tipster: gratuity rates and customs for services anywhere in the world
December 30, 2012 12:28 PM   Subscribe

tipster: gratuity rates and customs for services anywhere in the world
Gratuities can be tricky: obligatory in some countries, but perceived as insulting in others. tipster.io aims to help travellers with an intuitive interface: devices and browsers that support geolocation receive tipping rates for their current location, while others can look up rates from a database of countries.

Future features include a simple tip and split calculator. Your feedback would be greatly appreciated!
Role: designer, developer
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul (7 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite

Pretty cool, super useful before travel. I was surprised to get no results for UK, United Kingdom, or England when testing it out.
posted by mathowie at 12:30 PM on December 30, 2012


I agree with #1, having synonyms would be good. Great Britain and United States work, but UK and USA do not.

In any event, really useful site concept, nice sleek design. Maybe have a user input section, crowdsource info for countries you haven't been to?
posted by solotoro at 1:07 PM on December 30, 2012


Thanks for your feedback, matt and solotoro! I've added synonyms for the US, UK and Netherlands. solo, I am playing around with the idea of tying into the Foursquare API to show average tips left at the user's current location.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 4:50 PM on December 30, 2012


What's your source for the statement that 20% is "more common" than 15% for "good service" in the US?
posted by John Cohen at 8:30 PM on January 2, 2013


I don't think I know anyone in the U.S. younger than my grandparents who tips as little as 15% for good service. And my grandparents all died years ago.
posted by dersins at 2:39 AM on January 4, 2013


This is really cute!

I only have the smallest thing to say: The placeholder text says Japan but if you click Go without typing anything in, it returns the United States (where I am located, although I clicked deny when it asked to use my location which I think is what made it more jarring. I wasn't sure if this was a default or if you're using a fallback method for determining location). I only noticed because when I saw Japan pre-filled I was curious and clicked Go. It'd be cool if, when you did have the location, you updated the placeholder text and/or if you click Go without entering a value, it goes to the placeholder country. Or maybe change the placeholder text to say "Current Location" (if that is indeed what is happening, and then let Current Location be a valid entry).
posted by wintrymix at 2:05 PM on January 8, 2013


Is 15% really typical for hotels in the US? I guess I must be a jerk. I leave money for the cleaning staff but never 15% of the whole tab.
posted by lucasks at 4:45 PM on January 14, 2013


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