Hotel tipping calculator

Methodology

This tool runs the Kindhow Scale, version 1.0, in its list form — the same shape as the holiday tipping list and the wedding vendor tips, one row per person rather than one baseline and a stack of adjustments. What is new here is that every row counts something different, and that one row changes which publication it is sourced to depending on your answer.

The formula

for each person you dealt with:

  housekeeping     regular hotel  → Emily Post's $2-$5 a night
                   luxury hotel   → AAA's $10-$20 a night
                     the class picks the SOURCE, not just a position

  bellhop          $2 first bag + $1 each after     exact, no judgment

  everyone else    the source's own band for that role
                     ± what kind of hotel   position inside the band
                     ± where the hotel is   BEA price parity, as a nudge
                                          → a figure still inside the band

  × the thing that row counts   nights / bags / cabs / collections /
                                requests / deliveries / people in the van

  ─────────────
  your bill says "resort fee"        → $0 line, total unchanged
                                       (16 CFR 464.2(c): they must tell
                                        you what the fee is FOR)
  your bill names a gratuity         → that line to $0, kept visible
  all-inclusive, gratuities included → every line to $0, kept visible

  = cash to bring for the stay, split into what you leave in the room
    and what you hand over at the door
  rates under $10 are whole dollars — a hotel tip is paid in singles

Eight people, eight different clocks

This is the reason “how much do you tip at a hotel” has no answer. The unit column below is not decoration — it is what makes a single percentage or a single per-night figure wrong before it is generous or stingy. A valet tip is per time the car comes back, so a four-night stay where you drive out twice is two valet tips, not four. A shuttle driver is per person in the van, so a family of four pays four times what one traveller does for the same ride.

The last column is what this tool computes at a regular hotel in an average-cost state. The middle column is the publication’s own wording.

The bellhop row is the only line on this site with no judgment of ours in it whatsoever. Emily Post prints exact dollars there rather than a range — $2 for the first bag, $1 for each one after — so there is no position for us to pick and nothing to disclose.

Where our two sources disagree

Housekeeping is the query almost everyone arrives with, and it is the one figure our two publications do not agree on. Emily Post publishes $2–$5 per day, left daily with a note marked “Housekeeping – Thank you”. and does not split by hotel class. AAA puts the floor at “at least $5 per night”, and adds a luxury figure Emily Post does not have at all.

So the hotel-class control does something no other control on this site does: it changes which publication the line is sourced to, not where it sits inside one. A regular hotel is priced from Emily Post’s band. A luxury hotel or resort is priced from AAA’s, because Emily Post publishes no luxury figure and manufacturing one would make the line ours while it still looked sourced.

Where we could have quietly averaged the two and printed one confident number, we did not. Naming the disagreement is the honest version, and it is the reason the housekeeping line can still call itself sourced.

A resort fee is not a tip

This is the part of the tool worth more than the arithmetic. A resort, destination or amenity fee is a mandatory charge the hotel set, and guests routinely read it as money that has already gone to the staff.

You do not have to take our word for what it covers, because since 12 May 2025 the FTC’s Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees requires a hotel to disclose, before you agree to pay, “the nature, purpose, and amount of any fee or charge imposed on the transaction that has been excluded from total price and the identity of the good or service for which the fee or charge is imposed” — and makes it an unfair and deceptive practice to misrepresent “the nature, purpose, amount, or refundability of any fee or charge.” The fee has a stated purpose. Read it. If it names wifi and pool towels, no part of it is a gratuity.

Daily, not at checkout

The timing control is the other line that costs nothing and changes something. Both sources say the housekeeping money should be left each morning — Emily Post’s figure is explicitly “per day, left daily with a note”, and AAA says outright that “it’s best to tip each day rather than waiting until check-out.” Over several nights the person cleaning your room usually changes, so one envelope at the end reaches one of them. Choosing checkout adds a $0 line saying so rather than adjusting the total, because the total is genuinely the same.

Where the hotel is

The bands come from the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ Regional Price Parities for 2024, and shift you up or down within each published band — never outside it. A state ten points above the US average moves you a fifth of the way up. That inference is ours, not BEA’s: nobody has studied whether hotel tips track regional price levels. Same derivation as the other three tipping tools here.

Why this tool doesn’t round to $5

Every other calculator on this site rounds to an amount you would actually put in an envelope — a $5 step under $50, a $10 step above it. This one deliberately does not. A hotel is the one place where the money is genuinely handed over in ones, and rounding a $3 housekeeping tip up to $5 would be a 67% opinion of ours dressed up as arithmetic. Rates under $10 are whole dollars here; at $10 and above the site’s usual rounding applies, because that is where people start paying in fives. The line under the total shows the bills.

What this tool will not do

• It will not tell you any of this is required. US hotel tipping is customary, not owed, and Emily Post is explicit that a concierge answering a question carries no obligation at all. Untick anyone.
• It cannot read your bill. The bill setting reports what you tell it. If the wording is ambiguous — “service charge” rather than “gratuity” — the tool’s answer is to ask at the desk, and it says so on the line rather than quietly deciding for you.
• It has no room-service percentage. Room-service bills usually carry their own automatic gratuity or delivery charge, and neither of our sources publishes a percentage for one. The “something brought up to your room” row is Emily Post’s $2–$3 for a delivery, which is a different thing — check the check.
• It is US-only. These figures are American. Hotel tipping elsewhere is frequently different, often built into the rate, and in some countries actively unwelcome.
• It has no opinion about your budget. No nudge toward generosity, no comparison with what other guests leave.

Sources

• The Emily Post Institute — General Tipping Guide — the published figure for housekeeping, bellhop, doorman, valet, concierge and room delivery, including the extra dollar for hailing a cab in the rain.
• AAA Club Alliance — Hotel Tipping: 5 Things Every Traveler Should Know — the luxury housekeeping band, the shuttle-driver figure, and the advice to tip housekeeping daily rather than at checkout.
• 16 CFR Part 464 — FTC Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees — effective 12 May 2025; the requirement to disclose the nature and purpose of any mandatory fee excluded from the advertised price, and the prohibition on misrepresenting it.
• IRS — Tip recordkeeping and reporting (tips vs. service charges) — the test separating a tip from a service charge, used on the all-inclusive line.
• U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis — Regional Price Parities, 2024 — the regional price bands.

Informational only, not professional advice. The Kindhow Scale is a published model, not a standard, and the lines marked house judgment are our reasoning and nothing more. Nothing here is legal advice: the FTC rule and the IRS material are quoted to explain what a mandatory fee is, not to tell you or your hotel how to comply with either. Last reviewed: August 2026. Scale version 1.0. Figures that come from a publication are re-checked against their source on a monthly cycle; when one moves, the version number moves with it.