Zeeb

I guess it boils down to what you're tipping for. I tip for them cleaning up my mess, making sure I have enough fresh towels, making the bed, etc. For the work they do because *I* am there, not for the work they do because someone else was there. If you're giving them money because you feel they are working hard in general as opposed to for a service then you're just making a donation. Which you can do if you want, I'm not putting a judgement on that, it just is no longer a tip at that point.

I'm not traveling right now but I definitely would be tipping more for housekeeping if I was, but the OPs point is that they aren't receiving housekeeping during their stay. So there'd be nothing to tip for.

flyertalker28120

I'd still be curious what is the distinction in people's mind. They have most after you check out. That work results because you were there.

MSPeconomist

I think a tip at checkout is definitely warranted if you (or your family or your party guests) made a mess of the room during the stay. When I walk down the hall, I sometimes notice (through open doors) rooms with cereal all over the room (food fight?) or ground into the carpet, things stuck up on surfaces with tape and left behind, etc. Having a pet is another example, but would depend on whether the hotel charges a cleaning fee.

Special stuff that I've noticed during stays would include origami, beautifully folded toilet paper in tiny pleats into a fan (far beyond the typical end folded into a point), and nightwear/bathrobes being artfully displayed on the bed during turndown service. Some housekeepers re-arrange toiletries (such as standing up all lipsticks in a perfect row) but I find this annoying even if it looks pretty.

ChurnieEls

Or alternatively Hilton/Franchise Owner could pay their staff a living wage and then they wouldn't have to depend on the generosity of strangers to get by. Just a thought.

Enigma368

I think there is at least a discussion worth having that leaving tips for people in jobs like this is giving their employers an excuse to pay them less and provide them with less benefits. If people didn't tip housekeeping, would employers pay more? Maybe not - immigrants for example may feel that they have no alternative but to continue working for the same low pay. I do think it is a conversation at least worth having though.

I think a study of housekeeping staff in the U.S. vs housekeeping staff in other countries where they do not get tips and rely on a (probably higher) wage only would be interesting. I wonder where staff are happier, healthier and/or better off. I suspect the U.S. model makes housekeeping staff worse off than other countries but I don't know.

I think throwing your hands up in the air with a "it is what it is" attitude and slavishly following what many other people do without at least questioning whether there is a better way is not helpful to anyone in the long run. We should always be looking to improve as a society.

aztimm

I've had a few 1-night stays at Hilton properties since Coronavirus began and have mixed results from those stays.

In general, rooms are not any cleaner than prior, and I'd argue that they might even be less clean. But before all this began, I never wiped down surfaces in the room to know how dirty it really was. The presence or absence of a sticker seems to have no basis on the cleanliness of the room (I'd argue those with stickers are slightly less clean). The first time I wiped down a room I was almost horrified at what I saw on my wipe, but now I've just learned to accept it. I also liberally spray down the entire room with Lysol.

Out of 8 stays, only 1 had any semblance of a, "real," breakfast; but it was in such a setting that I did not feel comfortable eating so I didn't bother anyway. I noted in another thread that I'd much prefer that the property either give some sort of credit for no breakfast or a gift card/voucher for a nearby fast-food option. When on a roadtrip, I feel much more comfortable driving up to a McDonald's drive-through than eating in a hotel lobby.
I haven't used any other hotel, "services," since this began, as I wouldn't feel comfortable using a hotel gym, pool, or any other shared space.

My rule of thumb on tipping for housekeeping, is only on multi-night stays, and never on the last night. So a one night stay (before this started or now) would not get a tip at all. And I've stuck to that. As someone else noted, it is pretty tough to even get cash now, let alone small notes.

Enigma368

I have to say this is valid point that some people need to realize. The "extra" cleaning that hotels and other travel companies say they are doing is mostly marketing bluster. Hilton puts a sticker on each door to say it has been sanitized but I doubt the housekeeping staff are doing any additional work in terms of cleaning. Some news shows have tested this with rental cars and shown that the claims they are been cleaned more thoroughly is just flat out incorrect. This is not to say that housekeeping staff are not in a worse off situation than pre covid, I am sure their income is down in many/most cases and they are putting themselves at risk by working around other people. But I seriously doubt many of them are having to spend longer cleaning each room.

I base a lot of the above of what I have seen with mask usage in hotels. Although it is getting better, I have stayed in 20 hotels since covid and the vast majority of times I see housekeeping staff cleaning rooms, they are not wearing a mask. The big chains will make grand claims about new policies on cleaning and masks etc. but that does not necessarily mean that anything significantly different is happening on the ground. I imagine it is very difficult for chains or even individual hotels to enforce these policies.

writerguyfl

It's highly doubtful that any housekeeping staff member is getting tips for every room they clean. Tips for room cleaners are the exception, not the rule.

Think of it this way: FlyerTalk is inhabited with frequent travelers who care enough about hotels to discuss them as a hobby. Even among this group, a sizable portion of people do not think that tips for housekeeping are warranted.

Out in the "real world" of hotel guests, I'd argue that the overwhelming majority of guests never tip housekeeping because they don't even know it's a semi-normal thing.

(Granted, Marriott introducing tip envelopes in rooms might have changed the perception of "normal" hotel guests. But, I doubt it changed the percentage of tips across the entire industry.)

