Do you tip in Algeria?

Algeria does not have a formalised tipping culture. Nobody will chase you down the street over a missing percentage, service charges are not automatically added, and staff are not paid on the assumption that tips will make up their wage the way they are in North America. What tipping is, here, is a normal courtesy for good service.

Restaurants and cafés: rounding the bill up is standard and sufficient in everyday places. In a proper restaurant where someone has looked after you, something in the region of five to ten percent is generous and well received.

Guides and drivers: this is where tipping actually matters. On a multi-day programme it is customary to tip at the end rather than daily, as a single meaningful sum, and to tip the guide and the driver separately — they are usually not on the same team or the same pay. A desert crew that has cooked, driven and camped with you for five days sits at the higher end of whatever feels right to you.

Hotels: small notes for porters and housekeeping who have genuinely helped.

Two practical rules. Tip in dinars, in cash — foreign notes create a currency problem for the recipient rather than a favour. And hand it over directly and quietly rather than leaving it on a table.

You will also meet plenty of hospitality that is not transactional at all: tea, invitations, someone walking you to where you were trying to get. Those are not tipping situations, and offering money can be read as an insult.