HotelChatter

Please. Those goons will divide your tip up equally between the departments of me, myself, and I. Better yet, why not tip each day if you know you're going to be there over several days-- then you know the person who cleaned your room gets your tip. Don't assume the front desk is so organized. Or even better still-- introduce yourself to your housekeeper and give her your tip in person... she'll know you're an appreciative person and will give your room a little extra attention. :)

if you're there for multiple nights, you always make sure to start things off by leaving something the first time the room gets cleaned.  if you get a repeat room attendant that always bodes well.

it's especially important to tip if you're one of those use 8 towels and 4 washcloths and the coffee maker and the bath robe and the pillows in the closet and the extra blanket types. it takes twice as long to clean the rooms for those kinds of guests.

I'd better pay for nothing then would hold 5 dollars and feel like i'm a winner... Surely tips are necessary. There, for example, guys write about less sums. Think it's true not for travel in "gold-billion-countries" but for China, Egypt and so on

I often forget, which is terrible, I know. But when I remember, it's a few bucks on the desk. I tend not to use housekeeping services too much, but I do realize they clean the room before I get there.

I always have beef that they wake me up though. Honestly, all hotels should figure out a way of getting their staffs to clean the rooms when most people are probably not sleeping!

Five bucks a day, every day, left on the desk, with a smiley face and "Thank You" written on the hotel memo pad. It's a nice thing to do, and if nothing else, it lowers the chances that your stuff will be rifled through.

The first commenter is right. That "leave it at the front desk" advice is truly moronic. Don't do that.

$5. Everyday. On the desk. With a "thank you". These people have what may be one of the worst, most unappreciated, UNDERPAID positions in the entire hospitality industry. It may be my white-male-upper-class-guilt talking, but this is def a travel mantra must for me on any trip.

I always forget. honestly.

$5 for every day, folded with a note (smiley face and a "Thanks!") on the nightstand, though maybe the desk is a better location?

I leave between $2-5 on the bed every day in order to address the different housekeeper issue.  The amount varies mostly based on how many small bills I have on me.  Leaving it at the front desk seems like a bad idea if you want the money to actually get to the housekeeper who cleaned your room!

When I remember, and when I have small bills....ends up being about 25% of the time.

A $3-5 tip is very gratifying but DO NOT leave it where anyone but the housekeeper will get to it. Butlers and housekeeper supervisors will most likely steal it if they see it just laying there even though they know it's for the maid.

HINT: Try to leave it where only a good maid will get to it (e.g. inside the pillowcase, under the bed, etc).

My old lady does this for a living. It's a really hard job. Some people are considerate and know a human being will clean the room, others are not considerate at all and do things in the room you don't want to read about.

As someone who is an active member in Front Office Management in the industry I can honestly say the two comment concerning a tip being stolen must have experience in a Holiday Inn enviroment.  Money in a hotel whether it be a tip or petty cash is tracked hand to hand and post to post.  So unless its a very shady person or a very shady hotel the money get to each person that had a hand in cleaning that room.

Yeah leave it at the front desk hahah.

But yeah, it is a good idea to tip your housekeeper as they will be less likely to justify stealing from you. Also, is a nice thing to do lol.

Well, as a GM of a Holiday Inn I can atest only to my staff. Many times guest's have left tips for the housekeeping staff with us. It is always divided between the housekeepers who cleaned the room if it was a mulitple night stay. Most of my housekeeping staff rely on their tips to buy lunch, gas, etc... it is a nice suprise to them when they get it. They do work very hard and most times are underpaid. Remember your maid when you use EVERYTHING in the room, throw up in the room after a long wedding weekend or when you decide to revert back to your college days and stack beer cans between the adjoining doors!
If you can, leave it with your housekeeper- I liked the idea of leaving it in a place only a housekeeper would (should be) looking. If they find something one time they will always make sure they look there in every room.

i am a housekeeper at a marriott let me say it is a very hard job but i love it. there are some people who come to hotels and don't care how they treat the room because when they leave and come back it's clean. tips aren't expected but is icing on the cake for a hard day at work.

to the person who said housekeepers wake people up you have to understand we don't do it on purpose. every morning we get a list of rooms that are checking out and stay overs could be from 16 rooms to 20 rooms a day. check outs take 30min or more depending on the shape of the room and stay overs take about 15min-20 min. so thats why we start so early knocking on the doors to see which rooms are vacant so we can try to clean all the rooms in 8 hrs which doesn't always happen i work about 10-12 hrs a day depending on the day.

