I travel fairly frequently for business, so I spend my fair share of time in hotel rooms.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t derive any benefit from the maid service. I don’t care one way or the other if my bed is made. I have plenty of shampoo and soap.
I’ve taken to leaving up the ‘do not disturb’ sign while I’m at work thinking I’m saving the maids the effort of cleaning my room.
It occurs to me that they may be paid on the number of rooms they actually clean as opposed to some set rate for a day or something based on the number of rooms booked.
Generally speaking, am I doing a service or a disservice to them?
That just means they don’t clean the room/make the bed while you are in there. Once you check out of the hotel the room will be cleaned before a new occupant takes up residence.
You can save them extra effort by being clean and tidy yourself while you use the room. Try not to leave bodily fluids in the bathroom. Don’t dye your hair while you’re staying there (yes, I have seen the results of some **** dyeing their hair in a hotel bathroom). You know, treat the place as if someone on a piss poor wage has to come in and clean it up after you, and all the other rooms in the hotel.
Sure, but if you are staying there for a couple of weeks then it is surely saving them time if you don’t want the bed made and towels changed every single day. Or is it just doing them out of a job?
First of all, you do benefit from the cleaning they did before you checked in; tipping encourages good cleaning in general, so a “tipping culture” helps ensure that all travelers, including you, enjoy good service.
Maids, however, are neither paid nor tipped very well; they are usually paid hourly at minimum wage or close to it, and are lucky to get 10% of that in hourly tips. Overtime is scarce, and the work is exhausting and hard on the back and knees.
There will be a “maximum time between changes”. Many hotels won’t change bedsheets daily unless dirty and won’t change towels if you leave them in the location that signals “don’t change it”, but even so, they will change them at least once a week.
I’m in hotels a lot for work too, and like the OP, I usually leave the “Do Not Disturb” sign up the whole time I’m there (between 2 and 7 nights most of the time). When I check out, I base my tip on three things: Number of nights I was there, how messy I’m leaving it, and the cost of living of the area. That way, if I’m there for a week and leave the place a shit-sty, she’ll be tipped pretty well. In someplace like Miami or New England or California, it goes up even more.
That way, I figure she’s getting a decent boost in her hourly wage for the time she spends on cleaning up after me. Plus, for every day she can’t get into my room because of the D.N.D. sign, she’s missing out on potential tips, so I make up for it at the end of my stay.
When I worked as a housekeeper in a Maine tourist town, I was paid hourly (at least min. wage). If I got finished early, I was still on until the shift was over. If there was more than I could do, then someone else would work with me. Some guests would tip, others wouldn’t. We made up the rest by cashing in the left-behind bottles and cans for the deposit, and many times we would score unopened beers that were left because the guest didn’t want to travel with alcohol. Other times you got no tip, no empties, no beer and just a condom stuck to the headboard.
We did appreciate seeing a ‘do not disturb’ sign, it meant we didn’t have to go into the room mid-stay and see what needed to be done. We were happy to give the guest towels if they asked, and if such a guest did stiff us on a tip, we didn’t grumble as much because we didn’t do as much, yet got paid as much by the motel.
I don’t leave tips when I stay in hotels, but I try to generally not be a huge slob. Part of my process for moving out of the room is packing up all of my shit and sacking up any garbage I have (newspapers, old coffee cups whatever) to give the maid one less thing to deal with once I’m out.
Of course, this same process also helps me ensure that I don’t accidentally leave anything behind like a total doof.
You’re not doing them out of a job for the duration of your stay, but some hotels don’t like it if a resident keeps a “Do Not Disturb” on the door 24/7 for several days in a row.
I was a slob who never even used to consider tipping maids until seeing threads here indicating it should be done. So we tipped the maids every day on our trip to the US in April of this year. $2 a day except $5 on check-out day, left prominently in the middle of a pillow where there could be no mistaking who it was for. At our hotel in Washington DC, the maid wrote us little thank you notes, which really made our day.
Hourly wages is far more common, but per room payment is growing. It’s promoted to maids as a way to make more money, but the rarely get enough rooms to make it so. So you do ok on busy weekends, but poorly when the hotel is empty.
Why would they not want to travel with alcohol? They might not be able to take it where they are going, such as on a plane, or to visit their teetotaler relatives or some such.
