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Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ease staffing shortages

217 points by lxm 4y ago

eschaton 4y ago
A more honest headline would be “Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to avoid paying competitive wages” since that’s really how a free market is supposed to address shortages, isn’t it?
- lolinder 4y ago
  A free market can address shortages either way. If supply is so low that the prices are uncomfortably high, you expect to see a lot of people finding ways to make do without. If the price becomes so high that everyone finds ways to do without, then you expect the price to drop again until it finds another equilibrium. I think your phrasing makes a valid point, but what we're seeing is absolutely expected in a free market, not some sort of aberration.
codazoda 4y ago
In some Las Vegas hotels I no longer need to stop at a counter or stand in a line and it’s 1000x better experience. I can walk directly to my room and scan my phone. I can scan my phone for parking. I can grab extra keys at a kiosk, if I need them. I never have to talk to anyone, if I don’t want to. I also select the option not to have my room cleaned each day. I’ll ask someone in the hall for towels if I stay long enough to need them. I’ve wondered if this is easier or harder for them. I try to keep my trash well organized and otherwise make it as easy as I can on the staff after I leave.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  I would want any hotel I stay in to have mandated at least weekly hotel room cleaning, or at least weekly inspection. Too many people are sufficiently dirty that it can easily cause pest issues, as well as other damages.
  - crooked-v 4y ago
    I would assume the reputable but cost-cutting hotels would still be doing a full clean between guest visits, just cutting down on the daily room cleaning while a guest is still there.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      Every single hotel or motel should be doing full clean between guest visits, otherwise it should not even be allowed to operate. But if a hotel starts letting people stay weeks without checking their room, they will inevitably end up with hoarders and people that keep food lying around and then comes cockroaches and rats and odors, etc.
      - midoridensha 4y ago
        >Every single hotel or motel should be doing full clean between guest visits, otherwise it should not even be allowed to operate. The keyword here is "should". I don't have much faith that hotels will actually do this.
        vkou 4y ago
        Even bad hotels do this, because people lose their shit and do chargebacks if they end up in an uncleaned room. Source: a close friend works at a really bad hotel.
        midoridensha 4y ago
        So if your friend says this, this implies that uncleaned rooms do happen from time to time, right?
        vanviegen 4y ago
        People make mistakes.
        4y ago
- notyourwork 4y ago
  > I also select the option not to have my room cleaned each day. This has always been an option. Put the DND on your door.
  - Karunamon 4y ago
    Sort of. I don't like my dwelling with some amounts of my possessions present being rifled through while I am not there, but many motels are now requiring housekeeping every couple of days DND sign or not.
- realworldperson 4y ago
  - realworldperson 4y ago
    - alphabettsy 4y ago
      You have some good points, but I think you’re being downvoted because this comes across as unnecessarily hostile.
- wenc 4y ago
  > In some Las Vegas hotels Not just Las Vegas hotels. Any hotel (Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, etc.) with an app that supports digital keys via Bluetooth already have this. I still like to check in at the counter though if it looks like it isn't too busy. I have elite status at these hotels, and they typically hand out free cookies or water at the counter, and I occasionally get a free discretionary room upgrade on the spot.
  - dawnerd 4y ago
    They need to let their phone check in work with OTAs. I just stayed at a Hilton and couldn’t use my phone as a key because I booked through hotels.com and the front desk refused to add my hhonors info to set it up. I know you can call in but not something I want to deal with after traveling all day.
    - wenc 4y ago
      I usually book through Concur (corporate booking site) and have never had any trouble. Hotels.com might not be a supported OTA however, since they are a consolidator. You can't even get HHonors points with hotels.com. https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/hilton-hilton-honors/1887120-earning-points-ota-bookings.html https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/hilton-hilton-honors/1887120...
      - scarface74 4y ago
        There is a big difference between booking business travel through Concur and using hotels.com. You get all of the benefits of booking directly - points, nights count toward status, your credit card is charged directly by Hilton - ie I get 14 points per dollar by paying with my Amex Hilton Aspire.
        ghaff 4y ago
        You're essentially saying there are different tiers of travel agents. But you're right. There's no particular disadvantage to me booking Marriott through Amex than directly other than an (expensed) booking fee for work travel.
- nunez 4y ago
  Marriott does this!
- EFreethought 4y ago
  Where does this leave people who do not want to use their phones for literally everything? I do not want a lot of apps on my phone, and I do not want to install something just for one trip.
  - foepys 4y ago
    I have stayed at multiple hotels where a machine hands out key cards or numeric access codes when you enter your name and date of birth. When you leave you just throw the key card into a box or feed it back into the machine. No smartphone necessary.
    - EFreethought 4y ago
      Thanks for the info. I haven't traveled since COVID, so I don't know how things have changed. I bet hotels made a lot of changes due to COVID. I know this is OT: But I am tired of every business I go to bugging me to use their app for everything. I don't want another app to keep track of, and I do not want to get texts all the time.
      - eybbus 4y ago
        Thankfully some companies just send you a QR-code via email to interact with what ever system they are using. If I remember correctly one of my hotels I used sent me a pin code or such via email and then they had a self service to get a keycard, which used the pin code.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      I've rarely seen this as well. Mostly at a Yotel in Manhattan.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Then suffer the inconvenience.