I'm in this catergory as well.  I have best intentions and usually remember as I am pulling away from the hotel.  Maybe the hotels should encourage or remind us with a small envelope on the desk.  Reading the posts does say to me that it is a good practice to get into.  I always wondered how many people actually leave the maids a tip.

I leave between $2-$5, depending on the circumstances (number of beds, people, towels used, etc.), and ALWAYS in the room - specifically, on the pillow/bed. This way, whoever does the work pockets the cash! And I'll often get a "Thank You" note, which is unnecessary, but so very nice to see!

I'll tip $2-5$ every day and always leave it on the pillow.

I read somewhere that is is nice to leave small dollar store items for the housekeeper.  What kinds of things would be appreciated in Mexico?  Any ideas?

Of course I tip, and that is only because my girlfriend and I use towels and throw them on the floor. We never make a bed or clean up after ourselves. The place would be a wreck. But just like on a cruise ship. I dont tip until the last day. Usually 3/day.

I worked housekeeping for 2 yrs and when I got my first tip I was sooo Happy, housekeepers dont make bank and alot of times I would use my tips to keep me fueled for the day! Its hard for Housekeeping to come later in the day because they have a lot of rooms to clean I know I always started off with my check outs first and wouldnt knock on a stay over door before 11 am unless the light was on. Housekeeping for sure was one of the Hardest jobs i had to do.

You do not tip housekeepers, unless you personally want to. An average housekeeper makes $17/hour at minimum. The hotel pays them for their job. Their only duty is to clean your room. But like a waitress the BELLMAN/DOORMAN get paid minimum wage because they are classified as a tipped position. So rethink your tip when you have someone come to your room to move all your bags because you can not lift them yourself, load them into a cab and then you not even say Thank You.

housekeeper's don't make "their money's worth." Right now, during the summer while on break from university, I work full-time at a hotel as a housekeeper. And I only get paid $8/hour. Not $17/hour minimum as you claim.

I've worked in housekeeping for approximately 5 years. You would be LUCKY to even get close to $17/hour. Most starting wages for housekeeping is $8-11...11 if you're lucky.
The only high end paying positions in housekeeping are for supervisory and management levels...and even the cap for that is around $21. Most housekeepers work long days, picking up your garbage, cleaning your toilet and changing your sheets. Why would you not tip for that? If you dont want to tip, then dont have your room cleaned.
Its a tough job and housekeeprs are severely under-appreciated for the things they must do...wouldnt you like a tip for cleaning up vomit off the bathroom floor? or changing urine soaked sheets?

Tip tip tip! You have no idea how rare it really is and how good it makes them feel!...if you dont want to tip, then put your garbage in one bag and pull the sheets and linens off the bed at least! thats sometimes just as good as a tip :)

From all the comments I can see that I'm probably not tipping enough.  But I do try to tip every single day so that the folks doing the work get the tip.  I usually leave the money on my pillow.  Leaving a smiley note is a nice touch - I'll have to keep that in mind.

Where do you live? I have moved around alot...worked in 8 diffrent Hotels ranging from Tn to Las Vegas and now washington the MOST ive seen a housekeeper make was $12.00hr and she had been with this company for 6 years. So I'am very curious as to where you live that housekeepers manage to make bank!

It's strange that tipping the housekeeper is not as common as tipping the bellboy. Maybe TV is partly to blame for that - or do you see the cleaning lady tipped there? I have to admit that I'm somewhat guilty of this. Thanks to this article I will pay more attention to it in the future. Just leaving tip on the desk or bed never occured to me as I like to do things personal - but it's a great idea!

did this type of work myself, over the summers when I was at college and its hard work with low pay - a tip means a lot and you definately feel more inclined to provide a very good service. I always promised myself that when I could afford to stay in the type of hotels where I worked that I would tip.

I always have a problem with tipping because I feel that I have paid for the service being provided, until I moved to Panama. I have a tour company in Boquete, Panama; although our company pays more than the required base wage of about $1.25 an hour, it is still so little to live on, even here. In Panama, just a couple of dollars in tip can be as much as some people make in a day.

