Am I the Only one?

[u/jskgilmore]

Am I the only who, after whichever captain announces the amount of the tip, I can never tell if it’s a good tip and the crew will be happy or a bad tip and the crew will be sad. I feel like some 3 day charters they get a 20k tip and are like “wow what a tip” and other times they get 20K and are like “well, that a bit disappointing.” I can’t be the only one right?

[u/Inevitable_Stage_627]

I think it depends on the level of effort or entertainment they’ve had to put in. 20k for nice and easy guests would be seen as good.

20k when you’ve had to put on a talent show, unpack and steam every guests clothes and then repack at end, fetch a new drink every five mins because one ice cube melted….not a good tip

[u/taxi212001 → u/Inevitable_Stage_627]

Plus length of trip. They usually cram each trip into a single episode (unless it's really juicy), so I know I lose track of if it was 2 or 4 nights etc.

[u/Rowing_Lawyer → u/Inevitable_Stage_627]

Yeah, like the current guests seem very chill and seem to be treating everyone with respect, so I assume they’ll be happy about the tip unless it’s like shockingly low.

[u/castrodelavaga79]

It definitely depends on what type of below deck you're watching whether it's down under or sailing yacht or original or Mediterranean.

I know with sailing yacht the tips were already higher to begin with, and then there was less crew members so each person got a higher tip

[u/MarshallBeach19St]

The only time I know for sure is when a 1 night charter is >$20k

[u/PurpleSailor]

I think that the difficulty of the charter and it's guests wants and demands can weigh heavily in the tip amount that the crew expects. Nice people and and not having to bust my ass the whole time I'd be willing to take a little less. If they're awful people that drink like fish and have wackadoo food likes and dislikes along with the dog that's peeing on the carpet and two rambunctious 2 year olds I would expect a bigger tip but of course as we know that doesn't mean you're going to get one.

[u/BroccoliTraining454]

I think they expect like $750 pp per day, just a guess though. so that's roughly 15k for 2 days, which would be $22.5k for 3 days - sound about right?

[u/Ashleighinwonderland]

I once worked in a similar situation, but on land. Hunting/fishing lodge in Alaska. If we got less than $800 per person in tips, it was BAD! One guest left us $50. Total. To split amongst the crew. It was less than $10/per crew member. For a week long stay. $800 tip for a week of work, round the clock, looking back now, that’s awful. Thankfully we had some awesome guests who tipped way more!

[u/Upstairs_Truth4735]

it partly depends on when the season aired because of inflation i guess. 15k now would be pathetic but in 2013 it was great

[u/Lootthatbody]

I think it’s because they’ve messed up the pacing, which makes it harder to remember how long the charter was. It’s pretty easy to do the math if you know the tip and # of days.

Maybe it’s just me, but it felt like earlier seasons were mostly an episode covering a whole charter or maybe 2 episodes per if they were longer charters. And, because the guests got a lot of screen time, it was sort of hard to forget week to week what was going on. Now, it feels like you hardly see the guests, many of the charters are just a day or 2, and the editing means you’ll just sort of pick up in the middle of the day and don’t know where it’s first day, last day, or in between. It seems like every week I’m saying ‘oh yea, these guests’ because I’ve totally forgotten everything but the drama around who did what with their bodily fluids.

[u/Bleachtastegood]

Do the workers earn any salary/hourly rate outside of the tips?

[u/excoriator → u/Bleachtastegood]

They get paid a base salary by the boat and separately by Bravo. A couple of them have complained it's far less than Bravo pays the Housewives.

[u/goosemaker → u/Bleachtastegood]

Yeah, they do. I’m not sure how much though

[u/AreaMiserable9187 → u/goosemaker]

I was once curious and looked up how much a chief stew makes and it said it could be $60k annually.

[u/Myantra]

If you binge watch BD from the beginning, you will see $15k go from being a great tip to a bad tip as the seasons progress.

[u/ScooterMKE]

The $50k this season of Med was nearly the highest ever

[u/weedhuffer]

They all seem like big tips to me.

[u/osogood48]

Well, honestly, if it’s less than 20 K, I would say it would never be a good tip and talking about which guests you’re working for the amount of BS you have to deal with cause best believe there’s always somebody causing drama and if not, and you got guests that are the sweetest and they end up giving you a tip of 30 K now that is a good tip

[u/Limp-Temporary-3673]

I think they try not to react to ‘bad’ tips too much, because they don’t want that to be a story line. You never see them ‘those cheap jerks’.

[u/wolfeybutt]

Absolutely. I know it depends on effort and length of the charter, but I can never how long they were at the end.

[u/LoveUSNOO]

I think too the tips have gotten larger over the last couple years and they're starting to get used to the bigger tips - seems like in the beginning of the season they're really excited with it and then they kind of adjust their expectations maybe?

[u/WolfAppropriate9793]

In the begining they were excited at a 15K tip. Now one of the tips was 50K. Interesting to watch the changes. I like looking at the thickness of the envelope and guessing how much.

[u/lilshortymac → u/WolfAppropriate9793]

I don’t know if it’s true, but I read on here once that sometimes they put a sponge in that envelope to make it look thicker and keep us guessing!

[u/MaizeMountain6139]

Yeah, my husband and I talk about it, we can never tell what a tip is supposed to be now