Would you tip the housekeeper $20 or $30 per day at a 5* hotel?
 

That's what this article in the New York Times suggests.

What's appropriate?

http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/04/15...ares-tips.html

"I still don’t understand why five-star hotels charge you for Internet"

The lack of understanding on this point suggests that maybe he isn't the oracle to be believed on everything.

I think that's over-the-top. Unless you're staying in the Presidential Suite or some other huge accommodations, I don't know why something around $5/night is insufficient.

If I'm staying somewhere more than a night, I try to give the housekeeper the tip on the front end to (hopefully) ensure better service. Tipping on the back end doesn't seem like it would do me any good.

I never used to tip housekeeping, but now $5/night is my standard, be it a Four Points or a Four Seasons or somewhere in between. For a suite, perhaps more.

I can't and wouldn't try to expense a tip to housekeeping, and it is not listed in my companies tipping policy, so it would be coming right out of my pocket and into theirs. Since I spend a fair amount of time in hotels this would be a significant amount of money, even at the usual Hilton, Sheraton and Holiday Inn's I stay at. Not going to happen, I don't understand the constant need to tip everyone, but that's just me. I've never noticed any degradation in service if I didn't leave a tip, but then I am pretty neat and tidy and most times you can hardly tell I've been in the room, apart from a rumpled bedsheet and a used towel or 2.

He!! no. I expect a clean room and clean towels as part of my hotel experience. Call me cheap, but I only tip housekeeping if they do something special for me. I'm with timfountain, I don't see the need to tip everyone for simply doing their job.

100% agree.

$20-$30 per night is absolutely ridiculous! If you stay in a suite at a 5* hotel, housekeeping will typically spend 30-60min cleaning the room.

They obviously don´t earn a fortune, so tipping a few dollars goes a long way and usually is appreciated...

I usually tip $3-$5/night, very rarely $10 if I have a very large (1000sq.ft.+) suite, made a big mess and have some special requests, but that´s definitely the exception. I usually leave a thank you note and some change (as I hate carrying around coins anyway).

No, absolutely ridiculous.

The doormen accept a low hourly wage because they make a lot of tips. If the NYT had writers or editors with basic journalism capacity or 3rd grade math skills, they'd know this.

The Times prints crap like this so that we won't miss them when they're gone.

Once we were staying at a 4 star hotel in London for 10 days. We would leave a moderate tip on the desk every morning with a note of thanks. One day we came back to the room early and it wasn't made up yet but the tip was gone. We stopped leaving tips so that behavior hurt everyone in the end. We know the manager who runs his hotel very well so we didn't have the heart to mention the dirty deed.

If I'm spending $2-3K/night on a nice room I guess that $20/night for housekeeping isn't totally out of line. Now there's no way I would spend that much on a room, but if someone else was footing the bill I guess I would up my normal housekeeping tip (typically $5/night) and, in this case, I could see $20/night; especially if I felt that the housekeeping staff's services were on a par with what a $3k/night room warranted.

I would have mentioned it.

Just because your employer is too cheap to tip the housekeeper doesn't make it right not to tip them.

If you are spending $1100-1200/night for a 5-Star in NYC, $20-30 to the housekeeper is a drop in the bucket.

Tipping is always optional and those who don't want to don't. But, trying to rationalize it as other than cheapness just doesn't fly.

I tip $5-7 dollars consistently ever since reading Nickeled and Dimed.