I recently started working in a B&B which is basically a decorated (or themed) hotel room where you also get a home-cooked breakfast; room cleaning is not that different from a hotel with a few exceptions. No, I don't clean 20 rooms a day, but I do clean some of the smallest details in the room for guests. Every wrinkle is smoothed out, all bed-skirts are precisely placed, vacuum under all beds everyday, all floors are vacuumed and then mopped(if its hardwood). I literally wash ceilings regularly and around door-frames, not to mention some refrigerators and full sets of dishes for each room. I have been working there for a few months now and I haven't been tipped more than 3 times. People just don't consider it, or think that you should give the tip to the front desk. I deal with everything that people overlook and shrug off and I take it all at $10 an hour. People should be a little more considerate simply because they don't consider how hard they make our jobs. Within 2 months I've dealt with numerous blood-stained beds, one incident was bad enough that we needed to replace the whole mattress. Ive had guests completely move furniture around and even purposefully leave last night's drunken messes just because 'they are on vacation'. I've even had guests catch me cleaning a room and ask me favors and questions and still never leave me a tip. If you are still wondering if you should leave a tip or not then consider this- even if you are not tipping out of courtesy, perhaps it's in your best interest to be nice simply because nothing says 'I'm sorry' or 'Please keep this quiet' or even 'Please don't steal my identity' quite like a $5 bill. Though 90% of us would probably never do any of this, it's still very easy to look through your garbage, or even sneak into your room, some even have access to phone numbers or even credit card numbers. So please be kind to your house-keepers...they are still people, and they deal with the stuff you just left in the toilet 30 minutes before you checked out.

Like patricksw, I've gotten in the habit of leaving a daily tip, so if there's a different crew each day, the person doing the work each day gets something. (Until about a year ago, I hadn't heard of this approach, and only left something at checkout.)

Since ATMs dispense mostly 20s, so that's usually what I have most of, I always make a point of getting some change so I can leave $2-5 on my way out each morning.  I often leave a "thank you" note, and if I have special requests such as asking for extra coffee packets, I leave an extra tip.

For CaroPhila, always put up your Do Not Disturb sign on the door if you don't want to be woken up! If there isn't one in the room, ask for one at the front desk, or ask them to make sure the room isn't cleaned before a time you specify. The housekeeping staff doesn't WANT to wake you up. They just have a finite amount of time to clean every room in the building, and if they waited until after noon to start, there wouldn't be clean rooms to check into.

Being a Housekeeper myself, I know what hard work it is.
I rarely ever travel and haven't stayed in a hotel for over seven years so I've never tipped, but knowing how much work this job is now, I will surely tip when I travel again.

Tipping everyday can cause problems.  It is like if they see a tip they will clean your room better than the rooms that left nothing which isn't right.  They should clean all rooms with equal effort and not discriminate.

Besides, a multiple stay room has less work because they only change the dirty towels and tidy the bed [unless you request them to change the sheets].

If they are not compensated enough then they should take it up with management and not make the guests top up their wages.

Most of them are also unionized so it is not like they are slaves.  It is a job.

As a former Front Of House manager and a current Director of Housekeeping, I am appalled and offended at most of the comments on this thread. Let me address 2 things...
1) Front office staff are not "goons" they're people just like you, yet clearly happier. Unless you're staying at some shady hotel, the staff will gladly turn tips in to housekeeping because most hotel employees work as a team.

2)Housekeepers DO have the hardest, least respected, and least paid job in a hotel. No idea where $17 came from. Did you even research that before you posted it?? My housekeeping staff makes $11/hour.
If you are going to leave a tip in a room every day of your stay, make sure that it's clearly marked as a tip for them or hand it directly to them. Otherwise they may not take it because they dont want to be accused of stealing.

Bottom line is comments like these just make me realize what I've always thought; many people out there think that hotel workers are dumb pieces of trash and treat us like so. The truth is people who work in the hotel industry work their butts off. We work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to serve you. Have a little more respect.  

We do more than just "change the dirty towels and tidy the bed" in a stay, copan. We do almost everything we would in a checkout except change the bedding unless, like you said, the guest requests it.

Also, they put a freeze on our wages where I work so I'm not due for a raise until next year when minimum wage goes up again.

I'm not saying everyone should tip. I just think people should have a little more respect for Housekeepers.

Copan, you sound just like everyone else who tries to justify why you shouldn't have to give tips at all. I have never discriminated rooms, I clean all rooms equally despite how many days they have stayed. When I find a tip in the room I don't clean the room 'extra well' while slacking off on the guy who didn't tip, I don't know of anyplace that would do that or what source you heard that gave you that impression. The tip is just a nice consideration that keeps us going. Now I will be honest, It does bother me when someone really makes my job hard and doesn't tip, but I would still clean the room the same way.
A lot of employers consider tips a part of wages, bartenders being one example. Considering that almost all housekeepers get poor pay, management wouldn't really be concerned about upping pay for a disgruntled worker. If you don't want to tip then you don't have to, you are never required and it is NOT your job to be topping up our wages. But, don't go around justifying why you shouldn't have to tip. Your not that special.    

