TIPPING SYSTEM

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17409, 6 November 1930, Page 6

TIPPING SYSTEM

CONTINENTAL NUISANCE RESENTFUL FOREIGNERS The practice of tipping, Which has roused the strong resentment of many travellers from New Zealand, is not decreasing on the Continent, where head porters may pay as much as £6OO a year for the privilege of attending to travellers in hotels. Foreigners who cannot speak the language of the country in which they may travel affiwconsidered fair game for heavy impcSn y tions, against which they cannot find intelligible language in which to clothe their wrath. These are the views of Mr. R. Clarke, the newly-appointed manager of Messrs. Thomas Coo* and Soil’s Christchurch tourist office. Air. Clarke has had many years of experience with that firm with world-wide Interests, and has many stories to tell of tourists’ impressions of other countries. Mr. Clarke stated that in most Continental hotels the tips, averaging about 15 per cent, of the total bill, .were added to the tourist’s bill. In spite of this some of the servants still looked for stray tips. A waiter in Europe was paid only a small wage, and looked to the tourists to augment it. On some of the large Atlantic liners stewards might pay as much as £IOOO annually for their job, and a porter might offer to pay £SOO a year for a head position ,in a Continental hotel.

“There is no way of preventing tipping,” declared Air. Clarke. “If there is a general movement among tourists to refuse, someone will break the arrangement. I have seen the English wife of an Egyptian pasha throwing handfuls of gold to Alaori children in New Zealand. Women like that would not refrain from tipping, which is a means of showing off. One woman who travelled first-class to England boasted that tipping had cost her only Is fid. “Frenchmen in France are not called upon to tip, but Englishmen are, and heavily, too, when they cannot speak French volubly enough to satisfy the intentionally-dull proprietor that there is an over-charge. I have heard of a case where a woman always stayed at » different hotel from her husband, in order to escape the rumpus which he created when presented with the bill by the proprietor. In cases where tips are allowed for on travel tours the servants will in some cases plead that they have received very little, and then smile when the tourist has departed.”—Dominion correspondent.