Originally Posted by
writerguyfl
Generally, housekeeping does clean "check-out" rooms first...but that only can happen if they know the room is vacant.
They know this by knocking on the door, which will start at 8am or whenever the housekeeping shift starts. The housekeepers have a list of which rooms in their zone are checking out that day, and will rotate through those rooms first before starting on the stayovers. As long as you don't leave the DND tag on the door when you leave, there's very little advantage to letting the front desk know you're gone - the housekeeper will get to the room as soon as they can, and no sooner, regardless of whether or not the front desk knows the room is vacant.
Really, it's more about helping guests who may arrive early that same day than it is about helping the hotel.
See above - telling the front desk that a room is vacant and ready to be cleaned won't get it cleaned any sooner.
My advice is to pick up the room phone as you're leaving. In a full-service hotel, dial "0" for the operator (not the Front Desk) and let whoever answers know that you're leaving. It shouldn't take more than 60 seconds. Alternatively, do what you wrote and tell the Front Desk on the way out.
In many hotels, the front desk responds to these calls with a "Thank You" and then hangs up without doing anything. In other cases, they may log your departure in the computer, but it does nothing to get the room clean any sooner.
If you doubt any of the above, consider how many hotels have an "Express Check-Out" box in the lobby where you can drop your keys (or in the old days, an Express Check Out form). How often do you think this box is emptied, keys scanned, and the computer updated? The box is probably emptied once a day to recycle the keys, which are never scanned.