I grew up working a few jobs that relied on tips, so I get that these people need the extra cash to make up for the usual lousy pay. But even if I did not have previous employment with tips, I just could not imagine staying in a hotel room without leaving some money. It is my way of saying thank you for doing a great job.

It is the little things that go a long way.

Andrew
TheBrooklynNomad.com

Unless travelling w/kids - then a little extra at the end to compensate for the horrible mess!

When I stay at a hotel I keep the do not disturb sign on my door for the entire stay so I do not get regular room cleanings. I then try to keep the room clean during my stay and will still leave a 5-10 dollar tip for those who will clean the room after I leave. I used to work in a tip type job and I know how hard it can be.

I own a 40 units Economy hotel and like most economy hotels like Econolodge, Days Inn etc i pay minimum wage to our housekeepers which is here in MO is $7.25. I think Hotel housekeeping is the toughest jobs. Before owning my first hotel, i worked as housekeeper my self, then manager and then started with owning small motel with my savings & with the help of my relatives & friends $. Few years of housekeeping means killing your Back. It takes a lot to BEND your back and clean bathrooms after bathrooms and beds after beds. I have seen everyday people trashing rooms, leaving toilet unflush, etc.. Our maids hardly receive any tips. There are few people who leave tips for them. They get really excited when they get em. Few people don't leave tip but write thank you note and put goods comments for housekeeper. I have seen my maids really appreciate those comments. They save notes and comments like they received any trophy. I suggest, if you are on budget and not leaving tips for housekeeper, please atleast write a thank you notes if you find your room nice & clean. Housekeeping is the hardest job... After reading all comments its like wages paid $10- $11 per hour, i feel maids around here very underpaid. However, i am sure $10 to $12 per hours are paid to maids at Hilton,Marriot and other upscale Hotel.At economy hotels like Days Inn, econolodge, best western, quality inn and independent hotels pay Less then $9 per hours and they don't recieve much tips like at Upscale Hotels housekeeper. Just imagine, Motel 6 selling from $35 to $55, what would their employer afford to pay clean their rooms besides all Heavy franchise royalty fees, other big expenses? I doubt any Motel 6 and other similar chain and non-chain Hotel pay more then $8/hour. I think if guest don't tip its alright as long as when they check out they don't trash roooms so much for Housekeepers. Also, now a days there is new growing trend in Hotel and that is they pay flat fee to Housekeeper $3.50 for each check out room and $2 to $2.5 for each stay overs cleaning room. I don't know about upscale hotels.

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/hotels/2005-03-24-maid-for-a-day_x.htm

The average hourly pay for hotel housekeepers in various U.S. cities:

 New York City $14.74
 San Francisco $11.57
 Atlanta $8.48
 New Orleans $6.64

Source: UNITE HERE

Maid for a day
USA TODAY's Kitty Bean Yancey went behind the scenes as a trainee with hotel housekeeper Gladis Lee at the 217-room Loews Annapolis Hotel in Maryland, where Lee has worked for 16 years.

  Maid to measure: Gladis Lee makes her appointed rounds, a job that gets harder every year.  
By Tim Dillon, USA TODAY

A pet peeve for many travelers is that jarring morning rap on their hotel room door followed by the announcement: "Housekeeping."

On the other side of the door is someone like Gladis Lee.

She doesn't mean to pierce your cocoon: It's just that she has to clean 15 or more rooms in a single 7½-hour shift. Unless the "do not disturb" sign is out, each must be checked off her list.

Hotel housekeepers don't get a lot of respect. They're among the lower-paid staffers in the industry; $7 an hour is a typical starting wage. And their job is physically demanding, from pushing heavy carts to hoisting dozens of mattresses daily to scrubbing toilets.

"A housekeeper's job is getting harder," says Amanda Cooper, a spokeswoman for UNITE HERE, which represents about 50,000 unionized hotel room cleaners in the USA and Canada and is pushing for better wages and working conditions for them and other hotel workers. "Occupancy is up, amenities are increasing. The bedding is thicker, and there are more pillows. It adds to the workload."

Here's how Lee's day unfolds:

8 a.m.

Lee, 46, a trim and vivacious native of Honduras with her frosted brown hair in a French twist, suits up in a blue pinstriped smock and navy pants. She joins a dozen fellow housekeepers for the morning meeting in the windowless employee cafeteria, translating instructions for those who speak only Spanish.

