Tipping in Hurghada: Complete Baksheesh Etiquette Guide

Baksheesh represents a traditional social mechanism for expressing gratitude and redistributing hospitality earnings across service teams. In Egyptian service culture, base wages for hospitality workers assume that attentive, courteous service will be rewarded with modest direct gratuities.

Tipping should always reflect your genuine satisfaction with the service delivered. You should never feel pressured or intimidated into tipping if service was unsatisfactory or impolite. A warm smile, polite gratitude, and a modest tip in Egyptian Pounds create positive relationships with local workers who work diligently behind the scenes to maintain boats, drive coaches and prepare meals.

Tipping the boat crew is entirely optional on our trips, and nobody will ask you for it. On full-day boat trips to Orange Bay or Dolphin House, the crew includes deckhands, engineers, cooks and certified in-water snorkel guides.

If you want to thank the crew at the end of the day, hand a tip to the captain or guide. A customary gratuity ranges from 100 to 200 Egyptian Pounds per guest for a full day of attentive hospitality, snorkeling supervision and freshly prepared buffet cooking. Contributing to the shared box ensures that galley cooks and engine mechanics below deck receive an equal share alongside visible guides.

Desert safari instructors, Bedouin hosts and licensed Egyptologist guides receive individual appreciation based on guidance and safety attentiveness. Because safari teams and cultural guides work closely with travellers throughout the day, tips are usually handed directly to individuals.

On a desert quad biking or super safari tour, tipping your lead guide 50 to 100 Egyptian Pounds acknowledges their care in checking equipment, leading trails and assisting with safety gear. On a full-day Luxor day trip, an Egyptologist guide who shares deep historical knowledge for twelve hours is customarily tipped 150 to 250 Egyptian Pounds per guest, while the long-distance coach driver is tipped around 50 to 100 Egyptian Pounds.

Hotel housekeeping, luggage porters, restaurant waiters and taxi drivers appreciate modest, direct cash gratuities in Egyptian Pounds. While many hotel restaurant bills add a service charge, this charge generally goes to hotel management rather than floor servers.

Customary hotel tipping standards include:

• Luggage porters: 20 to 50 Egyptian Pounds for carrying bags to your room upon arrival.
• Housekeeping staff: 30 to 50 Egyptian Pounds left on the bed pillow every couple of days.
• Restaurant servers: rounding up the bill by 5 to 10 percent in cash for good table service.
• Street taxi drivers: rounding up the agreed fare to the nearest 10 or 20 Egyptian Pounds.

Tipping in local Egyptian Pounds is strongly preferred because local bank branches cannot exchange small foreign coins. While European holidaymakers often arrive with euro or pound sterling coins, Egyptian banks and currency exchanges accept only paper banknotes.

When travellers tip Egyptian workers with 1-euro or 2-euro coins, the recipients cannot deposit or exchange them without finding European tourists willing to swap coins for paper notes. To avoid placing this burden on local staff, withdraw Egyptian Pounds from airport or hotel ATMs and keep a supply of small 20, 50 and 100 Egyptian Pound banknotes in your wallet for daily tips.

The table below provides a clear, practical reference guide for customary gratuity amounts across popular holiday services in Hurghada.