  - rajamaka 4y ago
    Honestly it's such a small minority of people that it doesn't make business sense to accomodate for this sort of customer
- paganel 4y ago
  > I never have to talk to anyone, if I don’t want to. I have seen this attitude at more and more people, where does it come from? Meaning not wanting to talk with other people. It's what makes us humans, talking with other people. The alternative is lots and lots of money paid on psychotherapy and the like further down the road, or worse. Because actively avoiding talking to other people it's like bringing your car for regular checkups every 100k miles instead of ~15-20k miles, which will of course irremediably damage it.
  - mym1990 4y ago
    They did say 'if they don't want to'...and how many of us can honestly say that we want to talk to someone ALL OF THE TIME? Talking to someone about checking in for a hotel room, after waiting for 10 minutes in a check in line...is not what I would call a fulfilling experience. Communication does not make us human, plenty of other species communicate...there are far more intricate and unique things that make us what we are. You're equating someone's wish to not have to wait at a check out counter to being anti-social...come on.
    - paganel 4y ago
      > You're equating someone's wish to not have to wait at a check out counter to being anti-social...come on. Yes, 10 minutes waiting in a hotel lobby, which is by definition a societal space, is, well, social. Actively wanting go avoid that is, well, anti-social. Anyway, it's a losing battle at this point.
      - krisoft 4y ago
        > Actively wanting go avoid that is, well, anti-social. Ah the epitome of social interactions. An underpaid and overworked service worker mis-hears my name, pretends to not find me in the system then gives me a card. Well worth queuing for! But you know it is a must, since if I continue the conversation with my travel companion uninterrupted all the way to our room then I am actively tearing apart the fabric of society. > Anyway, it's a losing battle at this point. Battle? Why do you care how others choose to live their life this much? Are they hurting you?
- scarface74 4y ago
  > In some Las Vegas hotels I no longer need to stop at a counter or stand in a line and it’s 1000x better experience. I can walk directly to my room and scan my phone. I can scan my phone for parking. I can grab extra keys at a kiosk, if I need them. I never have to talk to anyone, if I don’t want to. You can do that with literally any Hilton hotel anywhere in the country whether it’s a Waldorf or Home2Suites or a Tru. You can share your digital key with up to 4 people.
- phpisthebest 4y ago
  That is like every Hilton Hotel, been doing that for over a year now. Marriot is starting that program as well Soo much nicer
- seydor 4y ago
  Sounds like an airbnb
- francisofascii 4y ago
  Hopefully the rental car companies will soon have a similar feature.
  - joekrill 4y ago
    They do. And they have for a very long time! At least with Avis I've been doing this for years. The app tells me where my car is located and I just walk to it and the key is in it.
    - krab 4y ago
      Mind blown, thanks! Next time, I'll look for this option! I don't mind hotel check-ins but the car rental process has never, ever been pleasant for me.
- matwood 4y ago
  Even pre-pandemic I never liked people coming in my room during my stay. First thing I always did when checking in was put the 'DND' placard on my door. All these changes just fit with how I operated for years.
  - eastbound 4y ago
    I’ve always thought that hotels mandated daily cleaning just to check you are not performing illegal activities (abduction, drugs, sharing the room, prostitution), having a heart attack or stuck and need help.
    - ejb999 4y ago
      no, not really - they (vegas) did briefly after the mass shooting from the resort window, but before that, and since then I always leave the DND sign up, even if I am there for a week, and never had a problem.
  - atkailash 4y ago
    [dead]
- gnicholas 4y ago
  App-based check-in is great, but I’ve found the phone-as-key system to be lousy when it comes to elevator swiping (to get access to higher floors). What hotels do this well?
- areyousure 4y ago
  Five years ago, in Las Vegas, it was cause for suspicion if you refused housekeeping for more than one or two days, see eg: https://www.wltx.com/article/news/local/hotels-revise-room-security-measures-in-wake-of-las-vegas-shooting/101-508153273 https://www.wltx.com/article/news/local/hotels-revise-room-s... But people forgot the reason why.
- tracker1 4y ago
  I'm the opposite... I honestly get frustrated with kiosks, usually the interface staff has is better/faster and I prefer the human contact. Even though I work with technology and generally like computers, I'm the type of person that I'll go to my desktop to do things I could do on my phone, but far more annoying on the phone.
  - sixothree 4y ago
    Especially work travel. They always forget to do something important that you need a human for.
- akhmatova 4y ago
  Unstaffed hotels have a major (in my view, fatal) flaw staring you right in the face: poor security. The one and only time I stayed in such a place - an intruder was caught entering my room and diddling with a phone I left there - and he only got caught because I happened to double back to get something, and just happened to do so while he was in there. Never again. And the best part about staffed hotels? "I never have to use my phone, if I don't want to."
- executive 4y ago
  You can also pay the kiosk $30 for the rare privilege of early check in. Completely soulless.
missedthecue 4y ago
I wonder where everyone has gone. The lazy answer is that companies aren't paying enough. But how is it better to sit at home making $0 than working and having an income? How do they afford rent or electricity or pay for car insurance? The workforce participation rate is still well below pre-pandemic levels. Millions of people just up and left the workforce. It's not as if they are looking for work at the right wage, they simply aren't looking for work at all. Very peculiar.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  People had ~3 years to find new jobs outside of hospitality after the industry basically shut down. No one is sitting at home, they found new jobs. There's also the toll COVID took on the workforce, and COVID-related disabilities.