Today will be busy, supervisor Tammy Taylor says: There are 37 check-outs and 160 guests staying in the hotel. Most women draw 15 or 16 rooms to clean. With a novice in tow, Lee -- whose exceptional performance has made her an Honor Housekeeper at the hotel -- is assigned 10.

By Tim Dillon, USA TODAY
Half hour per room: Bedmaking is her favorite task.

8:15 a.m.

Taylor gathers the crew in Room 420 for a pre-shift refresher on what needs to be done better. Don't forget to clean water spots off the shower heads and polish them carefully, she says. Do the same for the bathtub drains, and be sure to remove hair from them.

8:30 a.m.

Lee loads her cart with bath products and linens. Then she knocks three times on the door of Room 320. No answer.

After using her pass card, she goes into action -- stripping the bed in a flash. Sheets are changed daily at this $135-and-up-nightly hotel, which is time consuming. Lee sizes up the mattress pad and white quilted bedspread. They're stain-free and won't be changed.

Then, gold earrings bobbing, she demonstrates Loews' bedmaking standard. Pillows aren't just stuffed into cases -- ends are neatly tucked in. The blanket and top sheet also get tucked in a way that's hard for a beginner to master.

A room typically takes half an hour to clean -- 15 minutes for the bedroom, 15 in the bath. It's not as simple as cleaning a house: All is prescribed, down to adorning extra rolls of toilet paper with decorative paper bands. A card under the bed boasts: "Yes, we've looked under here, too."

Grabbing antibacterial cleaner, Lee wipes down almost every exposed hard surface -- even the arms on the desk chair. In the bathroom, she scrubs tiles, tub and toilet and washes the marble floor on hands and knees. Last task is vacuuming. She answers questions while in constant motion.

Her pay, she says, is $9.75 an hour -- about $650 in her pocket every two weeks. Unlike some other non-union hotel housekeepers, she does get sick days, health and life insurance, and after 16 years, three weeks of precious vacation time a year.

Tips aren't reliable. "A lot of people don't leave nothing," she says. Men tip better, in her experience. If she gets $20, "that's a good day."

Today isn't starting well: The occupant of 320 has left nothing.

9:45 a.m.

Slowed by teaching duties, Lee takes an hour to do the first room. So it's time to divide tasks and pick up the pace in 321.

There's a folded dollar bill on the bedspread, next to a tube of Chapstick. "I can't take it, because I'm not sure it's a tip," Lee says.

At least the room -- barely disturbed by the businesswoman occupant -- isn't hard to straighten.

"The meeting people are easier," Lee says. Not like the rowdy wedding parties and weekenders who make Sunday checkout time hell from a housekeeper's point of view.

10:15 a.m.

Room 326 is a room with a king bed -- tougher to change now that the hotel has added hard-to-lift cushy mattresses. Lee is hitting her stride, spritzing room freshener, deftly twisting a hand towel and washcloth into fan-shaped origami artwork that decorates every bathtub rim. After two unsuccessful stabs at replicating it, her helper throws in the towel.

10:45 p.m.

Room 329's a breeze. It's occupied by one of the "meeting people" who's a neatnik.

11:09 a.m.

Oh no, Room 330's a checkout. These rooms get the deepest cleaning. Virtually every surface is supposed to be scrubbed or swiped. Yet again, there's no tip.

11:35 a.m.

With five rooms down, it's time to break for the free lunch provided in the staff cafeteria. Hotel general manager Larry Beiderman stops by. He did a housekeeper's job once under Lee's direction. "I had no idea what it entailed. It took me about four hours to clean one room.

"We should make all hotel guests do this," he jokes. "Then they'd have more appreciation."

12:12 p.m.

After skipping 332, whose occupant turned down maid service, Lee finds stuff on the mattress pad of 331. Curly dark hair and flaky skin. At least the mattress isn't soaked with blood or other liquid that would mean a mattress change.

12:45 p.m.

Room 327 is another check-out. Lee changes the bed in five minutes- the time it takes her helper to stuff two pillow cases correctly. Bedmaking is her favorite part, she says. "I like the way they look afterward ... neat."

By Tim Dillon, USA TODAY
In the bathroom: She scrubs tiles, tub and toilet and washes the marble floor on her hands and knees.

1:10 p.m.

Lee is happy with what she finds in 328. "Two people staying in the room, but no one took a shower." That saves cleaning time.

1:35 p.m.

Hooray, 322, Lee's last room, poses no challenge.

2 p.m.

