What comes first – the desire for a good tip, or the desire to provide great service? In countries in which tipping is not standard practice, does the provision of service suffer? Tipping is interesting because it differs from most other economic exchanges. In most cases, the prices of goods and services are set by the seller and consumers must pay that price in order to receive the good or service. Given that desires often outweigh personal income, consumers seek to pay the lowest price possible for their purchases. Tipping is an exception to these general rules because tips represent consumer determined prices for services and voluntary payments that increase the costs of services already received (Lynn, Zinkhan & Harris, 1993). These unusual characteristics raise questions about why consumers leave tips and what factors influence their tipping behaviour.
Who Tips and Why?
Below are statistics, according to TripAdvisor on how often travellers from each country surveyed always tip while on vacation:
- Germans – 69%
- Americans – 57%
- Russians – 53%
- Brazilians – 40%
- French – 39%
- Brits – 39%
- Spanish – 36%
- Italians – 23%
When adding to this the travellers who sometimes tip on vacation, the percentage of Americans who answered affirmatively increased to a startling 99 percent, TripAdvisor said. And 21 percent reported feeling guilty if they don't tip. TripAdvisor attributes Americans' strong showing in the survey to the fact that tipping is a cultural norm in the States and U.S. travellers have a tendency to take their customs on the road whether they are on American soil or travelling abroad. This means service workers around the world benefit from the U.S. system of asking diners to subsidise the wages of waitstaff, whose employers can currently pay them as little as $2.13 an hour before tips.
Does tipping drive customer service? Can better service be related to the level of tipping or is it unrelated?
In general, tipping is an effective way to motivate restaurant staff to provide better service. According to Prof. Zachary Brewster, an active researcher in this area, only few waiters never give preferential service to guests who tip well. Most waiters occasionally give poor service when they expect a bad tip. However, this happens less often than giving excellent service because of the prospect of receiving a great tip (Brewster, 2013). There is, however, a nuance to be made. Staff that is more sensitive to tipping differences across demographics also seem to be more sensitive to providing better service if there is a prospect of receiving a good tip. The reversal, however, does not hold. Being more predisposed to demographic differences does not imply that waitstaff discriminately provide poor service if an inadequate tip is expected.
While tipping motives staff, better service is not directly related to the level of tipping. In other words, a higher tip is not necessarily received because better service is provided. Guests do not solely attribute service quality to the professionalism and efforts of the waiter, but also to other factors such as food quality and reputation of the establishment. This does not imply, however, that helpfulness, friendliness and politeness of waitstaff are unimportant in giving a tip. When asked what encourages travellers to leave a tip at a hotel or restaurant while on vacation, TripAdvisor cited the following factors as the primary reasons to compensate staff:
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| Source: Tripadvisor | |
According to Prof. Michael Lynn, a world-renowned expert in this area, there are also various other motives as to why guests voluntarily give a tip including rewarding staff, impressing others, exerting control over service quality, or simply out of habit, social obligation, or generosity.
What motivates staff in a non tipping country?
There has been much research interest on what motivates staff to perform their best. In most cases, research points to the effects of intrinsic motivators rather than extrinsic motivators (such as cash) as long as an acceptable basic wage is provided.
What motivates your staff to give great service? Is it the prospect of receiving a good tip or do you have other motivators in place? Recognition from above, for example, is in many countries a very powerful motivator. One visitor to China, a country in which tipping by the way is illegal, commented:
“In China, you have hardly any chance to tip with money. What I do if I get a good service in a restaurant or bar: I ask the waiter/waitress to get the manager/supervisor. They are usually scared to death because they think I will complain. When the manager is there I tell him/her that I was very satisfied with the service of the staff. This is worth way more for this person than money. In hotels I leave a note for the management that staff xy has gone the extra mile for me.”
What training can be provided to staff in relation to tipping?