  - missedthecue 4y ago
    This can't be the explanation. If it were true, the workforce participation rate would be steady. Changing jobs doesn't raise or lower that figure. A person is employed whether they scrub toilets or do brain surgery. But it's not steady. Literally millions of people have stopped working and looking for work since 2020.
    - gitfan86 4y ago
      People realized that they didn't need to work shitty jobs. They could Uber part time, or work as a nanny without reporting as a full time employee or cut down on their living expenses or live off of government programs. Just look at how many people live in tents in California.
    - crooked-v 4y ago
      Well, about 1,245,000 of them died [1], and I'm sure there were a substantial number of older working-age people who went for early retirement to reduce the chances of dying from public contact. [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
heavyset_go 4y ago
> It's not for lack of trying. Hotels have raised hourly wages by 25% since early 2020, and employers are offering greater flexibility in scheduling. Still, workers are nowhere to be seen. 25% of minimum wage isn't much.
- missedthecue 4y ago
  If they were able to adequately staff two years ago, and now 25% of a pay raise later they can't, there are likely some structural issues going on.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    The structural issue is that Covid allowed for the activation energy for people to find better jobs. And possibly cut down on supply of people willing to work hotel cleaning jobs for low pay. It is probably among the least desirable work. Volatile hours, busiest times are weekends and holidays, literally cleaning up anything from bodily fluids to garbage and dealing with smells. No one outside of large unionized hotels in big cities is offering a decent salary with predictable schedule. The small franchise hotels have less than 50 employees, so they have no employer subsidized benefits either like access to 401k, public transit credits, or other tax advantaged accounts.
    - missedthecue 4y ago
      Why has the workforce participation rate cratered? If people simply changed to a better job, that figure would hold steady. Instead it shows us that millions of Americans decided to stop looking for work.
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        I do not think it has cratered in the US. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab... Just 1 percent, 63% to 62%, which could just be aging demographics since a greater and greater proportion of people in America are going to be too old to work, especially for hard labor work like cleaning hotel rooms. Also, hotels (and other low pay to quality of life at work ratio employers) were already struggling before COVID. COVID just accelerated the inevitable.
mbg721 4y ago
I always assumed the previous frequent room cleanings were more for the benefit of the hotel owner checking up on things than because guests demanded them. So if hoteliers think there isn't very much risk of people trashing their rooms, they don't need to have somebody come in every day.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago
Probably shouldn't have fired people over some poorly researched procedure...
matt3210 4y ago
Its not a shortage of workers, it's a shortage of underpayable workers.
- Natsu 4y ago
  > Hotels have raised hourly wages by 25% since early 2020, and employers are offering greater flexibility in scheduling. Still, workers are nowhere to be seen. I dunno, my pay sure hasn't gone up by 25% in the past 2 years.
  - notwokeno 4y ago
    Mine has gone up at a rate pretty close to that over three years. You might consider switching companies.
  - ninth_ant 4y ago
    The rate it’s gone up is a red herring. If people don’t want to take the job at the posted rate then they are underpaying. Instead of comparing if your pay has gone up 25%, ask if you’d rather take one of those jobs than yours. Because apparently that’s an option if you want. There are almost certainly miserable working conditions, bad hours, and still an overall low wage. If people are able to find better jobs, then hotels need to treat people better or pay more to offset that. Are we seriously going to cry about megacorps not getting away with paying workers trash wages for miserable jobs? Boo hoo, pay more.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - kortilla 4y ago
      Megacorps is a red herring and emotional appeal. The same applies just as much to small businesses in the same industries.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
ETH_start 4y ago
What this labor shortage indicates to me is that a significant number of people are willing to reduce the goods/services they consume, in exchange for having to work less. I'm not certain how COVID/lockdowns precipitated this change, but I'm fairly certain they were directly or indirectly the catalyst.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  They spent weeks on end at home, and realized it didn't suck as bad as they thought it would. You can save a lot of money by not eating out, going out, etc. and just staying home and playing a board game with the family.
  - supertrope 4y ago
    There was a lot of substitution of goods purchases in lieu of services.
- acchow 4y ago
  Reduce the goods and services they consume? This would show up as a drop in real GDP
  - ETH_start 4y ago
    Yes it should show up as a drop in real GDP.
    - acchow 4y ago
      Then this can't be correct, since real GDP in 2012 dollars has been growing and is higher in 2022 than it was in 2019 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPC1 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPC1
      - ETH_start 4y ago
        Yep, that is definitely evidence against my theory.
mc32 4y ago
Some cheap European hotels are made like the expensive toilet booths where they basically just hose them down —-no fancy carpeting. All surfaces except the bedding are washable. Makes for easy cleanup and quick turnaround. It’s not for everyone of course.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  In Europe it's not uncommon (or at least, it isn't unheard of) to need to bring your own bed sheets and towels from home.
  - Eleison23 4y ago
  - bbbobbb 4y ago
    Source? Because that's definitely not unheard of let alone common. In fact, as a European I've literally not heard something like that.
    - dazc 4y ago
      Only time I had to bring my own bedlinen was in a youth hostel. For some hotels I've stayed in though, it would have been a good idea.
    - forgotusername6 4y ago
      The only places I've heard of that do this are the most budget of holiday parks in the UK. The type of place where the TV is bolted down and you have to pay for your own electricity.
