How much should I tip in Sicily?

A disclaimer before we start. As a tour operator, I sit on both sides of this question at once, and I can’t pretend otherwise. We employ our own guides, and we work closely with drivers, and both very much appreciate a tip at the end of their work. At the same time, we look after our guests, and the last thing we want is for anyone to feel taken advantage of, or to go home feeling they overpaid at every turn. So this is a difficult question for me to answer with a straight face, sitting as I do on both sides of the fence. But let me try.

The other thing worth saying up front is that a single group on one of our tours might include Australians, English, Americans and Canadians all at the same table, and every one of them arrives with a different idea of what “normal” tipping looks like. There is no single correct answer that works for everyone, because there is no single starting point. So rather than hand you a table of percentages, I want to try to explain the principles behind tipping in Sicily, so you can work out for yourself what feels right.

Is it possible to tip too much in Sicily?

Yes, and this surprises people. Let me answer with two stories from my own experience.

The first isn’t from Sicily, though the same culture applies. Many years ago I was visiting a friend in Ankara. In Turkey it’s customary to bring a small gift when you visit someone, and I arrived empty-handed. On the walk to her house I passed a street seller with pots of basil that looked wonderful, so I bought one as a present. I have no idea exactly what I paid, but let’s say 500 lira. My friend was delighted with the gift, and then, in typically direct Turkish fashion, asked how much I’d paid for it. When I told her, she was immediately dismayed. I’d paid at least twice the going rate, she said, and in doing so I’d made life harder for everyone else who lived there, because now that seller would expect 500 lira for a pot of basil from the next foreigner who walked past too. My gift, meant kindly, had become a small source of friction.

The second story is more recent, and it is in Sicily. My wife, my son and I went for a day out in Siracusa, and I took them to a restaurant we often bring our tour guests to, partly because I wanted to see the owner, who’s a friend. We had a lovely meal, and at the end I called the waiter over and asked for the bill. The owner came over, put his hand on my shoulder, and told me it was on the house, since I bring my guests there so often. I had a couple of fifty-euro notes in my pocket that I’d set aside for the meal, so I gave them to the waiter instead, who I know looks after our guests when they visit. My thinking was that it would encourage him to look after our future groups even better. We said our goodbyes and left, and my wife, who is Sicilian, gave me an absolute earful. I had, she said, completely overstepped. It’s the restaurant owner’s job to pay his own staff. He had given me a free meal as a genuine thank you, and by tipping the waiter behind his back, I had effectively gone around him. I have no idea whether the owner was actually offended. Maybe he wasn’t. But I felt thoroughly guilty for having broken what I now realise is an important, unwritten Sicilian code, one that I still get wrong occasionally even after almost thirty years living here.

Both stories make the same point: generosity aimed in the wrong direction, or pitched too high, doesn’t always land as kindness. Sometimes it causes exactly the awkwardness you were trying to avoid.

Do people pay by cash or card in Sicily now?

This has changed a great deal in the last five or six years, largely because of the pandemic. Before that, almost everything in Sicily was paid in cash. Since then, Italian law requires businesses to accept card payment, and restaurant owners no longer expect cash the way they once did. The side effect is that paying by card makes leaving a tip a little less automatic. We’re also starting to see the card machine itself ask you, right there on the screen, whether you’d like to add five or ten percent before you tap. It’s a recent addition to Sicily, and worth knowing about so it doesn’t catch you off guard.

What is “il coperto”, the Sicilian restaurant cover charge?

Almost every restaurant in Sicily, and across Italy generally, adds a small charge to your bill just for sitting down at the table. It’s called il coperto, and it typically covers the bread and the cutlery rather than any specific dish. This charge still exists today, and it’s one of the main reasons Italians themselves rarely tip on top of their bill: they know they’ve already paid a service charge of sorts. The catch is that if you don’t know to look for the word “coperto” on the bill, you might not spot it at all. And importantly, that charge goes to the restaurant, not to your waiter. If you do want to leave something for the person who served you, that has to be extra, on top of the coperto.

Do Sicilians tip in restaurants?

Not usually, no. Sicilians themselves will rarely leave anything beyond the coperto. It’s not a hard rule though: northern Italians on holiday in Sicily sometimes like to leave a nice tip, and visitors from abroad, especially, I’m afraid, from the United States, are often expected by staff to tip generously, whether or not that’s really their custom back home.

Should I tip for a coffee at the bar in Sicily?

If you’re doing what most Sicilians do, having a quick espresso or cappuccino standing at the counter rather than sitting down, then no tip is expected. The bill usually comes to something like €1.20 to €1.40, paid in cash, and rather than pocket the odd 10 or 20 cents of change, people will often just drop it in the tip jar on the bar. So there is a kind of tipping happening, but we’re talking about loose change, not money that should trouble you. If you sit down for a coffee, and perhaps something to eat, you’re likely to pay a little more for table service, and it’s reasonable to leave a little extra too, but again we’re talking about a small handful of coins rather than any meaningful sum.

Should I tip a taxi driver in Sicily?

I personally never tip a taxi driver for a short ride around town. If a driver has taken me around for an entire day and done a genuinely good job, I might round the fare up or add something small, but even then, not very much. Taxi drivers are now required to accept card payment, like restaurants, but many will still find a reason, a Wi-Fi problem, a card reader that “isn’t working”, to nudge you towards paying cash instead. This is common across Italy, because a cash payment saves them a significant amount in VAT and other taxes, often somewhere around 30 to 40 percent of the fare. If you are paying a driver in cash, my own view is that you don’t also need to tip them on top, since the cash payment itself is already doing them a considerable favour.

