Upright & Stowed

Tipping Guide for Travelers

My last post was about tip misappropriation in NYC, so I thought this a good time to share some useful information on tipping abroad.  Tips can feel like a nuisance, and at fancy hotels, it often seems that you're handing out bills like water.  But tips are part of the system (in some places more than others) and you're smart to follow local guidelines.  

And smarter tipping has its payoffs:  Leave a few bucks on your pillow when you depart your hotel room for the day (even at a moderately-priced place), and you will often find the room made up with discernibly more loving care.  Slip a tip to your hotel bartender, and you’ll get a bit tipsier from that drink.   And make sure you adequately reward any concierge you plan to assign a serious task, such as hard-to-get tickets or reservations. 

Travel & Leisure recently published a nifty "World Tipping Guide” slide show.  It’s a great tool.    Now you have no excuses for under- or over-tipping.   

Photo credit

Travel Ethics, Lost & Found

A regular reader of Upright & Stowed threw me this travel ethics question.  Here goes...

It's late on a Sunday evening and you are traveling on a train to New York City (or somewhere else on the east coast where they still have trains).  As you are about to get off the train, you notice that someone has left their digital camera on the seat next to yours.  You call out.  You wait.  But no one comes.  So you schlep to the Lost & Found.  The person on duty is serving a fill-in shift, and she clearly has no idea how the Lost & Found system works.   You know that the camera you found is valuable, and you saw that it contains the owner's irreplaceable vacation shots.  Something inside your head tells you not to trust the shift worker.  You believe that if you leave the camera with her, it might not make it back into the owner's hands. 

What do you do? 

Travel Ethics: Giving Up Your Seat

It's time for Travel Ethics, Part 2.  What would you do?

You are about to depart on a long, crowded  flight from New York to San Francisco.  You are sitting in an aisle seat, and the window seat next to yours is empty.  Score!!!  Lots of room to spread out over the next 6 hours.  But wait ...  Down the aisle comes a mother and her 8 year old son, and they are seated across the aisle from each other in the row in front of you.  You see them eying the empty seat next to yours.  Clearly, they'd like you to switch, which means you would be left with considerably less room for your flight.  Do you offer them your row of 2 seats, or do you try to ignore them?

Use the Comments link for your response.
Photo courtesy of Chuckumentary on Flickr

Travel Ethics, Upgrade Choice

Today is the first of a periodically recurring series I'm calling "Travel Ethics."  In it, I'll pose an ethical travel question ... and you can provide your thoughts using the Comments link, or just ponder privately.

I'm stealing my first question of travel ethics directly from the New York Times, which has a weekly column in the Sunday Magazine called The Ethicist.  It's wonderful reading, and always makes you think.  Thank you, NYT, for the question, and thanks to my highly ethical friend Scott for suggesting the series.  Here goes:

A friend and I were returning from Paris. An Air France ticket agent offered me a free upgrade to business class. I refused, not wanting to leave my friend in economy. Later, at the gate, she was offered the same upgrade and took it happily. Wasn’t this wrong of her...? – Janet Goodwin, Aurora, Colo.