  - switch007 4y ago
    Sorry that’s absolute nonsense Did you have some weird experience that you’re extrapolating wildly?
    - rippercushions 4y ago
boomboomsubban 4y ago
Doesn't hotel cleaning have a fairly famous reputation for hiring both legal and illegal immigrants? Could the policies started in Trump's term be part of what's causing this issue?
7373737373 4y ago
This is the kind of stuff I'd love to see rapidly accelerated through universal basic income.
myroon5 4y ago
Surprised how rare domestic automation attempts are. Thought businesses cleaning daily would try self cleaning things beyond vacuums by now: https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/self-cleaning-toilets-do-they-really-work-254692 https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/self-cleaning-toilets-do-th...
EricDeb 4y ago
As long as society is taking care of people I'd much rather have robots doing this type of work than low wage people.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  Yeah it's not like anyone exactly dreams to become a hotel room cleaner. Pointless menial jobs like these need to go. Unfortunately while I do see the profits from this getting taxed and going towards UBI-style services in some parts of the world, in the US it's just gonna be going to the owners with everyone else left to die on the street.
Animats 4y ago
Worlds smallest violin plays. A few years back, hotel workers were complaining that hotels were adding more linens to beds such as bed ruffles, to add "luxury", and expecting workers to do the same number of beds per hour. Now it's payback time.
- colpabar 4y ago
  Did that actually happen, or was that the headline of a breitbart article that you didn't read?
  - Animats 4y ago
    See this CAL-OSHA complaint.[1] "During the past decade, hotel operators have increasingly competed on the basis of the level of luxury of their room offerings. This includes luxury bedding consisting of oversize mattresses and opulent bed linen, together with other upgraded room and bathroom amenities. One industry observer has aptly described the competition to introduce more luxurious beds and room amenities as the "bed-race." The trend started in the late nineties when Starwood Hotel Corporation introduced the "Heavenly Bed" at its Westin-branded properties. Other companies followed suit with their own luxury bedding programs: Hyatt the "Grand Bed," Marriott the "Marriott Bed," Radisson the "Sleep Number Bed," Hilton the "Serenity Collection," and others. Although first confined to upper-end hotels, the new bedding and room packages are now commonplace throughout the hotel industry. The new bedding packages are characterized by heavy, plush mattresses weighing in excess of 100 pounds. They typically feature a bulky "duvet" or quilted comforter, triple sheeting using flat (instead of a fitted) bottom sheet, up to six pillows on a bed, pillow cases that fit tightly over plump pillows, and other amenities such as decorative pillows and blankets. Major players in California's hotel and lodging industry have acknowledged the hazards that the new bedding packages pose to housekeepers..." [1] https://www.dir.ca.gov/oshsb/documents/Hotel-Housekeeping-Musculoskeletal-Injury-Prevention-dr1.pdf https://www.dir.ca.gov/oshsb/documents/Hotel-Housekeeping-Mu...
Renaud 4y ago
Hotels should start proposing discounts for not cleaning the room every day. If I stay in a place for a couple of weeks, I’d be happy to have the bedsheets and towels changed once and the room made like every 3 days at most. I mean, most of us don’t do more than that at home. Less room cleaning would save on staff and laundry et be a net benefit for the environment.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Hotels should start proposing discounts for not cleaning the room every day. Hotels have, in many cases, just stopped having daily room cleaning, without offering a discount: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hotels-end-basic-amenities-no-more-housekeeping-skimpflation/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hotels-end-basic-amenities-no-m...
  - grogenaut 4y ago
    But that is a discount, they didn't raise your rates.
    - PakistaniDenzel 4y ago
      It's equivalent to the shrinkflation you see in supermarkets, I wouldn't call that a discount
      - grogenaut 4y ago
        I think the same way you can't a have a sale year round if it's been a year it's just what they sell.
- bombolo 4y ago
  You mean same price for not cleaning and paying premium for cleaning
- rippercushions 4y ago
  Many Marriott hotels have been offering 500 rewards points for not cleaning your room for years now. It's all or nothing though, you can't just reduce the frequency of cleaning.
pasquinelli 4y ago
maybe they could consider raising wages--for real--to take care of their staffing shortage. $10 to $16 an hour clearly doesn't cut it. $16 an hour is trash, $10 an hour... i don't know what to call it.
huijzer 4y ago
For people interested in how this would look, there are some videos on YouTube, such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnGpSZmj-cA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnGpSZmj-cA, where people visit Alibaba's high-tech hotel.
coderoffortune 4y ago
As a person who used to work for housekeeping department in various London hotels I can tell there's no shortage of labour, there's a shortage for slaves. Hospitality jobs, housekeeping in particular, is modern slavery.
- switch007 4y ago
  And London hotel prices can be crazy high. They should be able to pay their staff decent wages
Quequau 4y ago
I gotta wonder how much of a "staffing shortage" they would have if they raised the pay 10-15%. Everywhere else I see claims of employers having difficulties finding and retaining competent employees, it just happens that they're low wage, low respect jobs with unpleasant & unreasonable management. Hotel cleaning staff is probably no different.
qwerty456127 4y ago
The world needs big industrial vacuum robots. Why don't they exist? I live in a rather rich condo in Europe yet it's only once a year our vast underground garage is cleaned. In winter there are lakes of dirty water from the snow melting off the wheels, the rest of the year there are layers and tumbleweed-like balls of housedust (looks depressing). The floor itself is almost perfectly leveled and polished - ideal for a vacuum robot. I wish the bots would roam there and clean the mess. We have human jaintors but they only clean the stairs.
