Can we talk hotel tipping?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I worked for a major hotel chain - here were approved tips for business travel - $1.00 for the valet who gets your car; $2 for the hotel maid (paid each night of your stay because not the same maid cleans your room every day) and $5 for bell staff if they bring up multiple bags to your room.

What year was this? This seems super low.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I worked for a major hotel chain - here were approved tips for business travel - $1.00 for the valet who gets your car; $2 for the hotel maid (paid each night of your stay because not the same maid cleans your room every day) and $5 for bell staff if they bring up multiple bags to your room.

What year was this? This seems super low.

Agree. I have almost always done $5 for car valet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I tip 10% of room rate per day. If I stay at $2000 per day resort, I tip $200 per day. If I stay at $5000 per day resort, I tip $500 per day. I distribute the tip among various service providers. And I treat service providers as fellow human beings and they appreciate that very much. I don’t behave like a pseudo royalty!

Dumb..

You exacerbate the problem, because the hotel takes advantage of you, the customer throwing around stupid amounts of money. You enable hotels to not pay livable wages.

Nothing is worse than when you try to check into a hotel while on a business trip and they aggressively funnel you towards a bellhop who takes your luggage, or you need to give your luggage for holding because you have arrived early and your room isn't ready and you are expected to tip a bag handler. I almost never carry cash these days, I am not going to use my personal cash for tipping while on a business trip, and I am not allowed to throw around money as I please on a business credit card even if I were somehow able to tip on a credit card. The you are put into a very awkward situation where your bags are brought to the room and you have no money and no way to tip them and they stand there waiting for a tip.

The charade is stupid beyond belief and US tipping culture is asinine. I don't tip the mailman. I don't tip the garbage man. I do not tip the mechanic. I do not tip the plumber. I do not tip the nurse at the hospital. I do not tip my doctor. I do not tip the Amazon delivery guy. I do not tip the grocery store bagger. Everyone needs to do their jobs. If they don't like the salary then they should get a new one. That way if hotels are paying so low and everyone leaves for higher paying jobs it will force hotels to raise wages and stop the ludicrous culture of trying to force labor compensation onto the guest.
.

I do hate the aggressive go towards the bellhop when I’m perfectly fine carrying my one bag!

[Anonymous]

Wow. $20-30 a night for housekeeping when it should be included in the price of your stay? I don’t know anyone who does that much; maybe $25 or so for a week. Tipping seems out of control to me.

Agreed, this is insane. On average, a hotel maid spends about thirty minutes per room per day. For those who are suggesting tipping $20/day, do you really think that she should get $80k per year, plus her regular salary? In what universe is vacuuming, changing sheets, and such worth anywhere near that?

I'm with Emily Post on this:

https://emilypost.com/advice/general-tipping-guide

Bellman: $2 first bag, $1 each additional bag
Hotel maid: $2-5/day
Valet: $2-5 when car is returned

Emily Post says to tip the hotel maid daily. I prefer to leave the tip at the end of my stay. I realize that there are different maids each day, but this should balance out over time with different departure dates. I strongly believe that tips should be left as a reward for good service after the service has been provided. I cannot judge the quality of the service before then, so it makes no sense to tip in advance.

I will tip more for extraordinarily good service. I will not tip (or will provide a very low tip) for poor service. I mostly travel alone and don't make a mess. I don't have unusually heavy bags. Obviously, I would tip more if I had unique needs and hotel employees were willing to serve those needs.

[Anonymous]

I might leave $10 for the housekeeper after staying a few days but mostly I save all my tip money for servers in restaurants. They do not make minimum wage in their paychecks.

Not entirely true. A waiter's base pay plus tips must equal the minimum wage for that location. Base pay for tipped employees is typically lower than minimum wage. If he does not receive enough tips to meet that amount, then the employer must make up the difference.

[Anonymous]

If I stay at $5000 per day resort, I tip $500 per day. I distribute the tip among various service providers.

Out of curiosity: why? Shouldn't the tip depend upon how many hotel services you use and the quality of the service being provided? If you carry your own bags, don't use the concierge, don't use the valet, don't eat at the hotel restaurant, and don't make a mess, is there really any reason to tip that much?

(And do you often stay at $5k/day resorts?)

[Anonymous]

This is the tipping guide from the American Hotel and Lodging Association:

https://www.ahla.com/sites/default/files/guestGratuityGuide.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:$0 in tips.

