How do free walking tour guides make money?

At the conclusion of the tour, the guide invites their guests to pay what they feel the tour has been worth. The guide keeps 100% of that money, but gets paid no fee from the company to give the tour outside of the optional payment from their guests.



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Now, any guide who's worth their weight would be able to make roughly around $10 per person. So 300 people on a tour, you make $300, as the tour guide, you pay the company $120 out of that, and everybody's happy that's in a utopian landscape, that works great.

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Most entry-level tour guides only earn about $8-$15 per hour. But, there are experienced tour guides that earn upwards of $60,000 per year. These people often work for tour companies as managers. Since this is in the same service industry as restaurant workers, tipping is factored into wages.

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There are exceptions if your specific tour experience includes gratuities or you simply didn't have a good time, but in general, tipping your guide at the end of the tour is customary in the U.S. and Europe, though it's much more common in the States.

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In America, tipping is optional in name only. Legally it's voluntary but if you slink out of a restaurant without leaving a gratuity of between 20 and 25 per cent, you're likely to be chased by a waiter demanding to know why.

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At table-service restaurants, the tipping etiquette and procedure vary slightly from country to country. But in general, European servers are well paid, and tips are considered a small bonus — to reward great service or for simplicity in rounding the total bill to a convenient number.

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