When travelling on business, generally I don't tip housekeeping. It is too much of a pain to get reimbursed for it on my expense report. That said, recently my company has gone to only requiring receipts for expenses in excess of $25 instead of receipts required for everything, so maybe I should reconsider on tipping housekeeping.

When travelling with my family (wife and daughter), we generally tip 2 or 3 dollars per day but only when we are staying more than one night. If we make an unusually big mess, we will tip more. For one night stays, we don't tip. Currently, we leave the tip at the end of our stay. As others have noted the housekeeping staff changes from day to day, so tipping on daily basis would be better. We just need to keep more singles handy to start doing that.

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Housekeepers should be paid better so that tipping isn't necessary. I am always torn between tipping and enabling the hotel industry to keep under paying them vs. not tipping which at least in the short term hurts the housekeepers and not the hotels. Further I fear there will always be people who have limited skills and/or language barriers and hence desperate enough for any job, that there will always be someone to take the underpaid housekeeping jobs. Bottom line, I wish the hotels would step up to the plate and just pay them a reasonable wage so they didn't need to be so dependent on tips.

By the way, does anyone know what the typical hourly wage is for housekeepers at Marriott properties (yes I realize there will be wide variances based on the location)? Also do they get benefits, what do they need to do qualify for them (e.g. length of service, etc.), and what do they have to contribute to their benefit costs? My step mother is an HR director at an RI but I have never felt comfortable asking her those questions. Her property is owned by a big franchiser who owns about 50+ properties mainly with Marriott and Hilton flags. At her property the housekeepers do get health insurance but are otherwise low paid. I don't have any more details then that...

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