The 5 W's Of Tipping On A Dive Charter 

Find out in advance what's expected. Reward a good experience appropriately. You won't go wrong. Some of my dive guides and instructors have become friends for life.

Thanks for the TIP

My first year diving my son and I went boat diving a couple of time on what the dive shop called drive and dive. They brought everything and picked us up from the shore. After the summer I learned about tipping and brought two thank-you cards one for the captain and one for the dive master making up for not tipping the previous times.

Love your videos! True for N. America like USA, Mexico, Caribbean. For the rest of the world like Europe and Asia, do what the locals do. In many countries the dive industry is like their restaurants, a % service charge is already included in the cost so the employees are paid a living wage with benefits like free healthcare. So either no tip needed or a smaller tip for excellent service.

I tipped the boat captain and the dive master on my last off shore dive. They were both excellent.

At one resort I went to in the Caribbean, the dive shop had little mailboxes for all the DMs and little envelopes for peoples tips so at the end of the week you could leave what you thought was appropriate and there was no awkwardness with when or how much each person was tipped. In general I'll tip based on how helpful the crew or DMs are. On one charter I lost a piece of equipment on the water entry, while it was not real expensive, and I didn't need it for the dive, I elected to enjoy my dive rather than do a search for it. The crewmate Did a Search to find and recovered it, needless to say he got a big tip since I didn't have to spend money to replace my equipment.

The general guide for me is about $10 per tank. About $40 per day for my wife and I on a standard 2 tank dive day. If I’m spending a week with the same crew it’s more likely to be a little higher towards the end of the trip. I also tend to go higher if there are fewer divers on the boat.

Just returned from Cozumel. Awesome drift diving. Was that the wreck CF53? Scuba Club Cozumel uses the tip envelopes that a previous commenter mentioned. My understanding is that this is also used as an evaluation tool by SCC. Guides and deck hands receiving higher average tips are “rewarded” by management, not sure how, but I think this is a good tool.

Nice. We tip the guys in Cozumel very well, half to the boat guys and half to the divemaster. My situation is unique because I am diving With Roberta's Scuba Shack on boats owned by other dive companies because I can't get on and off Roberta's fast boats.

Thank you for the interesting video about a lets say "touchy" subject. My understanding of tipping might be slightly different since I am from Europe where, in my experience, typically everybody that belongs to the crew actually has a working contract and is paid a salary. I therefore allways seem to have issues with the "american" (!?) way of people working for tips allone. I like to tip for one reason, and one reason only. Did the person do the job I pay for in a manner, that exeeded my expectation of said job. I go to a restaurant, I expect to get clean food provided to me and at least regular human decency in the service. Therefore if I get a clean plate with regular but unspectacular food and with a friendly hello and goodbye of the waiting staff, i would typically not tip. If however the food was great and/or the waiting staff was super helpfull and maybe brought some water for my dog on their own and went out of their way to provide me with a great experience, I would of course tip generously. The same applies to me for diving. If I pay for a dive charter (e.g. 2 Tank Guided Dive from boat with hotel pickup) and i get picked up on time, delivered to the boat safely everybody is "regular" friendly I do my dive with the guide and he shows me one or two critters on the dives and I get back home safely. That would be the service I payed for and I would not tip. If however they go above and beyond to make sure I enjoy myself thoroughly (wait until I get the perfect picture of the cute little seahorse, explain me some geography on the ride to the boat or fix my broken whatever). They will deserve a tip. For me tipping therefore is a "thank you" for a job done better than it would have needed to be. I liked the video of James from @Divers Ready on the subject as he seemed to be pretty much in line with my understanding. (video linked here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-MofB1teQO9M.html)

Thank youfor very useful points of tipping. For an european, like me tipping does not come so naturally.

BRO I DO CONCRETE (HEAVY CIVIL) SO WHEN PEOPLE START STOPING AND TIPPING ME FOR A SMOOTH RIDE TO WORK THAT DAY ILL START TO TIP THE REST OF THE WORLD

If there are people on the boat not getting paid what are they there for? It’s a choice. If I pay for the dive why would I pay for it twice in tips? If the dive is free I’ve no problem paying people through ‘tips’. If not then forget about it, it’s that simple. Whoever is taking the money is the person holding back their wages, not me for not tipping. Plenty of hard workers in other industries will never see a tip but probably earn less that some in the service industry getting tips.

In general I think tipping has gotten way out of hand , some people like my wife wants to tip 45/50 dollars. With a 100 dollar meal, Ah. Negative ghost rider , I tip 1 dollar per drink per person. , 3 for each meal That equates to @ 25 dollars. For the 3 of us . Seems plenty to me. And the waitress probably ends up making more than I do.

Not digging the new style, it reminds me of those terrible corporate videos from the early 2000s pretending to be impromptu by "doing tasks" before moving into the content of the video.

Lol youve been doing this for years and your channel is small...lol have you been tipped for this channel...

Tips are only "tax free" if the implied advice to not report taxable income is executed and tax fraud is committed. Perhaps avoid this implied advice.