This Is Proper Etiquette When Leaving a Hotel Room.
Even if you hate travel but have to do it for work, you probably at least appreciate the fact that you need to sleep in a clean, freshly made bed every night. And while it may sound like magic (Phew! You come back from your meetings and your room is clean!), There are real people behind the order. Here’s how to thank, respect, and compensate the people who made this possible.
Stephanie Land is the bestselling author of The Maid, about how she worked around the house, supporting her daughter and earning her degree online. Land’s position was by no means unique; many people make a living in the service industry, and the standards for payment and treatment vary widely. As a traveler, you can raise those standards with your own behavior, and Land tweeted her suggestions on how you should leave your hotel room when your stay is over.
Towels
The luxury of having lots of clean towels of all shapes and sizes can quickly turn your head. Did you get fresh every day? Or did you just hoard them like a towel collector? Land writes that you should collect them in a rather special way so that it is easier for a person to pick them up for cleaning by rolling them up with a “washcloth in the middle”, probably because the washcloth is the wettest and dirtiest of all. …
Easy cleaning
You are not going to vacuum or wash the sink, but there are a few simple things you can do to make the life of a hotel maid a lot easier; people do some disgusting things in hotels, and Land’s general outlines paint a picture:
Pull your hair out of the drain. Rinse. Throw trash in the trash.
You don’t think what to say about flushing the toilet, but obviously it does, so please do it.
To disturb or not to disturb
Land did not raise the Do Not Disturb sign, but it was the subject of controversy in the comments; In theory, you could keep a DND subscription for the duration of your stay, limiting the amount of work the cleaner has to do. Unfortunately, not everything is so simple. First, as stated in the Travel Skills notice, the DND mark is not a legally binding contract . The cleaning and administration of the hotel can and will enter your room, despite the sign, and, obviously, guests often lie about leaving the sign when they return to the dirty room:
When leaving the house, guests often leave a Do Not Disturb sign on the door. Then, when they return, they think that somehow their room should have been cleaned up magically and no one has violated the Do Not Disturb sign. They will then call the front desk and complain that their room was not cleaned and lie flatly about leaving a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door. It happens so often that it’s crazy.
But in the context of how you help or hinder staff, banning room cleaning means you are probably cutting their paycheck:
The service staff just want to clean their assigned rooms, especially the rooms due to check-out that day. They are not paid for the rooms they are assigned, but they do not clean, and they cannot wait to find out if a guest left a tip.
So, let the workers do their job – they can just go ahead and do it anyway, and you can at least plan to hide your naughty things beforehand.
Tips
Tipping is a lot of debate, but it’s partly determined by the cost of the room and how much you’ve cleaned your room. Land writes:
Clue. ($ 10 per day per person staying). If you are staying for a few days, tip every day when you expect cleaning services. Seriously.
In 2016, Trip Advisor closed this post, which contained the following top recommendations:
From $ 2-3 per night to $ 5, more in luxury hotels. Also more if there are more than 3 people in a room or suite. Leave the tip on a pillow or similar obvious place with a thank you note. Leave a tip every day when you leave the room, not at the end of your stay, because your room may be cleaned by different people each day depending on the staff’s schedule. If you have extra items delivered to your room, such as extra pillows, hangers, luggage racks, tip the person who brings them $ 2 or $ 3.
With some cost of living inflation, $ 10 seems to be in the right place, and the sense of doing it daily as you receive care is good. People work different shifts, so a tip at the end may mean someone is not in the tip pool. Land added that by putting a tip on a thank you card, you can make sure they get it:
Small gestures
Tipping is probably one of the biggest sticking points for hotel cleaners if you haven’t trashed the room completely. If you want to help in any way, Quora interviewed Bruce Claver, who has worked in hospitality management for decades . He offered this list of little things that will make workers’ lives a lot easier:
Remove the sheets and pillowcases from the bed and stack them on the floor opposite the bathroom door.
Take all used towels, loofah, and bath mat and place them in one pile on the bathroom floor.
Take the trash can from under the table and trash can from the bathroom and place them together next to the sheets (by the bathroom door).
Change iron and ironing board (wrap or pull in the iron cord)
Replace the TV remote control with the place where it was on the day of arrival
Open the curtains.
And never, never make your bed. They just need to undo it.
This story was originally published in 2019 and has been updated with new information on 02/18/2020.