It is not uncommon for you to spend a number of days in a hotel and yet never really meet the housekeeping staff. You simply find a well-made bed, a cleaned carpet and the room that you may have left upside down in the morning is neat and clean. Like the saying goes, “out of sight, out of mind” you are very likely not to give a second thought to the person who did all that.
Personally, it was not that I never thought of the housekeeping staff, it was just that I was not sure if I am expected to give them a tip or not. It can be a bit confusing, considering you do not ever see them so you may not even know how to find the particular person that worked in the room.
CNN’s Marnie Hunter wrote about this and it touched some of the key concerns I have always had about tipping housekeeping staff. You see some of the questions I had were:
- Is it okay to tip them?
- How much is acceptable?
- Do I tip every time they clean or at the end of my stay?
- Should I just leave it in the room or give it to the person at the desk?
Even after reading the article in CNN Traveller, I still wanted to find out for myself from the staff themselves, after all, it would give me a chance to do research on one of my favorite topics, vacuum cleaning. So I will share with you what I found out.
Is it okay to tip housekeeping staff
The plain answer is yes. But this is not the case in all hotels. I talked to a manager in a family-run BnB, and he told me most of their staff are family members and they do not expect tips. This kind of makes sense since you do not tip the owner of a shop when they serve you at the till.
I talked to some hotel workers and they explained that they are always happy to receive tips because they do not get paid all that much so the tips supplement their income. In most big hotels, the culture of tipping staff has been promoted by American guests and now it is being encouraged more in Europe with some hotels paying the housekeeping stuff less money since they expect them to get the rest from tips.
How much is acceptable
I think the hotel staff I talked to were simply being modest when they said they are satisfied with whatever a guest sees fit to give them. I engaged a few guests in this discussion and one particular guest, Collins, said “A tip is a sign of appreciation, so you should measure the amount of work the person had to do, if you left a really messy room, you should think of leaving a tip that would show you are sorry for being such a pig and you are grateful for their service.”
That is a sentiment I share even though it still does not answer the how much of the question. I tried to narrow it down to how much is too little and how much is too much? Well the general feeling was there cannot be a particular figure on what is too much, it will depend on how much money you have and what you think they deserve, but for the minimum, $1 is the figure that had the most consensus.
When should you tip?
I have mentioned the CNN article earlier, and it seemed to provide a clear and acceptable answer to this question and even to how much you should pay. It is best to tip every day, this is mainly because you do not know if the person who cleaned the room today will be the same one tomorrow or will be at work on the day you are leaving. It is also very easy to forget to leave a tip on the day you are checking out because you may be busy thinking about so many other things; you may just go without tipping.
The article suggests that you make it a daily payment between $1 and $2 for the regular hotels and for the higher end hotels the daily tip could be as much as $5. They recommend this for people staying more than a night so if you are just spending a night, the tip may not be necessary.
I would still recommend that you leave a tip even if it is only a night; especially if they have done a splendid job of cleaning up before you get there.
You know there are some hotels you will get to and they did not bother to do much so if you stay in a neat and clean room for the night, show your appreciation with a $1 tip. The staff I talked to said they always love to receive tips.
How to give a tip
Now here is the part that confuses a lot of peoples as well. I was all for finding out the name of the person who cleaned the room and then personally handing it over to them, but many times it has not played out like I imagined since I end up missing them. I return to the hotel when they have signed out and I leave before they show up.
The best way to give the tip is simply to leave it in the room before you go out and add a note indicating that that is the tip for the housekeeping staff, if you have an envelope too, you can put it in there and write “For Housekeeping” this is a more sure way to ensure that the person who comes to the room to clean is the one who will take the tip.
You may find in some hotels, this is something the management already thought of and they decide to provide an envelope where you can put the daily tip. Some hotels have tried this, but they did not receive favorable feedback from some of the guests who felt they were being compelled to leave a tip.
In the end though, if you think of all the work that the housekeeping staff has to do for minimum wage, it is best to leave them a tip in appreciation and to lift their spirits, do not be surprised if you get special treatment because you left behind a tip. For me, it made it much easier to find out which vacuum cleaners they think are best.
This is a guest post from Carol Bell at Vacuum Koo.
