Travel Tip 78
Should you tip in a foreign currency?
I tipped my guide Sonia in Argentina with pesos, but she probably would have accepted dollars.
Exchanging currency can be a pain, especially towards the end of a trip when you’re trying to calculate just how much you need for the last few days.
Do you take a bit more out of an ATM? Do you exchange a more of you cash? Can you just use your credit card for everything? While you might think that the answer to the last question would be yes, it doesn’t always work out that way. Especially if you have activities and tours booked up to the last day of your trip, you may want to tip your guide, and that should always be cash.
Can you tip in your currency? This depends on three things.
The more remote your guide is, the less likely they are to be able to use foreign currency, especially in the Amazon rainforest.
First, can people use that currency where they live?
Some countries have a parallel economy that makes foreign currency useful, like US dollars, British pounds or euros. The last time I was in Argentina, inflation was so bad that people preferred to accept my USD, knowing that any pesos I gave them would be worth less the next week, or sometimes the next day. I could use dollars to pay for lodging and Argentines used dollars for big purchases. In this case, yes tipping in any currency that can be used in that country is probably fine, but check with your guide first.
If your guide is based in a big city, they’re more likely to be able to exchange foreign cash.
Second, is it easy to exchange that currency?
If you know it’s easy to exchange your dollars or euros for the local currency, then it might not be a big burden on the person you’re tipping to exchange the money themselves. If you simply ran out of time on the last day or so of your trip and couldn’t get local currency, but you know it’s easy to exchange, then you’re not making the other person’s life difficult by tipping in a foreign currency. However, if it’s difficult to exchange money, then don’t leave the person you’re tipping with that extra headache.
Claudia is a biologist and guide who frequently travels internationally, so she can probably use US dollars or euros.
Third, is the person going somewhere that they can use a foreign currency?
This is the least likely scenario, but it’s still possible. The second time I traveled with a group of high school students from the US to Peru, our guide said that he was leaving Peru right after our trip to go to Argentina to run a marathon. I knew that it’s easier to exchange dollars for pesos than Peruvian soles for pesos, so we tipped him in dollars. Lots of tour guides love to travel, so take the time to get to know your guide and you’ll know if they have any international trips coming up. That same guide often works in Ecuador, which actually uses the US dollar as their currency, so even without a marathon in Argentina, tipping him with dollars wouldn’t have been inconvenient for him.
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