Guests are all entitled to the same hospitality experience. Restaurant owners and managers should, therefore, train staff to understand and respect differences in tipping behaviour. If for some reason this is not feasible, voluntary tipping can be replaced by an automatic service charge, although one should not forget to employ other instruments to motivate staff to provide excellent personal service.
When training waitstaff, it should be explained that most guests tip for intrinsic reasons. Also, it should be understood that tipping rules vary by country, by region, and even by occasion. For example, no real tipping culture exists in Belgium, Estonia or South Korea. Tipping is not even allowed in China, although this does not mean that a tip will not be given out of sight or via a compulsory service fee. If guests dislike tipping – or are not used to this, but do so say because of social pressure – they may give a smaller tip than other guests who may like tipping for intrinsic reasons. A bad tip is thus not necessarily a personal vendetta or tit-for-tat strategy, neither an act of miserliness. A fair tip is relative, personal and by nature differs in level across nationalities, demographics and per occasion. This should be the first and foremost goal of the staff training. It should focus on mitigating sensitivities towards relative differences with the aim to achieve homogenous service quality across all guests. Creating together a tipping policy based on shared norms and values, and making this publicly visible in the restaurant can help to enhance staff behaviour and attitude.
Finally, some rather remarkable advice is given to us by French researchers Céline Jacob, Nicolas Guéguen and Gaëlle Boulbry. They state that pro-social songs result in a significant increase in tipping behavior. Nicolas Guéguen and Céline Jacob even find that waitresses wearing red lipstick can expect greater tips from male guests. So, put on your lipstick, turn the music up and pray for guests from the U.S.!
Recommended reading
For a good source on tipping, see Michael Lynn’s site http://tippingresearch.com/index.html
Brewster, Z.W. (2013). The effects of restaurant servers’ perceptions of customers’ tipping behaviors on service discrimination. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 32 ( March), 228-236. To download, click here.
Lynn, M., Zinkhan, G.M., & Harris, J. (1993). Consumer Tipping: A Cross-Country Study. Journal of Consumer Research, 20(3), 478-485. To download, click here.
TripAdvisor (2013, May 29). TripAdvisor Survey Reveals Americans Are Among World's Top Tippers [news]. Retrieved from http://www.tripadvisor.com/PressCenter-i6030-c1-Press_Releases.html
About Anne Edwards
Anne Edwards combines her love of language, travel, and different cultures as Editor in Chief of ehotelier.staging.wpengine.com. Prior to this position, Anne lectured in Cross Cultural Studies at the Blue Mountains International Hotel Management School in Australia and currently consults to the Australian Federal Government on subjects such as Leadership and Building Productive Partnerships. Anne has travelled and worked internationally for twelve years, holding various positions in the field of education, most notably as linguistic advisor to the Crown Princess of Thailand for two years where she sampled some of the best hotels in the world. Her love for travel spans the freedom of wandering on a shoe-string budget to the finest standards of service in world-class properties. As Editor in Chief of one of the largest hotel news sites in the world, Anne has a birds-eye view of what is happening in the industry internationally.
Jean-Pierre van der Rest
An economist and marketer, Jean-Pierre van der Rest is a full Professor of Strategic Pricing and Revenue Management at Hotelschool The Hague. He holds a concurrent position as Director for the Research Centre, and previously held a faculty appointment at Leiden University. He received a PhD in Business from Oxford Brookes University (UK), a MA in Managerial Economics from the University of Durham (UK), and a BBA in Hotel Administration from the Maastricht Hotel Management School (NL). His research covers price, competition, and consumer choice. He addresses questions such as: At what price should a hotel room be offered? How should a hotel respond to a competitive price drop? What is the influence of hotel ratings on booking behaviour? Dr. Van der Rest serves on 7 international editorial boards, and his work is published in leading scholarly books and international journals in hospitality and tourism. Recipient of research grants and awards, he has taught in Bachelor, Master, MBA, and Executive Education programmes.