So, you certainly didn't cost someone $1,000 by declining housekeeping services.

Except for a tiny number of hotels that they own, Hilton doesn't pay housekeepers. That's a fact for all major hotel groups.

Wages for hotel staff are set by each individual hotel based on local labor market conditions. Since almost all hotels are franchises, Hilton (or Marriott, or any other hotel group) has zero control over how much housekeepers are paid.

Due to the way franchising works, a small company can own a bunch of hotels within a single metropolitan area. In lots of cases, that company can own and operate a Hilton-branded hotel, a Marriott-branded hotel, and an independent hotel. Generally speaking, the hourly wage for housekeeping staff at each of those properties will be identical.

The name on the side of the building doesn't really matter when it comes to housekeeping wages. What matters are the size of the local labor force and the presence of a union. The smaller the labor force, the more likely that wages will increase. But the single biggest factor in wages will be whether there is a union or not.

hedoman

writerguyfl......I appreciate your sensible posts on FT. Of course, very few tip housekeeping. What I read on here is insanity when it comes to this subject. I have the same problem with tipping staff on ships selling fares that include tips. The problem lies with people not following traditions established within the industry. Daily housekeeping service is included in your nightly rate. Or, it was until the hotels found a legit way of cutting it. It's human nature for staff to begin expecting tips when so many customers begin to do so. Tippers will tip. Nothing will stop them. That they are setting a precedent is of no concern .

Five days a week it's the same housekeeper assigned to my floor. I've listened to her ..... about the GM, this and that. Tips included in the this and that column. Her personality is well suited for the job she works. As a waitress, she would go broke. Housekeeping is a tough job. It's not a bad job and it's not a poor paying job. It's honorable work. While very few people on here could do this for a living, there are people well suited for the occupation and happy to come to work.

The Road Goes On Forever

At just about any hotel you can with almost 100% certainty bet that the housekeeping staff are lowest paid people in the building yet without question their job is the toughest. While there could be unions in play which would raise the pay rate, that applies to such a small fraction of the people cleaning rooms for a Hilton branded hotel (or any hotel for that matter) to be almost irrelevant to the discussion. One other posted misconception is that Hilton somehow "takes care of their employees." Maybe so if you're part of the tiny group that work at a corporately owned or managed facility but for the rest of us, Hilton has no clue/idea/care as to what the franchise owner/management company pays me, any benefits or lack thereof or what's in the handbook regarding work rules or uniforms, etc. Another misconception is that most housekeepers are working in a pay-per-room system. It's out there but I'm not sure how prevalent it is. I worked at one place (FS corporately managed Marriott) that tried it for a year and it didn't work. I don't remember the exact details but the company the owned the hotel at the time (Sunstone Hotel Investors) didn't like the increased labor costs and Marriott didn't like what they saw on the surveys. Everywhere that I've worked in 20+ years in the industry or other hotels where I know people that also work in the industry, all pay their housekeepers hourly.

DiverDave

I was told at one Hilton in California that they have increased the amount of time allotted to housekeeping to clean a room after the guest checks out.

FWIW.

writerguyfl

Agreed. Pay-per-room is the exception, not the rule. For it to work, you'd need to only hire employees that are 100% ethical 100% of the time. Otherwise, your employee will take shortcuts. Having strict Housekeeping Supervisors (or whoever inspects the rooms after cleaning) can mitigate some problems. But in the long run, even that layer of supervision isn't going to catch all the errors cause by rushing the job.

cbn42

I know that in some states in the US, employees that receive tips (such as waiters) may be paid a wage lower than the standard minimum wage, provided their tips bring them up to the minimum.

Does anyone know if this also applies to housekeeping?

EAJuggalo

I would be very surprised if that were the case. The number of people who tip housekeeping is very small and it would be very difficult to ascertain how much per day a housekeeper is being tipped since it is by necessity cash. I used to manage in a tipped industry and very few of those employees reported all of their tips, which you would have to get them to do in order to claim the tip credit. It has gotten much easier at restaurants where almost everybody pays by card so there is a record of the tip amounts. If you want to make a tipped waiters day, pay the bill with a card, leave a very small tip on the card and tip the rest in cash.

I will tip if I make or leave a mess, or more likely if my kids make or leave a mess. I was in a Hampton for one night last week and didn't even consider tipping for the one towel I used and the one food bag and two pop bottles I put in the trash. The independent place my company put me up in for 5 days got a $20 for the mess I and my co-workers left there.

writerguyfl

Here's the chart from the US Department of Labor (as of July 1, 2020) showing the minimum wages for tipped employees:

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/sta...um-wage/tipped

I was actually pretty shocked to see how the feds and some states define tipped employees. Federally and in lots of states, if an employee receives $30 in tips over the course of a month, they can be paid the lower wage. That monthly figure seems incredibly low.

(Even the highest monthly amount of $120 [Vermont] seems incredibly low. That's only about $4/day in tips.)

Based on that chart, both Housekeeping and Concierge employees would probably qualify for earning the lower minimum wage. But in my experience, neither of those positions earns enough in tips on a monthly basis to bring them up to the actual average market hourly rate that employees earn.

Seems like this is a case when the market dictates what happens, not the government. Although it seems like it would be legal for some hotels to pay the lower-than-basic-minimum wage, the reality would be that they couldn't find enough people willing to work for that low amount.