Option to TIP hosts!

[Ali122]

Don't you think there should be an option on Airbnb to tip your host?  They've recently added it to Uber.  If the host (not naming names) goes above and beyond to prepare and make sure their guest has a seamless time, perhaps the appreciative guest would like to thank them with an unexpected tip!  $5, $10, $20, $50, $100 options would be appropriate, there are all types of travelers  

[Willow3]

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!! 

Dont get me wrong - I'm stoked when a guest tips me, but tipping is out of control in our culture. And generally, owners of businesses don't get tipped - seeing as we get to set our income levels. I really don't want to see Airbnb to contribute to the eternal outstretched hand. 

[Terry286]

Hi Willow - I am staying in a rental condo.  The owner employs a concierge and he will help with transfers and excrurion and dinning reservations.  Should they be tipped?

Thanks for the imput.

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

I agree with @Willow3 that tipping a host is too much. IMO, the moment hosts start to accept (expect) tips, we are no longer the home owners hosting guests  - we become housekeeping + concierge service providers.

As a host, if a guest wants to show appreciation, a thank you card or a bottle of wine or a box of chocolates would be more than enough for me!

[Melodie-And-John0]

@Jessica-and-Henry0 , I'm with you on that, as owner, its not really proper to expect a tip, we own the business, we are not entitled to that.  As @Robin4 also pointed out, outstretched hands expecting more gets really old, not the way to greet guests or bid farewell .    Welcome to the United States of Entitlement, if its free, its for me.....   Thats getting old!   Stay well, JR

[Marzena4]

@Ali122 @Willow3 @Jessica-and-Henry0 I will be happy enough with fair reviews. Some guests are not even capable of that...

[Paul154]

Yes. I would love an online option to tip,  just like UBER.

It would be culturally sensitive to the American culture.

Americans tip. And Americans like convenience. Instead of stars, it would be great if guests were presented a tip option and a shorter review process.

An interesting note. I always tip on UBER. It's so easy.

Every other week, UBER offers me 40%-50% off for a week.

I'd like to things their generosity is because I tip and they like me as a customer.

[Lisa723]

I think it would pressure guests to pay more than the agreed rate and tee them off. My guests are always free to leave a cash tip for my cleaners if they choose, but I would not want them to think I was soliciting extra payment for myself.

[Gordon0]

Americans tip 'just because', not because they've had a great level of service. Please, no. 

[Sarah977]

@Gordon0  Americans tip and tend to tip well because the minimum wage in the US is absurdly low. A restaurant server may only have a salary of $3-$4 /hour- the employer expects them to make the bulk of their $ in tips. 

This, of course, is the fault of the greedy employers. 

But it's too bad that the majority of Americans don't really bother to research the tipping customs in other countries when they visit. Or even if they know that a tip isn't customary, it makes them feel good about themselves to give a tip, even if it screws up the local economy (if service people start to expect it), they don't care.

[Amy38]

Tips? Yes please!..............just let me find my old g-string!

[Robin4]

I am with @Willow3 on this one. Personally I would hate to see this catch on.

I can't understand why Americans cannot just price a service as to what it costs instead having 'a couple of nibbles at the yeast bun'........this two tiered payment system doesn't help anyone. In fact what it does do is breed a culture of 'bottom dwellers'....people who expect something for nothing. In America people are paid to turn up for work, elsewhere in the world they are paid to actually work. Americans consider it a 'rite' to charge for work they didn't do and service they didn't provide!!

Boarding a ship in NY a couple of years ago this random guy instructed me to put my suitcases on the pavement! He picked them up and threw them in the general direction of a supplied passenger luggage trolley. One of my cases didn't make it onto the trolley I had to retrieve it and put it on the trolley myself while this guy just stood there with his hand out and said....."Well, we don't do this for nothin"!!

A circuit of NY on one of the 'hop/hop off' buses requires you to purchase a ticket for what is one of the more expensive hop on/hop off service experiences in the world, and each time you get off the bus at any of it's 40 odd stops you are expected to stuff the tip bag at the entry door with yet more notes. In the course of 2 days we paid for the total cost of that experience three times over. What should have cost us $120 ended up costing us almost $300! In my city, a hop on/hop off circle route of the city is free, it's provided by the goverment!

At Niagara Falls we paid for a serviced falls view room..........or did we!

Palm greasing has got the point where a stranger is frightened to even ask for a simply direction without that hand appearing!

God forbid this obligatory tipping culture should ever come here to this country. Here, an article costs what it costs, and the tip is for that service that did go above and beyond what was required.....a little thank you reward for a job well done.....not an automatic rite for simply being a human being!!!

@Willow3,s got my vote on this one! 

@Ali122, one would think you are already being paid to provide that, 'above and beyond seamless time', isn't that enough?

Cheers......Rob

[Sarah977]

@Ali122  No. Totally no. If a guest wishes to leave a host a tip, whether it's in the form of cash, a bottle of wine, a box of chocolates, taking you out for dinner,  they'll do that. There's zero need for it to be an option on the platform and would seriously offend most guests.

[Paul154]

I have never been offended by UBER's or LYFT's tipping page. 

The tip options are reasonable 5%, 10%, 15%

There is no push or need to tip. no extra page. It's voluntary.

Tipping is always voluntary. 

[Kris2933]

People in this replies thread are cheap as hell, wow.

Sometimes I WANT to tip.  I want the option to tip and having that in the AirBnB app would make that more convenient.  I don't always have cash on me and I don't always have the extra time (when staying at an AirBnB last-minute due to work) to go to a bank and take cash out.  The owner may also not be around to receive said tip and if I'm rooming in a home with multiple guests, I don't wanna leave an envelope with cash out.

Tipping culture isn't only American.  Canadians and other countriea have this as well.  I worked as a bartender and a server and I was a dang good one.  If people didn't tip me, then I made less than minimum wage.  I tip my food servers (even at the smoothie shop--they do a hell of a lot more than I did popping caps off of beer bottles or pouring out pints), I tip my barber, I tip cabbies and Uber drivers, I tip my massage therapist, I tip plenty of folks where it feels appropriate to do so, but no one is OBLIGATED to tip.

Some AirBnB listings are exceedingly cheap even while being nice places to stay -- tip THOSE folks at LEAST!