- jl6 4y ago
  Probably some combination of: * Lots of places don’t care if their garage is an unclean space. * Places that do care will hire cleaning staff that are probably cheaper. * Liability concerns for having something semi-autonomous roaming around peoples’ expensive vehicles.
- seydor 4y ago
  We also need retrofitted houses that can be easily cleaned/serviced.
rjh29 4y ago
Even Japan, a country fairly famous for overemploying people, is doing this. Hotels - self-service checkin, although you do at least speak to a human at the beginning, and if they're not busy they'll do the whole thing the old-fashioned way Convenience stores / supermarkets - self-service registers, or self-service payment Karaoke - self-service sign in and payment, even ordered a beer and was told to open the door, a robot was waiting outside with a beer balanced on its head. Izakaya - sit down, use a tablet to order everything I have mixed feelings about it, in the UK I want everything automated, but in Japan their service is so good that I find myself missing it.
- armchairhacker 4y ago
  I see it as a good thing, in that we really don’t need people for that stuff, so overall it saves time and effort. I see it as a bad thing when those former people are now unemployed, and also people are lonelier because we don’t have small talk. Those are 2 issues that absolutely need to be addressed. However bad (i.e. low paying and toxic) service jobs and lack of small talk are issues which we seem to be having in general
cafard 4y ago
For some years, I have taught ESL. One recent student worked on a hotel cleaning crew. She did not particularly enjoy it. She also said that when traveling she always took her own sheets, since she did not trust hotel crews to keep them clean or change them between guests.
amelius 4y ago
I personally hate it if someone comes into my room and cleans it. Home sweet home is a so much better experience than being in a hotel, even the more expensive ones.
- tim333 4y ago
  I actually rather like the experience in ultra cheap third world places where you can put your own padlock on the door. There's something nice about being able to leave your stuff including valuables around without worrying about random staff coming in.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
smcg 4y ago
Hotels have gotten by too long on exploiting workers with long hours and low wages. $16 is not a liveable wage and people know that. Market forces go both ways!
barbariangrunge 4y ago
Again, it’s not a staffing shortage, it’s an entire population fleeing an industry due to a pay shortage
- tantalor 4y ago
  Fleeing to where? Are other industries paying better? Except for niches like tech, wages are stagnant across the board.
  - BeFlatXIII 4y ago
    Amazon warehouses, mostly. It’s also a worker treatment shortage. They leave for somewhere with equally low wages but less nonsense to put up with.
    - Zigurd 4y ago
      Amazon warehouses are no picnic, and their attrition numbers show it. But compared to industries that exploit immigrants and where wage theft is common, a warehouse job is objectively better. A lot of people don't understand how hard it is at the bottom of the labor force.
  - pc86 4y ago
    Housekeeping/cleaning is pretty low wage regardless, and the pandemic gave a lot of people an opportunity to get new skills. Not saying they went into tech but almost any industry pays better. A lot probably also went into industry that pay comparatively the same but offer more flexibility in scheduling.
  - fundad 4y ago
    Catering, retail, call “center” (often remote positions).
  - VLM 4y ago
    Risk avoidance. Poor people can't economically handle "someone sneezed so you get no income for months". Plenty of low paying jobs never closed during covid and everyone's crowding into them to avoid possible economic disaster. Normally you fix lack of employees with higher pay, but low pay is baked into the cake they can't pay more and stay in business (which is the step right before going out of business, BTW).
transfire 4y ago
You’d think for new hotels there be a robot vacuum in every room these days. Surely there are enough hotel rooms in the world to get industry vacuum bots to cost less then 10k a pop.
dbg31415 4y ago
I have a cousin who... lots of reasons... but life hasn't gone her way. She had a kid way too early with the wrong guy. She never had much of an education. Her main job has been working at hotels as a cleaner, and makes something like $8 / hour. The work was "on demand" -- the hotels wouldn't even give her regular hours. If they didn't have people staying, they wouldn't call her to show up. But, for $8 / hour, they expected her to be on-call -- even though she only got paid if they called. It was just so cringe-worthy hearing her talk about what was expected of her to make $8 / hour. She was only allowed like 15 minutes per room. She was never to talk to guests in the halls, unless they spoke to her first. She was told, "Never make eye contact with guests." One supervisor told her, "Better to just shrug and pretend like you don't speak English if a guest talks to you." My cousin has blonde hair and blue eyes. The cleaners all got cut loose the moment the pandemic hit. No severance pay or Covid bonuses -- pissed me off knowing these companies were claiming pandemic hardships, and getting bailed out, but not passing assistance on to the employees most in need. My family had to come together to help my cousin during that time -- and that's what family is for, but her employer sure wasn't there for her the way my employer was there for me. She's never one to complain, or ask for help, but I know from how excited she got when I gave her a handful of $5-50 gift cards that she's never gotten more than $20 as a Christmas bonus. The highlight of the job for her was when someone would leave a tip, forget something trivial in the room (a phone charging cable or something they wouldn't call lost and found over), or throw something out and she'd get to keep something she found in the trash. But she said they weren't allowed to keep anything from the rooms any more, even if it had been put in the trash. And they were supposed to report if someone left cash in the room, even if it was clearly a $5 tip. Pretty shitty. Oh, and the kicker... she worked a lot, she was always on call for a few of the different hotels in her area. But if she made "too much" money she would lose her food stamps. There was an "un-sweet" spot, where if she worked too much it would cost her. Anyway, I don't know what the moral of the story was. It all seemed shitty. Probably best to have robots do more of it. I spent 7 years in my 20s and early 30s basically living in hotels for work. I have a "lifetime" status with one prominent chain. I didn't put a lot of thought into the lives of the people who worked these jobs back then. But I probably should have. Anything that seems to good to be true, probably is. Pretty much any time someone walks away feeling, "What good service!" I'm sure there's an army of people being exploited.
