REVEAL KILIMANJARO TOURS' ETHICAL POLICY AND TIPPING

Our mountain care guidelines

• Utilize gas for cooking instead of harvesting firewood from the mountain.
• Ensure all wastes are collected by your team and transported off the mountain, avoiding disposal at campsites or scattering on the slopes.
• Whenever feasible, encourage your team to pick up any litter encountered along the journey, whether it belongs to our group or not.
• The objective of our mountain crew is to leave each campsite and trail as tidy, if not tidier, than when we first arrived.
• With the exception of the initial day, make an effort to boil, filter, and purify water to minimize the use of plastic bottles on the mountain.
• Adhere to the policy of not harvesting flora or disturbing any fauna encountered during our mountain climbs, leaving everything undisturbed for the enjoyment of the next group.

Our Policy with Porters

Ensure that Kilimanjaro Tours adheres to all the rights and guidelines outlined by the Kilimanjaro Porters Assistance Project (KPAP) and takes proactive measures to uphold the proper rights and treatment of porters.
Therefore, Reveal Kilimanjaro Tours’ policies towards the fair treatment of our staff are as follows:

• Proper Equipment: Before hiring, we make sure each porter has good footwear and warm clothing. We check their gear on the morning of the climb.
• Meals: Porters receive three meals a day during the trek.
• Weight Limit: Each porter is given a maximum of 20kg (plus 5kg of personal items).
• Fair Wage: Porters are paid a fair wage of Tsh. 20,000 per day.
• Healthcare: Sick or injured porters are promptly evacuated from the mountain and receive the same level of care as trekkers.
• No Early Returns: We ensure the number of porters at the start is the same at the end, except for necessary medical returns to Moshi/Arusha. This prevents overloading other porters and ensures fair wages and tips.
• Fair Tip Distribution: Tips are distributed fairly at the trek’s end. We provide a form to each group detailing their tips, making it easy to verify with the guide and crew. If you didn’t receive a form, please let us know.
• Crew Interaction: We encourage trekkers to connect with their crew. Some porters speak English, and your efforts, like saying “pole” (pronounced ‘pol,’ meaning ‘I’m sorry for you’) or ‘Asante’ (meaning ‘thank you’), show respect and appreciation for their hard work.

Our Tipping Policy

Climbing Kilimanjaro is tough, and tipping adds another layer of concern. At Reveal Kilimanjaro Tours, we strive to simplify things. While I personally find the tipping process less than ideal, I recognize its importance. Despite paying our porters well, tips provide crucial extra support. I understand the worries about carrying enough money and the right way to give it. It’s not ideal that trekkers have to carry $250-300 up the mountain.
There have been thefts in Kili (in fact, this problem is increasing), and trekkers shouldn’t have to spend their days in Kili worrying about whether their money is safe or not.
So we at Reveal Kilimanjaro Tours have tried to make things as simple as possible for our climbers, while still obeying the strict criteria set out by KPAP (the porters’ charity that looks after the welfare of porters) to make sure there is no funny business going on, and that the guide is not trousering most of the tip money for himself.
The procedure we have devised is as follows:

• Bring US$250-300 per climber (or more if you’re feeling generous or know you are going to rely on the crew more than most climbers). Please bring the money in US dollars / Euro cash if you can.
• Give it to your guide at the briefing.
• He will then add it all up and give it to our office staff, who will keep it safe.
• Towards the end of the trek, your guide will tell you how it should be divided (when he’s seen who’s worked hard – and who hasn’t). Normally, the assistant guides and cooks get twice as much as the porters, and the head guide gets twice as much as the assistant guides and cooks. So if the porters are getting US$50 each, the assistant guides and cooks are getting US$100 each, and the head guide is getting US$200.
• The money is then returned to you at the final lunch, which you take in Moshi, so you can then distribute it amongst your crew (and get them to sign that they have received it, so there is no misunderstanding).
• The sheet with all the signatures of the crew and the amount they each received is given to KPAP, so they can also be assured that the money was distributed fairly.

We believe the process could be streamlined further by gathering tips from you in advance, such as incorporating them into the final invoice and distributing them to the crew like regular wages. However, previous attempts at this approach resulted in us having to pay taxes on the tips. The appeal of tips for our crew lies in their non-taxable nature. Moreover, implementing such a system would undermine the essence of tipping, as it would eliminate the personal gesture of expressing gratitude to the crew members through individual tips.

We hope that’s all clear. So, in summary;

• Bring US$250-300 per climber (or more if you’re feeling generous or know you are going to rely on the crew more than most climbers).
• Give it to your guide at the briefing.
• You then won’t see it again until the final lunch in Moshi, where you hand it out individually to each member of your crew, having been told how much to give to each of them by your guide.

As always, please let us know if you have any questions about any aspect of this procedure.