couples but that both of us should tip him at least $25 (Minimum total of $50) and that he would greatly appreciate a larger tip. He informed us that near the end of the trip he would pass out envelopes for the tip money. (His remarks really upset us and at one of the stops my husband and I discussed our dislike for being pressured and
told what to tip and decided that his attitude was not deserving of a tip)!! Throughout the trip he continued to talk about the high cost of living in Hawaii and that tour bus drivers could only survive from the tips they made. He passed out the envelopes and instructed us to write our
names on them and again instructed us as to the minimum tip he should receive. At the end of the trip he dropped each passenger at their hotel and stood at the bottom of the van steps to collect the envelopes. When he dropped us off, we did not give him an envelope!
(My husband and I have traveled extensively and taken many local day tours and are very
familiar with being told that tips are appreciated and/or seeing a sign in the bus or van to this effect but never have we been told a minimum amount to tip!! My husband and I always tip and before any trip we get several hundred dollars worth of ten, five and one dollar bills just for tips when we don’t use our credit cards.)
After we were dropped off at our hotel, we were freshening up to go out to dinner when the telephone rang in our room. I answered it and it was the van driver wanting to know why we did not tip him! He was outraged and yelling we owed him a tip and that if we could afford to stay in an expensive hotel then we had money to tip him. My husband was in the shower and was not aware of the phone call. I was dumb founded and scared as I wandered if he was at our hotel. I
hung up on him and informed my husband what had happened...we were both in shock. Then
we realized that we had to give our room number to the hotel concierge when we made our reservation for the trip and that he (the van driver) had this information. I wanted to call the hotel staff (it was too late to call the tour company) and inform them what had happened but my husband insisted we go to dinner and since we were leaving the next day that everything would
be ok. ( I stayed awake that night expecting the driver to come pounding on our door). After we got home, I wanted to write a letter to the tour company about this behavior but remembered the tour driver had our home address and decided it was best to just try and forget this terrible experience. I am happy to say that nothing like this has ever happened again and I do not give our room number when making reservations and definitely not my home address!