Duty-free beverages and the customary Instagram pictures of your pre-flight meal, it’s all part of any trip away. There are many moving parts at an airport, and tipping comes into practice in some areas more than others. 

For many flyers, the need for wheelchair support, help with bags, and ground transfers within the airport may be necessary. These tasks are carried out often by willing, awesome volunteers from across the airport who are assigned to help ensure your visit to the airport is super easy. Tipping in these situations is almost exclusively cash based (unless you have a virtual tipping account), and means you will need to part with your money that way – hopefully you have the right currency to hand! It’s also worth remembering they will not have cash on them to change up. 

Tipping airline staff may be tricky and hard to manage, but airport staff are in a different jurisdiction, they’re service staff, they’re much easier to show appreciation to.

Airport staff in North America, where tipping is often supplementary to someone’s wages, are welcoming of tips. In many server jobs in the United States, waiting staff, concierges, and other helpful employees will often take a pay cut to secure a job at an airport, because the tips can tend to be a little more fruitful. 

This is in the main down to the positivity of holiday travellers before they board their flight. Asked to arrive at the airport hours before their flight leaves, we have nothing better to do than sit, eat, drink, and chat with fellow travellers. This is, of course, why we are sometimes a little less frugal with our money in these scenarios. 

When it comes to airport restaurants, there’s no need to approach it differently. Whether you’re at a small, family-run restaurant or a chain, we always look to our server as the shining light. An airport server will almost certainly be working unkind shifts – an airport is a 24/7 conveyor belt of people from all over the world. 

To support their role, airport staff may learn new languages, understand how to communicate with people from all walks of life, and still manage to hold it together during the busy times and long night shifts. 

Tipping is an easy calculation when you receive your bill from an airport restaurant, but make sure to read your receipt before leaving any money. Airports often add service charges to the bill and will sometimes leave you paying an extra 20% or more. This is an opportunity to refuse the general tip on the bill, and choose to personally tip your waiter/waitress through a virtual tipping app – keeping that tip for themselves will certainly be appreciated by the staff member.

Beware not to use hand signals when asking for the bill in France. It is considered rude to wave or beckon a server to the table for the bill. A simple ‘excusez moi’ will suffice to get their attention to ask for the bill. 

Just like in our Italian tipping guide – your bill explains everything. In France you will sometimes receive your bill as you are finishing or have just finished eating. Don’t worry, they are not trying to force you out, the restaurant may just be very busy! 

A service charge is sometimes added to the bill as ‘service compris’ and is usually 15%. This slice of money goes directly to the restaurant owner who is in turn able to pay the servers a salaried wage. If you feel the service deserves more, tipping on top of this will find the pocket of your servers directly. 

It is always worth carrying cash for your bill. While many restaurants and cafes are equipped with card machines, you may find it harder in smaller establishments.