skybrian 4y ago
I recently stayed a couple nights at a nice “boutique” style hotel in Philadelphia that has no staff there most of the time. You get in with a keycode or an app (the app didn’t work). It’s sort of like an airbnb, but a hotel. Presumably they do have staff to clean the rooms, but only between visitors as far as I could see? We never saw any staff. There is a number to call.
akhmatova 4y ago
"Hotels turn to robots to keep wages down" is the title they meant to use.
typest 4y ago
There is a take that consistently comes up in discussions like this (and indeed is prominent several times on this post), which says "the problem isn't a shortage of workers, it's that employers don't want to pay workers enough." This seems somewhat limited to me, and there is an alternate explanation I would like to explore. It seems to me rising cost of labor, while good for the people being paid that rising cost, can actually be bad for society overall, because you some businesses and industries will just disappear when the cost of labor goes high enough. And sure, you can respond that those businesses shouldn't exist if they can't pay workers enough, and yeah, fine. But the result is that we just then don't have those businesses (making society worse off?). For this hotel example -- maybe cost of labor continues to go up, and it's much harder to automate making a bed than vacuuming a floor, and in 10 years, we all generally stay at hotels where robots vacuum our floors every day, but no one ever makes your bed for you -- that becomes a relic of the past. I live in NYC, so a more prominent example I think about frequently is how we can no longer afford beautiful stone masonry on all our buildings. When labor was cheaper 100 years ago, it was easier to pay someone to carve stone -- now, not so much. I want workers to be paid a lot so they can live good lives, but it's worth thinking about what happens to society as cost of labor continues to go up, and why the cost of labor is going up in the first place (Baumol's Cost Disease? Land rent?).
- cudgy 4y ago
  Seems like you are forgetting about laborers getting more of the profits of companies and the inverse of non-profitable or barely profitable companies surviving on artificially low labor rates. You mention “society” as if it is distinct from the laborers, but society consists of these laborers.
  - typest 4y ago
    I think this makes sense with what I'm saying. Laborers get more of the profits of companies and in turn get wealthier. However, the costs of services in turn go up (due to rising cost of labor), so those laborers (society) cannot actually afford more services (provided by people). Workers can more easily purchase goods which benefit from increasing automation and technology. So, these workers which are capturing more of the profit can afford to buy fancier kitchen appliances and cook themselves better meals. But, can they all then afford to go out to eat more -- when going out to eat is primarily an endeavor dependent on the labor of others (and thus it becomes more expensive)?
thinkmcfly 4y ago
The craziest part of this to me is all of the business owners who weren't having to work their asses off before, raging about not having a $10/hr labor pool to exploit anymore These hotel owners can get fucked
SergeAx 4y ago
Last time I traveled was in Germany in September. Several hotels there offered options for 2-3 nights with no cleaning included, for a discount. They call it "green stay", ironically.
green-digger 4y ago
I think there is the other side to why hotels are unable to raise wages and therefore are unable to raise prices. With the introduction of services like Airbnb, the increase in supply of accomodation means that it is very much a consumers market where accomodation is almost indistinguishable is competing purely on price. This is combined with the fact that the opportunity cost of owning a property for the purpose of short term let is very high. Each night your property is vacant you are unable to resell that night in the future (unless you are doc from back to the future). I think this all leads to a situation were there is very little a hotel can do to raise wages: raise wages and raise prices then consumers will pick the cheapest practically identical accomodation near by.
puffoflogic 4y ago
> Hotels have raised hourly wages by 25% since early 2020 Assuming annual inflation of 8%, that is a reduction in real wages over three years.

217 points by lxm 4y ago

A more honest headline would be “Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to avoid paying competitive wages” since that’s really how a free market is supposed to address shortages, isn’t it?

lolinder 4y ago
A free market can address shortages either way. If supply is so low that the prices are uncomfortably high, you expect to see a lot of people finding ways to make do without. If the price becomes so high that everyone finds ways to do without, then you expect the price to drop again until it finds another equilibrium. I think your phrasing makes a valid point, but what we're seeing is absolutely expected in a free market, not some sort of aberration.

codazoda 4y ago

In some Las Vegas hotels I no longer need to stop at a counter or stand in a line and it’s 1000x better experience. I can walk directly to my room and scan my phone. I can scan my phone for parking. I can grab extra keys at a kiosk, if I need them. I never have to talk to anyone, if I don’t want to. I also select the option not to have my room cleaned each day. I’ll ask someone in the hall for towels if I stay long enough to need them. I’ve wondered if this is easier or harder for them. I try to keep my trash well organized and otherwise make it as easy as I can on the staff after I leave.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
I would want any hotel I stay in to have mandated at least weekly hotel room cleaning, or at least weekly inspection. Too many people are sufficiently dirty that it can easily cause pest issues, as well as other damages.