Should I tip the driver on a small-group tour?

This is a genuinely different situation to a casual taxi ride, and I think it deserves different treatment. A driver on one of our tours is with you every single day for a week or ten days. He makes sure the coach is stocked with water, he’ll take your hand as you step down so you don’t trip, he might carry umbrellas, he keeps the bus clean, and he quietly does dozens of small things across the week that a taxi driver never has the chance to. That ongoing, personal service is exactly the kind of thing a tip genuinely recognises. I wouldn’t put a fixed figure on it. It depends on how the week went and how you felt about the care you were shown.

Should I tip hotel porters and housekeeping?

A small tip for a hotel porter is fair, particularly if they’ve carried a heavy suitcase up a flight of stairs, or out to your taxi or coach. I wouldn’t go above about €5 for this, there’s no need for more. Housekeeping is a little different: it isn’t really expected in Sicily, and a Sicilian guest certainly wouldn’t think to do it, but if someone has gone out of their way to look after your room well, it can be a nice, optional gesture to leave something small when you check out.

How much should I tip my tour guide in Sicily?

This is the one I find hardest to answer, because I sit on both sides of it. I know our guides genuinely appreciate being tipped, and I understand why. A licensed guide in Italy has worked hard for that licence, and holding it means registering for VAT and paying tax on everything they earn, at least when they’re paid by card or bank transfer. There’s also a set daily rate for licensed guides, in Sicily it’s set by the regional authority, with different rates for a half day versus a full day, and further rates if a guide works in more than one language or has to stay overnight. Guides know this rate well and won’t work for less than it. What’s changing is that some guides are now starting to charge noticeably more than that official rate.

As with taxi drivers, if you pay a guide in cash, which is what they’ll almost always ask for, you are very likely saving them a substantial amount in tax, and they’re unlikely to give you a formal receipt for it even though technically they should. Given that, I don’t think an additional tip is really justified purely for a single day’s work paid in cash.

Where it’s different is a guide who has been with you for a full week or ten days, who has been generous with their time, friendly, and has genuinely looked after you. In that case, I do think they deserve some recognition. But I honestly can’t give you a number, or a percentage, that would mean anything. My real advice is to give what you genuinely feel. If you don’t feel moved to give anything, you’re not obliged to. But if that guide has made your week, they’ve earned some acknowledgement of it.

Should I offer to buy my guide or driver lunch?

You don’t need to feel guilty about not doing this, but it’s worth understanding what’s really going on. If your driver takes you out to a restaurant in the countryside for lunch, he won’t expect to pay for his own meal. Either the restaurant looks after him, or he’ll expect you to. It’s not always obvious which. He might also be taking you to a friend’s restaurant, where he knows he’ll eat for free, and possibly even receives a small commission for bringing you there. The same applies to guides showing you around a city: they may well take you to a favourite spot, and there may be a similar arrangement behind the scenes.

None of that should stop you being generous if you want to be, by all means offer to include them at the table, it’s a genuinely nice gesture and often a lovely way to get to know Sicily through someone who actually lives there. But it’s also worth reading the moment. Sometimes a guide has talked all morning and would honestly rather have a quiet hour to themselves than sit through lunch with you too. Use your judgement.

How do I know if my guide is properly licensed?

Not every “guide” offering their services in Palermo, Taormina, Catania or Siracusa is actually licensed to work as one, and frankly, some of them shouldn’t be. If someone isn’t a licensed guide, I don’t think there’s any obligation to tip them at all. In fairness to genuine guides, it’s worth asking before you engage anyone whether they’re properly licensed. It isn’t always easy to tell. Licensed guides should have a badge, but I’ve seen badges that could just as easily have been a library card.

Why shouldn’t I overpay for a private guide, even if I can afford it?

This brings us back to where we started. In cities like Palermo, Taormina, Catania and Siracusa, there are now plenty of visitors wandering around looking to hire a guide for just a few hours, and happy to pay well in cash. For a guide, that can mean three or four easy hours close to home, with none of the pressure of a full tour, and a cash payment at the end that often works out better than a day spent working for a tour operator like us. Understandably, some of our own guides have started turning down tour work in favour of it, which makes it genuinely harder for us to put together the teams our guests rely on. It’s the same lesson as the basil in Ankara: paying generously, even with the best intentions, can end up making things harder for the people and businesses trying to do things properly, including, in this case, us.

Is it possible to tip too little?

Yes, and this is worth knowing too, particularly if you’re British, since many of us simply aren’t used to tipping at all. Sometimes people reach for a gift instead of a tip, a bottle of wine, say. Unless it’s a genuinely good bottle, a €15 bottle of wine in exchange for someone’s time across a ten or twelve day tour is likely to be read as rather mean, not generous. Bear in mind, too, that many drivers don’t drink at all, so wine isn’t really the right gesture for them regardless. The same goes for small gifts like chocolate or a pair of socks, unless there’s a specific reason behind it, they tend to land as an afterthought rather than genuine thanks. If you do want to tip, make it a proper, considered amount rather than a token gesture that could be read the wrong way.

So, how much should I tip in Sicily?

Genuinely, there’s no single figure I can give you, and I’d be wary of anyone who claims there is. My own advice is this: pay honestly for what you’re using in the first place, and try not to overpay to the point that you’re distorting prices or expectations for the people who live here. Then, separately, if someone has genuinely added something to your trip, whether that’s a guide who made your week or a waiter who looked after you especially well, give something extra that reflects what you actually felt they were worth to you. It doesn’t need to be large. It just needs to be honest.