What is the appropriate amount to tip housekeeping for a 6 night stay in Alexandria, VA?
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I tip about $5 per night, along the way. (I don’t think most places have the same people cleaning the same rooms every day, so I wouldn’t wait til the end)
Some days I don’t have any cash, and I don’t tip. I try to, however.
I leave 5 to 10 dollars every morning. Don’t leave one big tip at the end of your stay, or the only person who will get tipped is the lucky one to do your room that day.
I’m generally in the $5 to $10 per day range myself, depending on the cost of the room, and what I’ve essentially asked them to do (i.e. have I had the “do not disturb” sign up a lot and they have barely been in the room.
I have to admit, that I haven’t though about a daily tip, as others have mentioned. I have to do that.
My gf is in charge of hotel room tipping. She daily leaves $5 in the US and $10 outside of the US.
If I am traveling alone, she will text a reminder to me about it, but I usually leave the “do not disturb” sign up the entire time. I leave a $5, but nobody takes it so I do.
We stay at dog-friendly hotels and after we unpack, it looks like Beirut. But everything is in its particular place and we don’t need Housekeeping straightening up. “Do not disturb” sign is up for the duration, we pick up after ourselves before leaving and leave $5 on check-out.
Moved to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I tip at the beginning . One night, no but over that it’s 4 to five bucks a day.
Why more when you are outside of the US when tipping is much less of a thing world-wide than in the States?
I confess I try to avoid coughing up for anything that isn’t itemised on a bill. You want to charge me? bill me. I’ve never left a tip for housekeeping and never noticed any downside to it.
The downside isn’t yours, but the housekeeper’s. It’s not the worst job in the world, but it’s not near the top either.
Tipping a housekeeper isn’t required, nor even as “socially required” as a waitstaff at a restaurant. I do it because I have plenty of money and the person who cleans the room probably doesn’t.
I do at least $200/night, and I call in an outside maid service to clean the room before I leave. And I tip them as well.
My gf thinks (and I tend to agree) that people generally have it easier in the US than in the places we vacation (typically Caribbean islands).
From my point of view, moderately extravagant tipping while vacationing leads to better service overall and therefore a better vacation.
Cleaning hotel rooms is a sucky job. When I was an interpreter, I worked several times with Deaf people who were doing job training as hotel room service people. The job is physically difficult, and monotonous, plus, management tends not to treat them especially well.
I also learned that tips really make their day.
I tip about $5 a day, unless I have been especially messy. If I have been there with a dog or a baby, I’ve tipped a little more. Also, if I’ve had the DND sign up so the room hasn’t been cleaned for more than a couple of days, and the person cleaning it is going to have a more difficult time than usual, I leave a little extra as well.
When I didn’t have a lot of money, and it was a struggle to leave a tip (and I was staying in the cheapest of places), I still would manage a couple of dollars. Something was better than nothing, I figured.
$5 a day for me.
I just left a hotel this afternoon after 2 nights. I didn’t have housekeeping done, I just got new towels one day when they knocked. I still left $10, but left it today for whoever was going to do the work today.
$5/day has been about it for a long time AFAIK. Getting whittled down gradually by even moderate inflation I guess. Although I have the feeling more people do this now than used to. But somebody said they don’t, and that’s not so unusual either AFAIK.
I don’t see a general ‘solution’ (if it needs one) to the fact we are financially comfortable and some other people aren’t. Following the logic of tipping more because we have more, maybe we should leave $200 as somebody joked (I assume). That wouldn’t really dent our finances if we compensated by scaling back our contributions to charity which are much larger given how many times we stay at hotels in a year (even correcting for tax benefits). If a tip is more than ‘customary’ it is really is kind of charity: the person is working, but getting paid plus ‘customary’ tips. Tips and tipping are hard to grasp in a really logical way I find. We just stick to ‘customary’ or a little more. Rigorously defending tipping amounts is difficult.
We leave it all at the end. A place where employees treat one another reasonably would divvy it up, and it goes beyond being my problem if not, IMO.
$5 a day, same as in town.
when I leave a tip, it is $5.
Most of the time I don’t-but it is a habit I should develop. Occasionally I have found discrete envelopes with explanations from the manager about how nice it is to tip the cleaning staff, but usually it is personal initiative.
I fully agree about tipping every day if you tip at all. Often the cleaning staff changes daily.
Thanks for tipping! My college daughter is cleaning rooms this summer, Marquette MI at the Hampton Inn on Lake Superior in case your heading up that way! lol
Tips and leftover booze are the main perks. Her first day she took home some curry found in the fridge and a bottle of EVOO that was left behind. 
Leftover booze? Never heard of that.
It’s 6 a.m., and you made me smile.