What should I tip my guide on a hiking tour?
Anxiety, joy, gratitude, and so many more emotions can be invoked by tips. The only thing we all feel together is how prominent tipping culture is in American society. We, as a company in the tourism industry, would be foolish not to acknowledge this as a core part of our world. So let’s talk about what to tip your tour guide — and let’s talk honestly.
This article is going to revolve around Northern Epics for its tipping examples and anecdotes, as that’s who we are and that’s what we have experience with. With that said, much of what you’ll see here applies to tipping guides throughout Alaska. We can’t guarantee that our situation will translate to one you’re in elsewhere, but it should be able to give you a little peek behind the scenes to inform your tipping decisions for the next time you ask, “What should I tip my guide?” or “How much should I tip my tour guide?”
Let’s start strong with the biggest question: What should you tip your guide? The short answer is that as of 2026, on a Northern Epics hiking tour, 10-20 Percent is what most guides expect. So yes, in reality, your guide does expect a tip. But as many of you might have guessed, it’s a lot more complicated than that. So let’s get into it!
The reasons for tipping in the United States are complex and have some history behind them. We’ve all heard of (or worked) jobs that pay well under what they’re worth or what’s livable simply because the industry knows that tipping exists. Not to stress — Northern Epics doesn’t do this. We actually pay our guides well above the industry standard. There are many reasons we do this, and some I’ll elaborate on later. But one big one is that we don’t believe in the stressful and volatile nature of relying on tips to make a livable wage. So we don’t do that to our guides.
This is especially important to us because of where we operate. We’re based in Denali, Alaska — quite remote compared to the rest of the United States. There are very limited job and housing options, and everything is crazy expensive, including coming and going from Alaska. This is not the place where you would want to have an unpredictable income. So, in such an expensive place, what should you tip your hiking guide?
The classic rule we’ve all heard is that you should tip your server 20%, right? This is a little different in the guiding industry. I believe this is largely because the services are so much more expensive. A cup of coffee is $5 (more like $8 here in Denali), so a 20% tip is only $1. In contrast, our most popular tour is the Naturalist Walking Tour. This costs an adult $139, so a 20 percent tip would be around $28 per person. While this is the same proportionally, it’s a $27 difference to your wallet. And you can imagine the difference when you get planes or helicopters involved.
A 10% tip is far more common in our industry, and it’s realistically the baseline what a guide would expect on any given tour. For the aforementioned Naturalist Walking tour, this is about $14. But let's be real, we don't all carry around that exact amount, so the most common occurrence is people reaching into their wallet and pulling out a bill, either a ten or a twenty. No one is knocking you for this. We’re all doing it.
While this reality makes perfect sense, there is one detail that I’m sure our guides would like us to point out. The barista who’s getting 20% said a few nice words to you, threw a frozen sandwich in the toaster, and made you a coffee, while the guide who’s getting 10% spent hours getting to know you, cracking jokes, and sharing their stories, knowledge, and experience. This isn’t to say that the barista’s job isn’t difficult or that they don’t deserve that tip. They certainly do! The coffee they make is not easy, and boy howdy is it delicious (I’m a Mexican Mocha guy myself)! I only say it to point out the discrepancy with what guides generally get tipped.
Northern Epics guide Jade Weaver teaching survival skills on the Denali Survival Tour.
In a larger group, your guide won’t be giving you as much personal attention. Often, if your group is only 2-4 people, a guide will expect a larger tip (closer to that 20% number) per person. After all, they’re spending more time getting to know each person in the group and customizing the tour to them. Of course this is not a requirement, but it’s something worth noting.
We all know there’s more that goes into tipping than this generic 20% rule. The biggest factor is, of course, how you felt about the quality of service you received. Leaving tips, especially ones greater than 20%, is a great way to show the guide that what they did was really valuable to you. Did your guide make your tour go beyond what you thought a hiking tour could be? Did your guide go out of their way to understand you as a person, and then customize your tour to you to the best of their abilities? Were your guide’s jokes so funny that you felt like you worked out your legs and your abs? A yes to any of these questions is an indicator that your guide did an exceptional job, and a proportional tip is a great way to tell them that. What you should tip your guide should reflect the quality of service you received.
A job well done isn’t all a tip can show. A passion and excitement for this job and this industry is something that brings every one of us guides together, but that’s far from all we are. Each guide is building something unique of their own…a life. Northern Epics knows this, and we even ask about the life goals of our employees in our interviews. Every single one of them, without fail, has goals that go beyond their career at Northern Epics (no, we are not offended by this). As I mentioned before, we pay our guides well above the industry standard, and one of our biggest reasons for doing this is to help our guides get ahead — to help them remain independent and grow in whatever direction they choose.
This is something you can do too. If you believe in what your guide is doing, in who they are, and what they could become, that is the best reason to tip someone. The guides get paid by us, and this they expect (as they should). That gives them expectations about what is achievable within their means. But tips from customers give guides means beyond their expectations. Not to sound crazy…but that’s pretty cool.
The second, and last big question: Do I have to tip my tour guide? No, of course not. Does almost everyone expect it? Yes. Have I just told you all the reasons why you should? Absolutely. But crucially — and what I believe you really want to know — will we be offended, or think less of you if you don’t tip? It may surprise you, but not at all.
To convince you of this, I’m going to tell you a story of my own. I guided a tour a number of years ago, and on this tour, there was a young lady who had just begun her teaching career. She taught elementary school. This trip to Alaska was a HUGE deal, and she had spent years saving to do it. And she picked our hiking tour! This is both flattering and, honestly, a little nerve-racking. I needed to do the best job. And that's exactly what I did. I pulled from every experience I had and every book that I’ve read. And trust me — you’ve never seen someone as pumped up to talk about wildflowers as I was that day. At the end of the tour, this sweet lady told me how excited she was to teach all of her elementary schoolers the amazing and fascinating things she’d learned.
This showed me just how many people I could really reach as a guide, an invaluable lesson. What a teacher! I took her back to her lodge, and she hurried off to whatever was next on her grand adventure. A few months went by. The hiking season was over, and I was doing a completely different job. Then I received a text — it was from the teacher. She’d made a presentation, with photos and knowledge from our tour, and shared it with her whole class. I never received even a dollar after the tour from her…but that’s still the best tip I’ve ever received.
What I hope you take away from this article is that tipping is complicated. It’s expected in both our industry and in our culture. Tips can be a reflection of the service you received, but they can also be a gesture toward the person you just got to spend time with. And finally, whether your tips are monetary or something a little less mainstream, let your guide know that you appreciate them. That’s all a tip really is, after all.