Time for the second of two 15-minute breaks Lee gets daily. The first was missed because her helper wasn't up to speed. Lee puffs a Marlboro Light in the garage smoking area and says one reason she doesn't look for a higher-paying job is "so I can be with my kids after school." Divorced, she lives with her mother and her 9- and 7-year-old daughters, spending $500 monthly on rent. She sends money to an older daughter in Honduras.

2:15 p.m.

Her rooms done, Lee helps others catch up. In Room 350, she whips the bed into shape while a colleague does the bathroom. She and her trainee pitch in on 353 and 356. Lee looks as fresh as in the morning; her pace hasn't slowed. "But I'm tired," she says. "Having less rooms to do would be nicer."

Her helper is exhausted. Even Loews Hotels CEO Jonathan Tisch, who played housekeeper for a day to see what employees face, calls it "the hardest job." He couldn't get the hang of bedmaking, either.

2:57 p.m.

Room 357 makes a housekeeper's heart sink, especially near shift's end. This is no quicker picker-upper -- it's a pig sty. Messy beds. Clothes strewn on the floor. Dirty glasses. Clutter on every surface. Toilet that needs scrubbing. And a tip? Dream on.

But it could be worse. Lee and other maids have tales of spilled booze, used condoms, baby spit-up, damage by all sorts of body fluids, carpets covered with dog hair.

3:12 p.m.

Up and down the halls, housekeepers race to finish. In some cases, standards slip. Glasses are hand-washed in a sink to avoid a time-consuming trip to fetch dishwasher-sterilized ones. A housekeeper who runs out of cleaning fluid swipes surfaces with a water-dampened washcloth.

But in Room 363, Lee sticks to the rules. Even when a pillow clearly has not been slept on, she slips on a fresh case. Novices find the routine daunting, she says. It takes a week to train a housekeeper here; many end up quitting.

3:35 p.m.

Lee helps Ana Maria Flores catch up in 226, 232 and 231. Yesterday, Flores says in Spanish, she had to do 14 check-outs. Not one left her a propina (tip).

By 4 p.m., when Lee punches out, she has cleaned all or part of 17 rooms. She leaves to care for her kids, no extra money in hand.

Her helper heads home, too -- bone-weary and never again to take a clean hotel room for granted.

TO TIP OR NOT TO TIP?  

Most travelers tip the bellman who carries their bags - but not the staffer who makes their bed and scrubs the toilet.

About half of 137 USA Vacationers Panelists who took part in a write-in survey said they never tip a housekeeper or do so only occasionally.

The 30 who never do offered reasons ranging from thinking it's not customary, to believing cleaning should be included in the room rate, to balking at the thought of one more outstretched palm.

"I had never thought of it until this question," wrote Bill Roe of Bellingham, Wash. "I think it's because there's no 'guilt factor.' Housekeepers are mostly invisible."

The average U.S. hotel housekeeper tip for good housekeeping is $2 to $5 a night. Leave it in an envelope or with a scrawled thank-you as housekeepers are trained to leave money not clearly intended for them. Mike Lynn, a Cornell University Hotel School associate professor who studies tipping, cites polls that found only a third of hotel guests tip housekeepers. "The social norm is that you do (tip), though not everyone knows it," he says. Many of the 71 panelists who tip do it daily to ensure thorough cleaning or extra towels and toiletries; others because they think cleaning up after others is a tough job.

After reading Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, about the realities of menial jobs, Patrick Reid of St. Paul leaves $2 to $5 every morning. He tries not to leave the room messy for housekeepers, and "I will even write a note thanking them."

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/travel/hotels/2005-03-24-maid-for-a-day_x.htm

Okay so I read most of these comments and I'm going to answer a lot of questions and give my opinion.  I am currently a housekeeper at a Hilton Garden Inn in Jacksonville, Florida.  We get paid $3.63 per room and as every other hotel, we are expected to finish each room in half an hour.  Once all the rooms in our lists are done, we are clear to go home.  We don't necessarily have to stay all day, it depends on how dirty each room is.  Important things people need to know: we do not always get 16 rooms a day, which would be an 8hour shift.  Very often we get less than 10 rooms, which is bad.  Not only that, if the room is a stay over and has a DND on it, we do not get paid for it which means that even if we get 16 rooms, and 3 of those are DND, we only get paid for the 13 rooms we cleaned.  This is how a lot of hotels work, and people need to keep this in mind.  Someone said we get paid $17/hour which is partly true.  Sometimes we can clean up to 3-4 rooms per hour, which averages out to be around $15 in a single hour but if you put it that way, we don't work all 8 hours so we might get paid $15 per hour for maybe 3 hours.

