Tips for free walking tours

[FloridaTourist]

I know in walking tours you are supposed to tip what you think it was worth but what's the general guide. If you like a tour and it is 3 hours would you go with $50pp or $20pp or am I not even close? We are doing several free walking tours in the Baltic in several countries. Never did free walking tours before but most all we looked at have great reviews.

 

 

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[LondonTowner]

If the guide is good, then an ample tip would be €10 pp. certainly no more.

[Bostonjetset]

We've never done a "free" walking tour but did do a wonderful tour in London a few years ago with London Walks. They tell you up front the cost is £10 pp which takes the guesswork out of it. You pay in cash to the guide and whilst there is no pressure to give an additional tip we did give her a couple quid each in addition. I think that for the "free" tours, they likely assume they will get about $10/£10/10€ pp [which is quite reasonable] and would not expect to get much more. If someone were interested in paying $50+ for a tour, they would not likely be looking for a "free" one in the first place and the guides surely know that.

[GradUT]

We did a couple of free walking tours on our Baltic cruise last year. A tip of $10 per person would be adequate. A tip of $20 per person would be extremely generous. A tip of $50 per person would be unheard of--but the guide might invite you home for dinner for that!

 

(And the tours were, in fact, very good--especially the one we did in Copenhagen with Magnus.)

[Kellie in Texas]

Get Rick Steves' book Northern European Cruise Ports. We used it last year on our Baltics cruise. He had do-it-yourself walking tours for every city, which was good for us because I'm a slow walker so we could go at our own pace.

[LondonTowner]

There are loads of free walking tours in almost every large European city. You have a guide who gives you information about the place. Obviously, some are better than others, so if they haven't been particularly informative, then you don't tip.

 

I've heard that the aforementioned London Walks are good, but personally don't need one of those.

[GradUT]

The walking tours included in Rick Steves' "Northern European Cruiseports" are very good. We used them in Copenhagen, Tallinn, Helsinki and Stockholm. But, because we were there overnight, we doubled up and also did free walking tours in Copenhagen and Stockholm. The sights covered by RS were not necessarily the ones covered on the walking tours, so we got little-to-no overlap.