All them little courtesy supplies of shampoo, conditioner, etc… Assuming they’re not all swiped by guests at the end of their stay, what happens to the used ones ? recycling ? refilling ? or just out with the trash ?
The latter being my guess, but seems contrary to the TQM management BS current in business these days…
I travel every other week to meet with clients, so I’m in hotels & motels alot. I’ve seen housekeeping always throwing them away, unless they were completely unopened and unused, then they reused them. I used to take them home with me but it drove my wife nuts. Said it was cluttering up the drawer in the bathroom.
I would imagine that if it’s something painfully obvious that it hasn’t been used (like the wrapped soaps), they stay. However, the hotel staff has better things to do than peer down into hundreds of little shampoo bottles and figure out how much is left so, unless the bottle is clear, my guess is that they all see the trash. Probably the equivlent of one bottle of real shampoo per day for a mid-sized chain, several bottles for a large city hotel.
Most hotel shampoos now have a paper seal so houskeeping can see at once if they’ve been used. If unused, they recycle, if not, they toss. I usually take them home with me.
They throw them away if used at all.
If you travel a lot and are so inclined, check with your local homeless shelter and see if they’d like these. Soaps and shampoos are valuable commodities for the homeless, and small unopened bottles and packages of these would be appreciated. I bring em home and donate them to the AIDS Services food bank.
Jill
A few years ago, I stayed at a hotel in Denmark. All the little shampoo bottle weren’t thrown away, but recycled simply by refilling them. If you wanted a clean towel, you just left it on the floor, but if you were happy using the same towel two days running, you just left it on the rail.
Nice hotel, but I’m just glad someone else was paying the $600 a night!
Nice idea about the homeless shelter Jill.
–Thank You! That’s a great idea. A shoebox full of those things are going to be dropped off at the shelter tomorrow.
We’ve been doing this for a while…take 'em to the local women’s shelter, and they distribute them to clients who are relocating or using the ‘safe house’…sometimes, the clients arrive at the shelter with only the clothes on their backs, so they could use EVERYTHING. Those handouts from the dentist are nice, too…the ones with a toothbrush and a little tube of toothpaste in 'em.
I actually investigated this for the MAILBAG about a year ago or so, and every time I was in a hotel, I’d try to find someone in Housekeeping who spoke English and ask them. They always said they were tossed if opened, left in the room if unopened. That also seemed to be the answer from simple observation – the cleaning person who came to the room tossed them in the same trash bag as the other trash, didn’t separate them.
I called the HQs of some of the big hotel chains as well, and asked them (I’m in the frequent flier programs of many of them), and got the same response.
We never used it as a Mailbag because we didn’t know how we would really verify. I mean, if they did gather the open ones together and pour them into a bottle to reuse, you wouldn’t expect them to admit it, would you?
I worked as a hotel housekeeper for a summer at a Comfort Inn in the early 90’s. All of the shampoo/conditioner/lotion bottles had seals on the outside that broke if the bottles were opened. If they were opened, we tossed them.
Oh, and sheets were only changed when guests checked out. They weren’t changed during their stay unless the guest specifically requested it. Only obviously used towels were replaced as well.
–tygre
I agree that it seems unwrapped - throw away, wrapped - keep. This has always aggravated me. One is the waste, but mostly it is my laziness, I hate unwrapping the new soap every night.
Fleetwood, they actually throw away your used soap each night during your stay? That doesn’t sound right.
From my experience, if you stay in the same room, they don’t pitch the soap, just make sure you have a new one (or two, or the email saga about 3). It’s when you check out that they pitch all the partially used products, because a new guest doesn’t want a partially used bar of soap, opened shampoo, etc.
In Cuba those tiny bars of soap and bottles of shampoo are valuable commodities and people there love to get them as presents. I doubt even the half used ones are dumped anywhere. Probably one of the perks of the staff is to get to keep them (if they are not recycled, that is). One of the main problems facing a hotel manager in Cuba is keeping the staff from stealing all the supplies.
I’ve worked in hotels my whole life and yes I was trained in housekeeping. For checkouts anything opened is tossed. That is anything that is the hotels. Housekeepers should put all opened shampoos that aren’t in the hotel into a lost and found bin.
If the room is a stayover they hotel has guidlines on when to replace them. The upper scale ones will replace them everyday regardless. Some wait till the soap is 2/3 used. Etc.
BTW you can always tell how honest the housekeepers are by the quality of stuff they turn in. When I first started out in 1982 we got great stuff turned into the lost and found. I got a London Fog trench coat, a bike, a couple of Brooks Brother’s coats. It was cool.
Interesting. I would think the sensible policy would be to leave one extra unopened set of each item for the stayovers and let them decide when they need a new bar of soap, new bottle of shampoo, etc. Then if they open a new bar a day, you give them a new bar a day, but if they use it down to the nub, you don’t have a pile of soap piling in the room (a la the urban legend) and the guest doesn’t feel like they’re wasting it.
But I guess I’m too logical.