It's not my responsibility to pay employees' salaries and livable wages. The hotel should be doing that. If the employees don't like the wages offered, they can find another job. I will not be tipped to death. It's also a giant pain in the ass expectation from staff if you have to travel on business. You're not there for vacation. Very rarely do many organizations give you free cash to spend. You have to pay for everything with a credit card, which means you can't tip anyway even if you wanted to. I sure as hell am not going to use my own personal money to tip while on a business trip they I am forced to be on.

+1. I have no clue why only US has such a strong tipping culture. In parts of Europe and Asia that I travelled, tips are 100% optional and generally round up. If collectively, we stop tipping the folks, hotels would need to start paying livable wages.

[Anonymous]

Another vote for $0. We pay to stay in hotels, don’t cause trouble, don’t leave the rooms filthy. I’m not paying extra.

The only time we tipped the housekeeper was when our baby had an accident. I cleaned up what I could and then left a tip with a friendly note when we left.

Tops should be for special service only.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I worked for a major hotel chain - here were approved tips for business travel - $1.00 for the valet who gets your car; $2 for the hotel maid (paid each night of your stay because not the same maid cleans your room every day) and $5 for bell staff if they bring up multiple bags to your room.

What year was this? This seems super low.

DP. Do you have an online source with recent guidance to tip housekeeping $10-20 a night? I'm not finding it, and I looked.

Not sure where people are getting this. Again, I don't object to people spending their money this way, but I do object in a desultory way to labelling it as standard practice if it isn't.

[Anonymous]

https://www.indeed.com/career/hotel-housekeeper/salaries

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://www.indeed.com/career/hotel-housekeeper/salaries

Yep, agreed it is low, but I don't think it's my job to make sure they are paid decently. Like the other poster said, in the current labor market shortage, they are free to find another job, or qualify for lower tax brackets and other goverment subsidies available to them. With this low wage, their kids would qualify for need based scholarship etc (which I fully support). I honestly don't think I get a far superior service in US vs the other places that I traveled to, people are the same everywhere.

I would rather donate to charity than allow the hotel chains/owners to get away by paying min wages to their workers by expectating that hotel guests would pay the workers a fair salary in the form of tips.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.indeed.com/career/hotel-housekeeper/salaries

Yep, agreed it is low, but I don't think it's my job to make sure they are paid decently. Like the other poster said, in the current labor market shortage, they are free to find another job, or qualify for lower tax brackets and other goverment subsidies available to them. With this low wage, their kids would qualify for need based scholarship etc (which I fully support). I honestly don't think I get a far superior service in US vs the other places that I traveled to, people are the same everywhere.

I would rather donate to charity than allow the hotel chains/owners to get away by paying min wages to their workers by expectating that hotel guests would pay the workers a fair salary in the form of tips.

+1. Grocery checkout workers are also low paid and they are providing a service by bagging your groceries and we don't tip them either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Wow. $20-30 a night for housekeeping when it should be included in the price of your stay? I don’t know anyone who does that much; maybe $25 or so for a week. Tipping seems out of control to me.

Agreed, this is insane. On average, a hotel maid spends about thirty minutes per room per day. For those who are suggesting tipping $20/day, do you really think that she should get $80k per year, plus her regular salary? In what universe is vacuuming, changing sheets, and such worth anywhere near that?

I'm with Emily Post on this:

https://emilypost.com/advice/general-tipping-guide

Bellman: $2 first bag, $1 each additional bag
Hotel maid: $2-5/day
Valet: $2-5 when car is returned

Emily Post says to tip the hotel maid daily. I prefer to leave the tip at the end of my stay. I realize that there are different maids each day, but this should balance out over time with different departure dates. I strongly believe that tips should be left as a reward for good service after the service has been provided. I cannot judge the quality of the service before then, so it makes no sense to tip in advance.

I will tip more for extraordinarily good service. I will not tip (or will provide a very low tip) for poor service. I mostly travel alone and don't make a mess. I don't have unusually heavy bags. Obviously, I would tip more if I had unique needs and hotel employees were willing to serve those needs.

+1 This is the standard. I tip the maid $5, the valet $5 only on return of car, and the bellman $5 (but I have given a 20 on occasion when I didn’t have change). I find this results is excellent service since about half don’t tip at all.

The people giving $20 to the maids, that is awesome but highly unusual. That would result in a 6 figure salary and a coveted job, in reality being a maid is about the least coveted job in the hotel and lots of $0 tips and $2 tips.