Private tour etiquette

[hazelglaze]

For those of you who have booked a private tour with Bodden or another company, did you pay for your tour guide's lunch if you had them take you somewhere to eat? Did you feel obligated to do so?

[Bookmarker]

For those of you who have booked a private tour with Bodden or another company, did you pay for your tour guide's lunch if you had them take you somewhere to eat? Did you feel obligated to do so?

 

We invited our Bodden guide to eat with us and I happily paid for his lunch as we had a wonderful conversation over lunch about Roatan and about the different foods served as well as talking about other restaurants on the island. We also talked about his family and what types of meals his wife fixes and serves at home. Basically we were discussing regional food while we were eating. I did not feel obligated to pay for his lunch nor did I feel obligated to invite him to eat with us. I tipped the full 20% at the end of the tour and did not deduct the lunch money from their tip.

 

We have done other tours where we did not invite the guide to dine with us. So this invitation to dine with us is usually dependent upon how much we are enjoying our time with our guide and how interesting/entertaining they are during our tour.

[hazelglaze]

Thanks for the advice Bookmarker. I don't want to be cheap or stingy but the $80 for the tour itself is eating a lot of our budget for the island and I am not sure how much more we can spare if we also want to leave a decent tip. I didn't want to be "that" couple if it is standard practice to feed the tour guide but if they care more about the tip than the food then I'll shift the money there....just can't do both.

 

I welcome anyone else's thoughts.

[m steve]

many times they say they have their lunch with them or just want to spend it talking to other guides and friends. We also tip at the end.

[lovevacadays]

We toured with Tex from VB's and had a fabulous time with him. However, when he took us to the Half Moon Bay for lunch we didn't invite him to lunch with us and really didn't feel obligated to do so. We had him all day to chat with in his van as he took us around the island. He was fabulous but we wanted to enjoy our lunch experience alone. He didn't even indicate he expected to have lunch with us. It really wasn't about money for us as we gave him a $40 tip because we enjoyed him so very much and had one of the best tours ever. We just didn't feel the need to have lunch with him.

 

Please don't feel obligated to buy your tour guide lunch if you choose not to. The wonderful thing about VB's tours is that they really are about providing you with the most individual tour experience you can have. It really is up to you to decide how your day will go.

 

I wish you as wonderful a day in Roatan as we had:):):)

[snow bunny]

When we were in Roatan last December I requested that both our driver and guide (we were a group of 14 between four families) have a lunch on my tab at Bananarama. I felt that they were more than deserving of the lunch as they were spending their time waiting on us at the beach and the least I could do was purchase something for them to eat. I didn't feel that they expected it as they were both very appreciative of the offer.

 

Snow bunny

[jdcml]

We just got back from a private tour of Roatan this week. I had this same question and had decided that it would be worthwhile to eat lunch with him because he was a great guide. He had a soda with us and then said he'd be back in a bit. I asked him later and he said that the restaurant (which we had requested, not his suggestion) provided lunch for the guides. I think that might be fairly common when they bring groups in...

[hazelglaze]

Thanks for the info! It's good to know that you don't feel obligated to buy lunch but that some restaurants have a mechanism in place to feed the guides. I'm really looking forward to this trip!