- crooked-v 4y ago
  I would assume the reputable but cost-cutting hotels would still be doing a full clean between guest visits, just cutting down on the daily room cleaning while a guest is still there.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Every single hotel or motel should be doing full clean between guest visits, otherwise it should not even be allowed to operate. But if a hotel starts letting people stay weeks without checking their room, they will inevitably end up with hoarders and people that keep food lying around and then comes cockroaches and rats and odors, etc.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      >Every single hotel or motel should be doing full clean between guest visits, otherwise it should not even be allowed to operate. The keyword here is "should". I don't have much faith that hotels will actually do this.
      - vkou 4y ago
        Even bad hotels do this, because people lose their shit and do chargebacks if they end up in an uncleaned room. Source: a close friend works at a really bad hotel.
        midoridensha 4y ago
        So if your friend says this, this implies that uncleaned rooms do happen from time to time, right?
        vanviegen 4y ago
        People make mistakes.
        4y ago
notyourwork 4y ago
> I also select the option not to have my room cleaned each day. This has always been an option. Put the DND on your door.
- Karunamon 4y ago
  Sort of. I don't like my dwelling with some amounts of my possessions present being rifled through while I am not there, but many motels are now requiring housekeeping every couple of days DND sign or not.
realworldperson 4y ago
- realworldperson 4y ago
  - alphabettsy 4y ago
    You have some good points, but I think you’re being downvoted because this comes across as unnecessarily hostile.
wenc 4y ago
> In some Las Vegas hotels Not just Las Vegas hotels. Any hotel (Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, etc.) with an app that supports digital keys via Bluetooth already have this. I still like to check in at the counter though if it looks like it isn't too busy. I have elite status at these hotels, and they typically hand out free cookies or water at the counter, and I occasionally get a free discretionary room upgrade on the spot.
- dawnerd 4y ago
  They need to let their phone check in work with OTAs. I just stayed at a Hilton and couldn’t use my phone as a key because I booked through hotels.com and the front desk refused to add my hhonors info to set it up. I know you can call in but not something I want to deal with after traveling all day.
  - wenc 4y ago
    I usually book through Concur (corporate booking site) and have never had any trouble. Hotels.com might not be a supported OTA however, since they are a consolidator. You can't even get HHonors points with hotels.com. https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/hilton-hilton-honors/1887120-earning-points-ota-bookings.html https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/hilton-hilton-honors/1887120...
    - scarface74 4y ago
      There is a big difference between booking business travel through Concur and using hotels.com. You get all of the benefits of booking directly - points, nights count toward status, your credit card is charged directly by Hilton - ie I get 14 points per dollar by paying with my Amex Hilton Aspire.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        You're essentially saying there are different tiers of travel agents. But you're right. There's no particular disadvantage to me booking Marriott through Amex than directly other than an (expensed) booking fee for work travel.
nunez 4y ago
Marriott does this!
EFreethought 4y ago
Where does this leave people who do not want to use their phones for literally everything? I do not want a lot of apps on my phone, and I do not want to install something just for one trip.
- foepys 4y ago
  I have stayed at multiple hotels where a machine hands out key cards or numeric access codes when you enter your name and date of birth. When you leave you just throw the key card into a box or feed it back into the machine. No smartphone necessary.
  - EFreethought 4y ago
    Thanks for the info. I haven't traveled since COVID, so I don't know how things have changed. I bet hotels made a lot of changes due to COVID. I know this is OT: But I am tired of every business I go to bugging me to use their app for everything. I don't want another app to keep track of, and I do not want to get texts all the time.
    - eybbus 4y ago
      Thankfully some companies just send you a QR-code via email to interact with what ever system they are using. If I remember correctly one of my hotels I used sent me a pin code or such via email and then they had a self service to get a keycard, which used the pin code.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    I've rarely seen this as well. Mostly at a Yotel in Manhattan.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Then suffer the inconvenience.
- rajamaka 4y ago
  Honestly it's such a small minority of people that it doesn't make business sense to accomodate for this sort of customer
paganel 4y ago
> I never have to talk to anyone, if I don’t want to. I have seen this attitude at more and more people, where does it come from? Meaning not wanting to talk with other people. It's what makes us humans, talking with other people. The alternative is lots and lots of money paid on psychotherapy and the like further down the road, or worse. Because actively avoiding talking to other people it's like bringing your car for regular checkups every 100k miles instead of ~15-20k miles, which will of course irremediably damage it.
- mym1990 4y ago
  They did say 'if they don't want to'...and how many of us can honestly say that we want to talk to someone ALL OF THE TIME? Talking to someone about checking in for a hotel room, after waiting for 10 minutes in a check in line...is not what I would call a fulfilling experience. Communication does not make us human, plenty of other species communicate...there are far more intricate and unique things that make us what we are. You're equating someone's wish to not have to wait at a check out counter to being anti-social...come on.
  - paganel 4y ago
    > You're equating someone's wish to not have to wait at a check out counter to being anti-social...come on. Yes, 10 minutes waiting in a hotel lobby, which is by definition a societal space, is, well, social. Actively wanting go avoid that is, well, anti-social. Anyway, it's a losing battle at this point.
