The tipping policy was pretty well covered by the travel planner here in the US, for tipping of the staff and game drive guides in the Safari camps.
Not covered anywhere that I have seen - what is the policy if any for the (using wilderness company as an example) for tipping your US based travel planner/travel agent?
Is their interest covered by their fee that they get as a % of the trip cost- or should they be tipped? Most travel aagents are not tipped (I think) but the african planning is more extensive.
Carol Eric - Opinions? Experiences of others?

Edward--you know, I never even thought about tipping our agent. I assume (and you know what happens when you assume!! <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Grin.gif" alt="" />), that he got paid a percentage on at least the safari portion of the trip, if not necessarily the air portion. We booked our air from the US to Africa on our own and he booked the intra Africa air. I don't have any clue what the percentage was, but normal TA commission is 10 to 15%. 10 to 15% on the safari portion of our trip would have been a hefty chunk of change!

True, safari trips are not cheap!

I can tell you as a former travel agent that most agents don't expect to get a tip. Most travel agents now charge a flat fee for their services. They do almost all work on commission which yes, generally is about 10%. However, for the past 10 years, nearly all airlines no longer pay any commission or its very small ( something like 5% of the base fare before the taxes) so chances are, the agent made no money on the flights booked for you.
The bottom line is, they don't expect a tip but especially if they haven't changed you a service fee for planning your trip, it certainly would be appreciated.

Actually, the flights were about 1/10 of the cost of the rest of the trip, so if the agent made 10-15% on the rest of the trip, he was still well compensated.

The three trips I am aware of - mine, a cousins and Eric and carols were all in the $13-15,000 range. Two of these trips did not include air, as air miles were used.
A camp manager told me many trips were $25,000 and he said many Europeans, i think he mentioned Folks from Italy, frequently financed the whole trip!

Just guessing, but many Europeans go longer (more days) than the US counterparts, so it would be more if they went for say 3 weeks instead of like what we did? Don't know if that is the answer or not, but that would be my guess at the moment.