Now, concerning tips.  We hardly ever get a tip... it is very rare.  Our housekeeping team has averaged a 90%-100% score in each inspection we get, which is very good and I am proud to say that we are the best in our area.  When I get a tip in a stay over room, I usually do put extra effort in it, but all rooms are cleaned equally.  The only thing we don't do in a stay over room is change the bed, only because that would cost the hotel more money (for the laundry attendant hours plus more loads having to be washed).  Other than day, every time we clean a room it looks exactly as it would if you had just walked in there for the first time (minus the luggage and whatnot).  

Mondays-Fridays are the cleanest days, that's when we get all the "business" people that are clean and sometimes they might leave us a tip.  Now, when the weekend comes, all chaos falls upon our hands.  Rooms can take up to an hour, guests leave WHENEVER they feel like it and are not considerate of us AT ALL.  I've seen a tip on a weekend ONCE.  I don't think any of you can fathom how bad it is for us on a weekend, you would have to be there.  Not only that, that's when we get the least amount of rooms.  Think about it, if I start at 9am in the morning, get 10 rooms, that means I should finish in 5 hours.  No, that's never the case because guests leave at 2 o'clock or whenever they feel they're ready so we have to stay EXTRA time that we're not being paid for.  We have to change a lot of things, even more things than a lot of hotels because we are "the best" around here so we have to make sure things are perfect.  We change pillows, all curtains, even the duvets (big fat thing on top of the bed) that most hotels hardly ever change.  What does this mean? It means we have to travel to our storage room, or to the laundry room downstairs, every half hour because we can't carry everything in our carts WHICH makes us take even longer.

Now, let me talk about where to leave the tips.  I see that some General Managers have posted here and some were offended.  I am very sorry to say but, even with our scores at our hotel, nobody should trust a tip to ANYBODY but the housekeeper.  People are not honest anymore and they will keep a tip, who's going to know anyway right? We actually got one of our housekeeping supervisors fired after taping her with a cellphone stealing our tips.  I know for a fact that Maintenance people also take them, I've left traps for them, and I can't say about the rest of the staff but a lot of people have been fired for stealing other things, hotel property, through the two years I've worked there.

So should you tip? Yes for the love of all that is holy, you have no idea how happy I am when I see a tip, even if it's a few dollars, on a day that I get 8 rooms to clean.  It makes my day and makes me realize that not all hope is lost in humanity.  If you're a stay over, do not leave a tip anywhere on a table expecting the housekeeper to know it's for them. We are not allowed to touch ANYTHING in a stay over room UNLESS it strictly points out that it is for us to touch (of course if we have to clean under it we move stuff around).  But if you are a stay over, leave it on top of a pillow or on a desk WITH a note.  Usually if it's on the bed we know it's for us, otherwise it has to have a note.  If you are checking out, put it in a place where only a housekeeper would check; drawers, under the bedsheets, under a pillow.  Otherwise, even our supervisors WILL steal the tip, nobody should be trusted, not front desk, the supervisor, or anybody else for that matter.  

Also I know that some housekeepers do get their 40 hours each week, even they deserve a tip.  Rooms can get very nasty, as I previously mentioned, and even if it's not you who left a nasty room, just think of all the trouble we have to go through each and every weekend because of all the inconsiderate people that stay there.

I've done housekeeping at a 5 star hotel for a couple years now. It's back breaking work. I get paid just a little over minimum wage which is 7.45. Our manager once said "housekeepers are a dime a dozen" which is so true. Unfortunately for someone like me that means it doesn't matter how much hard work you put in or how far out of your way you go, your always replaceable. I think if there is anything I'd want guests to know it's that we are NOT paid enough for the job we do. I hardly ever get tips and my only thought is that people don't know that they should tip. Somedays I'm lucky if I get 75 cents but most days I don't get any tips at all. And sometimes it seems like when the guest is upset by a mistake that the front desk made, they take it out on the housekeeper by trashing the room and leaving a bigger mess to clean up when really housekeepers don't get a say in anything that goes on around the hotel. Next time your in a hotel room just remember to consider your housekeeper before touching or moving anything. If you make a pot of coffee, drink the pot of coffee, don't leave it sitting there unused cause that's just another mess your housekeeper has to clean. One of my biggest pet peeves is when the guest takes all the towels and shoves them under the sink, that's just mean. When in doubt, just leave a tip because it's the right thing to do.

So i am the only American female working for. Housekeeping at a local Portland,or hotel,and i noticed i never get tips unless i beat the head housekeepslr/supervisor. Into the room,kinda weird i thought so i set her up and she failed.what can i do about it?

