Originally Posted by yosithezet
Doggone if I didn't think tonight on the way to the hotel about this very topic. It is late and I need to sleep. I have not been tipping in the past with no negative effects. I have started to tip here and there but there are far too many people that I could potentially so I'm a bit perplexed.
1) Guy that tries to grab your bag and take it to the car at the airport.
2) Airport pickup/dropoff driver
3) Bellhops taking/placing your bag from/into car
4) Bellhop bringing/takig bag to/from the room
5) Room service delivery person
6) Local run car driver
7) Hotel restaurant/bar waiters
8) Waiters outside hotels
So do y'all tip all of them while in India? How much do you tip them each?
Here's how I do it generally:
With regards to Person:
1 above. Only gets tipped if I ask for the help and he's not pushy. (For those that try to milk me, I have a bunch of old Turkish lira that look good -- a million old Turkish Lira, you know, a big amount
-- which I give them. They can't even get it converted into two INR.
) Never more than 40-50 rupees.
2 above. Never more than 50 rupees.
3 and 4 above. Never more than 50 rupees and only to the person who did the last or biggest delivery step.
5 above. 50 rupees regardless of bill
6 above. 70-100 rupee tip per day for local run driver if he negotiates down things on my behalf but never more than 300-500 rupees per month in total.
7 above. Never more than 100 rupees regardless of tab.
8 above. Restaurant waiters never more than 10% with a cap of 150-200 rupees.
Not tipping has not yielded me any trouble either. There have been some trips where I have not even tipped more than 200 rupees in total on the entire trip and my service the follow-up time was not impacted negatively as far as I could tell.