It’s so easy to leave a few bucks a night, put your towels on the counter and pick up your trash. It helps the housekeeper and ensures you don’t leave something behind.
/From a family 80 years in the hospitality biz
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Reality is the hospitality industry is labor intensive, low margin and first to lose business when the economy slows. At the same time, you consumers want low prices from orbitz and groupon and the like for your rooms and meals.
Solve the wage issue.
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Exactly right. In any event, I hope the people denouncing tipping as the wrong way to compensate their hotel cleaning staff aren’t trying to singlehandedly end the practice by not tipping their cleaning staff.
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My thoughts exactly. I adjust a few things the way I like them like making sure that the clock faces the bed so I can see the time if I wake up momentarily and have no need to have the bed made any better than I do out of habit.
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Yeah, I worked a cafe (counter service only) and ever since I’ll make sure to tip even for counter service. Car wash, valet, cab/rideshare and other face to face stuff too. Hotels, not so much.
But, so you’re saying, people who tip usually tip daily? When I have tipped, it’s been at the end of the stay. How do they indicate it’s a tip vs. change, small bills, and other pocket crap left over from the end of the previous day?
Yeah, the envelope makes it unambiguous, but I agree that it seems a bit presumptuous to let it be known that’s expected. Though, I guess, in all honesty, it is.
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Should I get a tip from the cleaning crew if I leave my room in a pristine condition?
(never tip myself because I’m a bad person)
Whenever I stay more than one night at a hotel, I always hang the “no room service needed” door tag (or “do not disturb” if that’s all that’s available) for the duration of my stay. I’m a naturally tidy person and automatically hang my towels to dry and make my bed. If I do need an extra washcloth or something, then I just catch housekeeping when I go out in the morning and politely ask for another one and take it to the room myself. When I check out, the room is tidy with no spills or overflowing trash. I always thought that I was just saving them the effort of unnecessarily cleaning a room, but it never occurred to me that they might be paid BY the room: is that industry standard?
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The daily tippers got better service from me. A single lousy dollar a day would likely mean better service than the rest.
Most tippers tip at the end of the stay.
The large luxury suites would book for weeks by one family/party. The maids would get to know the family as it takes a lot of time to clean up a 5 or 6 bedroom suite. That situation would always get a 20-30% tip, (plus left over booze, food, etc)typically hand delivered on their last day or earlier if the maid had the day off.
Leave a dollar on the pillow of the unkempt bed, the maids know that is theirs.
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Almost agree… I like fresh towels, but otherwise I like to be, and the room to be, left alone. I wish there was a sign I could use to signal “towels only please”.
I’ve done the permanent “Do not disturb” thing and just call for towel exchange. But then I have to talk to someone AND interact with the towel deliverer. And some hotels will call every so often to make sure you’re OK. Another talk-on-the-phone hassle.
On topic: would love to be rid of tipping. Pay the people a living wage. I hate it, but do tip generously for good service. I’ve left a penny a few times to make a point if service is really bad. Now that the penny is gone, will have to use a nickel now.
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Just ask someone or Google it.
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Indeed, this is exactly the reason given by the owner of the dine-in movie theater chain I work for. He swears up and down that he practices “conscious capitalism”, but servers still earn only $2.13/hr. He’s a millionaire, he can afford to pay us a living wage.
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By leaving tips, you are directly enabling the victimization of yet another class of employee by their management. Congratulations.
What do you think the majority of the cost of the hotel room is? Labor. The labor of the hotel. Yes, today, right now, that $5 on the bedstand is money in the maid’s pocket, but long term it’s just extra profit for the hotel company out of their wages and they get to be compensated based on the power trips of strangers who never meet them.
Demand that your maid gets paid. Don’t allow another industry to become tip based just to increase margins by marginalizing more employees.
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Here, have a dollar
In fact, no brotherman here, have two
Two dollars means a snack for me
But it means a big deal to you
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I completely agree with you. Thanks for taking the time to register a new account in order to tell us how you feel. It took me a few years as an adult to realize that housekeeping staff relies on tips as part of their compensation for working, like waitstaff, and I felt bad that I hadn’t been doing it all along. Especially since I had worked a few jobs (paperboy, car wash attendant) where customers did tip sometimes.
Welcome to the Boing Boing BBS!
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I only worked at one resort, but I believe the industry was evenly divided between per room or per hour. Fun idea… watch the maids; If they are hustling, they are probably paid by room.
I think I got paid for do not disturbs, I don’t remember trying to ever game that system in any way.
I never felt like a tidy person was taking my job, they are showing respect for themselves and me. Alternatively, when adults trash a room and didn’t tip, that is just bad behaviour and it was easy for me to take that personally… and I was losing money by spending too much time in a room.
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Don’t you guys read your own blog before you post? https://boingboing.net/2016/02/19/tipping-screws-poor-people-wo.html or even better, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/09/05/study-countries-with-more-tipping-are-more-corrupt/?utm_term=.b5ee30fdb83c
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I tip but I feel bad for doing it.
I would be offended if someone tipped me doing my job, and I don’t know why anyone deserves to be appreciated as a tipper. Throwing money around to appear generous just seems so vulgar, and same sentiment goes for handing money to the homeless.
If job people do is disgusting and demeaning, and such job gets enough pay through mercy of people’s generosity, we should try to eradicate such work. What is it about hotels that makes us not tidy up after ourselves? Instead of tipping, why not leave a big mess in the first place, and penalize people who do?
It should work the other way around. Why not let the cleaners decide how much discount they want to give us for their service from fixed price?
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As long as no one’s saying tip comes from “to insure promptness” or whatever, I’m okay with it.
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At a dinner party this evening the subject came up about leaving tips in the hotel rooms for the maid staff, leave the tip with a note to take the TIP, usually US 1’s.
edit one dollar US bills are less noticeable in a market place by the staff… i guess
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What makes it even worse is that inflation will eat away fixed tip values. It’s insane.