So can the head housekeeper legally get fired for stealing the tips?cause i set my head housekeeper up and ripped a dollar bill and left it in one of my rooms and just like i thought she strait took it,so i went to my manager and told her and she said it was against the rules for me to set her 7p like that..

You can't really do much honestly.  Best you can do is tell your manager about it, or someone above your supervisor and the only way it'll stop is if that person gets fired. We've already fired two people for that, one time one of our housekeepers recorded the supervisor with a cellphone cam and that got her fired.  Then another time the maintenance guy was doing it, we all knew, so our hotel manager set him up real good and he fell for it and got fired.

I've honestly never heard of tipping housekeeping before. I usually consider myself a pretty generous tipper, too. At restaurants, unless the service is horrible, I give a flat 20% tip, and increase based on good service. Even if the service is horrible, I still give a minimum of 15%.

I tip hairdressers, bellhops, valets, manicurists, grocery boys, and anyone that works at any place of business and helps me with any kind of physical labor.

But housekeeping? I will have to keep this in mind next time I stay at a hotel. It honestly never crossed my mind. I always do my best to be clean and courteous and to not use more towels than necessary, and I do not leave messes for the maids, but I've never tipped them, either.

I will tip my housekeeper when I see him/her. My Mother worked at a hotel in Fort Walton Beach Fla. and her supervisior would go in the rooms before the housekeepers and take most if not all of the tip money. Thats not right so, I will personally put the money in the housekeepers hand. I will never just leave it. Or I will leave it at the front desk and they will give it to the right person.

As someone who worked at a B&B for almost 4 years, I can tell you, sadly, most guests do not tip. Unless your establishment puts out designated housekeeping tip envelopes, most guests will think staff is getting a good wage and don't need to tip. The average pay is around $10-$12/ an hour for intense physical labor. I can tell you waiting tables is easier work (I've done that too).  People expect a spotless room, yet have no idea the amount of work that goes into it. So, when you check-in to your $200/night room, think about the person who has to clean up your mess and leave at least $5/day tip.  

As a housekeeper in a very upscale resort, I feel it is rude not to tip us. We work very hard and have guest demands as well as our supervisor's demands. We have constant stress. Guests call and complain for the smallest and most petty things and trust when I say we are told all the issues people complain about. I work about 12 hrs a day and make about $100/day (this is good pay for our field).  I was raised to tip everyone in hospitality so I am not sure why others don't.. Also as a whole, we know that the guests that stay with us have the money to tip but don't no matter if we do extras or not. It takes us 30 min to do a maid service and 3 hrs to clean your suite. If you leave a tip upon departure do leave it somewhere like  inside the pillow case bc the bellboy or our supervisors  will steal it

I worked as a hotel housekeeper for FOUR DAYS. It was the worst job I've ever had in my whole life. I did cleaning before, I thought this was something similar, but omg.... it was way harder than just plain cleaning. I had to mop the floor on my hands and knees because they didn't provide real mops with handles, only rags. We didn't have rubber gloves either, no one on my team wore them, I had to buy a box on my own because my hands were so dry and sore after the first day. And for some reason everyone liked to steal there. On the first day the person who trained me "forgot" to split the tip with me, the second woman just simply took all of it, but we had tips every day (between $5-$20 a day). The first day when I didn't find any tips was my first day alone when the supervisor checked the rooms before me... So we had to do a really hard physically demanding labor in a FAST pace for $8/hour. But I don't blame the guests for not tipping, they just simply don't know how hard that job is for how little pay. I never tipped housekeepers before as a guest because it just never crossed my mind.  I knew nothing about their job, I just didn't know it would be nice to tip them. I think it's all the hotels' fault. I don't know why don't they value their housekeepers. Without them they could close the doors on the next day because no one would want to stay there. They should pay them more and/or make their job easier.
so on my last day I had a room, actually it was a huge suite where a family lived for 6 days with kids and dogs. There wasn't a single inch in the room without trash or dirt or piece of paper, food, something spilled, or trash intentionally thrown to the floor, tons of dog hair, human hair everywhere (in the bathtub, in the toilet, on the sofa, on the floor, on the sheets, floating in the air) no tip of course (or someone took it) I'm an experienced cleaner and it took me more than an hour and a half to make the room acceptable, not perfect. (instead of the 30 minutes) I just wanted to cry so I called the place where I worked before and they hired me back. And I didn't mention that they only gave me 1 uniform for the first 90 days so I had to wash it every single day. Or I could work in dirty clothes.