HotelChatter

Front desk?

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. :)

always on the first night

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.

Depends...

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

tips

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!

whoops

i feel bad - i never do. but then i also try my hardest not to get in a situation with bellboys, room service etc to avoid it completely. my excuse is that i don't think it's so expected in europe (i hope). promise to change from now on.

at least i pack away my toothbrush every day else i might have had a reprisal by now.

Always

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.

if i remember!

but usually im in hotel rooms for one night and housekeeping is not allowed in to clean. that's because i'm usually working...without my pants on. true!

for the rare occasions when ive slept in a hotel room more than 3 nights i do put down a fiver.

Absolutely

$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.

oops

I always forget. honestly.

definitely

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

Definitely

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!

sometimes, but not with a nice smiley face note

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

My mom does this for a living...

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.

Hateful People!

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.

hah

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.

tipping

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.

not expected

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.

thanks for sharing!

it's always good to hear what housekeepers must think of us guests. we promise to be cleaner on our next visit!

Housekeeping tips

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 ALWAYS 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 will..

always tip $3 - $5 per night from now on.  Try to, but will admit, have blitzed on it waaaay more than I should.  No more!

Normally

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

small gifts as well?

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?

Honestly: Do You Tip Your Housekeeper?

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.

Really

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.

they get there monies worth

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.

In response to hoteltruth,

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.

False...

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 :)

Every Day

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.

Hoteltruth....

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!

Somewhat guilty

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!

yep

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.

Tipping While Traveling

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.

B&B

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.

Daily tip!

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.

HK here.

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 is not necessary for multiple days

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.

Appalled

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.  

that is all.

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.

thank you for not researching

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.    

Always

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