The staff there treat every one like Royalty, true your drink won't go empty at Paty'os if you open with a $5 tip, but Ive never felt like I had to tip At TTR I saw someone give our waitress a 500 peso tip and I got the same service with $1 tip, she was happy,
We brought a few hundred dollars in ones for 5 nights and went through it all. We went out of our way to tip when we asked for name brand liquor and actually got it poured, when drinks came quickly at the restaurant (especially keeping water full), housekeeping services (we gave our maid $10 when we asked for more water bottles and she gave us 6!), and we tipped our waiter $25 at the seafood restaurant when we got the best service of the trip from him (he about died when we gave it to him!). We tried tipping first and that didn't work so well - so we switched to rewarding good service and that proved to work better! We also let the bus driver keep the change from the $1 we gave each way, but felt excessive pressure to tip outside the resort where you wouldn't tip in the US (like cashiers/merchants). It is probably the culture there, which is fine, but we found that rewarding service above and beyond expectation worked best, and I think that is the way it should be. Feels good to reward someone for just being a nice, good person of their own free will, and not doing simply what is minimally required of them.
I usually bring a big stack of singles to any all-inclusive I end up at (about $100-150). Fold them up as singles and stuff them in the side of the swimsuit (not front or back...eww). Buck a drink - just like any other bar.
Buck a drink, $2-3 @ breakfast, $3-5 lunch, $5-20 at dinner (depending where we eat), $3-5 /day to housekeeping, $5 to bellboy and $5 for driver. Never felt the need to tip but we do for the amazing service. Only once did we ever have poor service from a waiter but so did every other table he was working...he was too busy chatting up a group of ladies in another section.
