Best Of

Ok. Fifteen dollars per day for a 14 day trip is 15X14=$210 per person. We are not talking about thousands of dollars except perhaps for those who plan on doing back to back to back trips on a months long trip. I’m guessing that is a small number of people. If you are not comfortable carrying around two hundred and ten extra dollars, perhaps foreign travel is not the correct activity. I’m guessing that in this crowd many people have single pieces of clothing that cost more than $210.

Not to beat a dead horse but this thread began with a notification that Tauck had increased the “suggested” gratuity amounts. Once again, in their communication Tauck says the following: “Please note: Although gratuities represent the majority of your Tauck Director's compensation, ourpolicy prohibits Tauck Directors from directly soliciting gratuities.” So, these gratuities are not truly gratuities, these are the TD’s compensation for the most part. My take away is that Tauck is either not paying them or paying them so poorly that they are dependent on our gratuities. If you look up the definition of gratuity this ain’t it folks. Time for Tauck to pay the TD a decent wage, increase the price of the tours and eliminate this so called gratuity. Then, for those who wish to extend a gratuity in appreciation of service ( a true gratuity) so be it. This eliminates all the discussion about carrying cash, which currency, the freeloader issue, etc.

This is a really interesting discussion…. We don’t fill out the evaluation forms anymore. We bring them home and formulate a letter a week after when we have fully thought about everything and then mail it. Given the fact that we complained in a big way about a tour director in Ireland in 2012 and Mike H had the same guy and was also complaining about him at least 10 years later, it is pretty obvious that they read them, may or may not call and act concerned, and then don’t do much. They may change hotels or itineraries ( eg Scandinavia), but about certain things, complaints fall on deaf ears. As for tips- we write checks for american dollars. We don’t care if we are luddites. It is the most convenient way to tip in American dollars and we don’t want to carry a lot of cash🤷🏻‍♀️. I was recently called by customer service about an unrelated issue , and expressed dissatisfaction about the tipping mechanism in place. My suggestions were either include it in the price ( like the cruises) or let us do it through the Tauck website. I assume they don’t want to deal with tips because then the income will have to be “ claimed” and taxed. Personally, I think the tip should be included in the price. I also think tours should be advertised by number of full days…. A welcome dinner and a breakfast on the way to the airport are not 2 tour days. Just a pet peeve….

My point is that there are many different tax situations or even cash flow situations. On one of our trips to Africa there were other guests who found a need for cash and thought they were going to find ATM machines or be able to cash checks at the hotels. Neither was the case. I ended up ‘cashing’ a few checks for people who needed cash. I have had credit cards go ‘inert’ on trips several times, so I am not comfortable if I don’t have a reasonable amount of cash with me. I once got caught in a restaurant with ‘dead’ credit cards, and no cash. I will not repeat that mistake. I made more than a couple phone calls getting one of the credit cards reactivated … which they said they could not do …. but they did when I told them we were getting ready to wash dishes. (;-). Those who think they can visit remote places with nothing but credit/ATM cards will eventually be proven wrong.

I don't know about people from other countries but in the US yes cash only will often get you a discount because the person is likely not intending to pay tax on the amount. We've definitely had workmen giving us a discount if we pay in cash.

I’ve seen businesses give a cash discount vs credit cards, because they are passing on some of the savings, of not having to pay the credit card fees when a customer pays in cash, to the customer.