Yes, always. $2/night is my usual.
I never do. Well, I think we did after a particularly poor decision to let our five year old eat pizza while sitting in bed and watching TV, but other than that, no.
Funny, when I lived in a hotel in Canada for a year, I did tip the maid. It was a run of the mill Marriot-branded long term type of place. If I were staying that that type of place and lower for only a night or two, I wouldn’t bother. But when living there for such a long time, it just seems appropriate to leave a tip. Mostly we left the “no service” sign hanging on the door except for two to three times per week, so it wasn’t a daily tip. My wife chatted with the Spanish-speaking staff from time to time, and reported to me that tipping wasn’t unusual, but was far from the norm. So… maybe mostly other Merkins?
Same here. Despite that in some hotels, they won’t take the money anyway. I figure that if I’m obstinate enough and leave it there when I leave the room for checkout, they’ll be forced to take their tip.
Usually $2 - $5, unless I’m only staying one night and I’ve found some sort of uncleanliness upon my arrival to the room. Which happens more than I’d like it to.
I travel a lot for work (mostly small towns in California, Nevada, Arizona, and Oregon) and we are typically on a daily per diem so the hotel/motels we stay at range from local mom-and-pops to Motel 6/Super 8 style. The best we usually stay at would be a Best Western-level hotel.
When I travel it is because I’m out doing fieldwork and when I come in at the end of the day I’m usually pretty filthy. I start at $2 per day (left daily under the tv remote) but if the room isn’t decent when I get back then I stop. We will sometimes live in these hotels for months at a time (depending on the project) so it pays to have good relations with the staff.
I usually tip about $1.50-$2.00 a night. I once tipped $20 (back around 1985), but that was because our daughter got sick all over the sheets.
Read Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed and you’ll see why you should tip.
Every single time. My mom was a maid for pretty much all my childhood, and I know from personal experience that a large tip can have a very big impact on a family, and a small tip can just go a long way in making a very, very shitty job less shitty. Plus, all those small tips add up. I always tip at least $2, unless I’ve left some huge mess, then it’s more. I do it automatically now.
I have read Nickel and Dimed and I can see how many people should be paid more, but not how I should tip.
I usually tip about $2/day. I seldom leave a big mess, but I can only imagine what some people do in their hotel rooms and leave for the poor maids to take care of, and I bet they don’t tip at all. I figure I can afford it, and it’s a mostly crummy, thankless job, so why not?
In fact, the last hotel I stayed at had a pre-printed envelope requesting a gratuity, with a place for the maid to write her name. I thought that was a bit much, but I’m not going to punish the help for a management decision so I still left something.
I never have. I tip people who make less than minimum wage because I don’t consider it optional at that point, but I can’t tip everyone for everything, or I’d be just as bad off as the people I was tipping. Honestly, I think this ever-growing trend of tipping everyone for everything just encourages employers to continue paying their employees shit for wages, so I really try not to feed that ideology, but I do anyway sometimes without thinking about it, because it’s so automatic to write in a tip when I see a line on my receipt for it.
I never have. Actually, I’ve never known how to. If you just leave money lying around, how do they know whether they’re supposed to take it?
Plus, I’ve never really felt like the maids were serving me; they’re just working for the hotel, like the guy who mows the hotel’s lawn or cleans the hotel’s pool. Like others have said, maid service isn’t something I particularly want.
But then, I seldom leave a mess behind. If I did, I would feel inclined to leave a tip for whomever had to clean it up.
Ditto.
Unless the room is comped, as happens quite often with me (I’m in the travel industry) then I’ll leave $10 to $20 per night.
And it pays off I assure you. One time I left my wallet in my room, I was at a conference I could not leave but when I got back to my room, my wallet, credit cards and all my cash were tucked under my pillow.
I tip in a variety of ways. I either leave a couple of bucks a night, or leave bus tokens if I have them, or unused subway tickets. Hotel maids work damn hard for very little money. Some hotels have included a percentage for service staff, so it’s best to check on that when you check in.
I was going to mention comped rooms, but figured I’d not since nowadays I only stay in them when I go back to visit family. I also tip more in comped rooms - about $10 - $15 a night.
And it was actually comped rooms where I learned to tip housekeeping 20 years ago. My mother spends roughly a third of every year (total, not all at once) in Atlantic City and she tips everybody. Housekeeping, slot hosts, janitors, cocktail waitresses, maintenance, concierge, etc. etc. etc. Everybody. If you cross her path for some reason and you are working in the hotel/casino, you’re going to get a tip.
She rubbed off on me. I won’t tip when there is bad service, but on the whole I consider myself a generous tipper. And I agree, in most cases it definitely does pay off.
Never - I don’t want maid service in my room anyway. I hate to have strangers mucking about with my stuff. If I’m just staying 2-3 days, I leave the Don’t Disturb Sign on the door the entire time - I don’t change my towels/sheets at home everyday, no reason to do it in a hotel. I also never have cash on me, so leaving 1-2 bucks a day would be stressful (having to remember to get cash, break it into singles).
I am a firm believer in tipping waitstaff who make less than minimum wage, but I dislike tipping in most other situations (haircuts, taxis, Starbucks baristas) etc.
Always. $20 a week, under the pillow, plus a thank-you note.
I worked as a chambermaid when I was a teenager and we had some long term residents. I would never touch any money in their rooms, note or not (we had a guy who dumped his change in the ashtray every night and it grew to a huge stack by the time he left) - but if there is money left in the room after checkout we considered it a tip (even the handfuls of pennies some idiot had strewn about the room, which I had to collect on my hands and knees for fear of killing the vacuum). Of course, if someone left their wallet or some unusually large wad of bills they would have been turned in to the management to be returned to the guest.
I’ve done it, know what kind of scut work it is, therefore I tip. If the room is not clean enough for my liking I tip less (or on one occasion, nothing - with an explanatory note), if they’ve done something above and beyond, I tip more. (I’m in the US).
Yeah. Usually like $10-20 no matter how long I stayed.
I tip servers and pizza delivery people. I tip valets. I tip the kids who wipe off your car at the end of a drive-through car wash. Hotel maids have to put up with a lot more shit (literally) than those people do, so I feel they deserve some extra cash, even if I tidy up the room before I go.
Always. $1-2 a night, left on or under the pillow. Part of it is because my grandmother was a hotel maid, and part of it is because they are cleaning up after me. I’m in the US.
A year ago when I visited home, the maids used the hotel stationery to write me a thank you note for the tips. It made me glad I did it. A note like that isn’t something you get from anyone else you tip.
I always tip $3 to $5 a night