sjhart,

Tipping is entirely at your discretion. If you feel you've received good service and you want to tip, that's up to you. I would normally tip a couple of times through the day / evening, not every time rather than give one large tip at the end. You'll tend to find the level of service increases the more you tip! For maids, I normally leave something at the end of my stay before vacating the room (or if you see them, give it to them personally to ensure they get it).

Darren

We stay at the same hotel each year.

We tip the room cleaner at the end of our holiday (as we tend to have the same one throughout and he knows he will always get one from us). The mini bar chap also gets a tip at the end because he asks us each day what we would like put into the fridge. On our last holiday, both of us became ill and we needed a prescription filled so the hotel sent one of the hotel staff to the chemist in a taxi (at their expense) and we tipped the boy who collected our tablets for us.

Quite often the bar staff and the room service staff are different each time we need them, so we tend to tip each time. The people we do not tip are those who bring our clean laundry up to our room because all they are doing is bringing us up a bag of clean clothes. If we eat in one of hotel's restaurants we will tip the waiter, but we don't tip the breakfast people because all they do is come around with stewed tea and coffee and as the breakfasts at the hotel are buffet, we don't think anyone should be given a tip.

Thanks Darren & Sydney.

Shirley

We always used to tip hotel staff at the end of the holiday. They had a big padlocked box and we used to leave a very good tip (and a thank you card) as it went towards their off season staff day out. We would give smaller personal tips for service as and when (both in the hotel and in restaurants). We stayed in a small guest house this year and we tipped the staff at the end of our stay, but we made sure they got lots of praise and appreciation prior to departure day. We were more than happy to leave good tips too as we were a big group and we were there for 3 weeks. Fizz

It is quite possible at The Taj that there will be a service charge added to your bill.In Thailand whenever we ordered room service,drinks by the pool or in the hotel bar a charge of 10% was added for service.I could never understand why some people then left a tip as well.Keep an eye on your bills.

As for the room maid/boy we always make sure to tip them before we leave.We never leave the tip in the room as bell boys have been known to sneak in and beat the maid to it.

Papa