    - krisoft 4y ago
      > Actively wanting go avoid that is, well, anti-social. Ah the epitome of social interactions. An underpaid and overworked service worker mis-hears my name, pretends to not find me in the system then gives me a card. Well worth queuing for! But you know it is a must, since if I continue the conversation with my travel companion uninterrupted all the way to our room then I am actively tearing apart the fabric of society. > Anyway, it's a losing battle at this point. Battle? Why do you care how others choose to live their life this much? Are they hurting you?
scarface74 4y ago
> In some Las Vegas hotels I no longer need to stop at a counter or stand in a line and it’s 1000x better experience. I can walk directly to my room and scan my phone. I can scan my phone for parking. I can grab extra keys at a kiosk, if I need them. I never have to talk to anyone, if I don’t want to. You can do that with literally any Hilton hotel anywhere in the country whether it’s a Waldorf or Home2Suites or a Tru. You can share your digital key with up to 4 people.
phpisthebest 4y ago
That is like every Hilton Hotel, been doing that for over a year now. Marriot is starting that program as well Soo much nicer
seydor 4y ago
Sounds like an airbnb
francisofascii 4y ago
Hopefully the rental car companies will soon have a similar feature.
- joekrill 4y ago
  They do. And they have for a very long time! At least with Avis I've been doing this for years. The app tells me where my car is located and I just walk to it and the key is in it.
  - krab 4y ago
    Mind blown, thanks! Next time, I'll look for this option! I don't mind hotel check-ins but the car rental process has never, ever been pleasant for me.
matwood 4y ago
Even pre-pandemic I never liked people coming in my room during my stay. First thing I always did when checking in was put the 'DND' placard on my door. All these changes just fit with how I operated for years.
- eastbound 4y ago
  I’ve always thought that hotels mandated daily cleaning just to check you are not performing illegal activities (abduction, drugs, sharing the room, prostitution), having a heart attack or stuck and need help.
  - ejb999 4y ago
    no, not really - they (vegas) did briefly after the mass shooting from the resort window, but before that, and since then I always leave the DND sign up, even if I am there for a week, and never had a problem.
- atkailash 4y ago
  [dead]
gnicholas 4y ago
App-based check-in is great, but I’ve found the phone-as-key system to be lousy when it comes to elevator swiping (to get access to higher floors). What hotels do this well?
areyousure 4y ago
Five years ago, in Las Vegas, it was cause for suspicion if you refused housekeeping for more than one or two days, see eg: https://www.wltx.com/article/news/local/hotels-revise-room-security-measures-in-wake-of-las-vegas-shooting/101-508153273 https://www.wltx.com/article/news/local/hotels-revise-room-s... But people forgot the reason why.
tracker1 4y ago
I'm the opposite... I honestly get frustrated with kiosks, usually the interface staff has is better/faster and I prefer the human contact. Even though I work with technology and generally like computers, I'm the type of person that I'll go to my desktop to do things I could do on my phone, but far more annoying on the phone.
- sixothree 4y ago
  Especially work travel. They always forget to do something important that you need a human for.
akhmatova 4y ago
Unstaffed hotels have a major (in my view, fatal) flaw staring you right in the face: poor security. The one and only time I stayed in such a place - an intruder was caught entering my room and diddling with a phone I left there - and he only got caught because I happened to double back to get something, and just happened to do so while he was in there. Never again. And the best part about staffed hotels? "I never have to use my phone, if I don't want to."
executive 4y ago
You can also pay the kiosk $30 for the rare privilege of early check in. Completely soulless.

missedthecue 4y ago

I wonder where everyone has gone. The lazy answer is that companies aren't paying enough. But how is it better to sit at home making $0 than working and having an income? How do they afford rent or electricity or pay for car insurance? The workforce participation rate is still well below pre-pandemic levels. Millions of people just up and left the workforce. It's not as if they are looking for work at the right wage, they simply aren't looking for work at all. Very peculiar.

heavyset_go 4y ago
People had ~3 years to find new jobs outside of hospitality after the industry basically shut down. No one is sitting at home, they found new jobs. There's also the toll COVID took on the workforce, and COVID-related disabilities.
- missedthecue 4y ago
  This can't be the explanation. If it were true, the workforce participation rate would be steady. Changing jobs doesn't raise or lower that figure. A person is employed whether they scrub toilets or do brain surgery. But it's not steady. Literally millions of people have stopped working and looking for work since 2020.
  - gitfan86 4y ago
    People realized that they didn't need to work shitty jobs. They could Uber part time, or work as a nanny without reporting as a full time employee or cut down on their living expenses or live off of government programs. Just look at how many people live in tents in California.
  - crooked-v 4y ago
    Well, about 1,245,000 of them died [1], and I'm sure there were a substantial number of older working-age people who went for early retirement to reduce the chances of dying from public contact. [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

heavyset_go 4y ago

> It's not for lack of trying. Hotels have raised hourly wages by 25% since early 2020, and employers are offering greater flexibility in scheduling. Still, workers are nowhere to be seen. 25% of minimum wage isn't much.

missedthecue 4y ago
If they were able to adequately staff two years ago, and now 25% of a pay raise later they can't, there are likely some structural issues going on.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  The structural issue is that Covid allowed for the activation energy for people to find better jobs. And possibly cut down on supply of people willing to work hotel cleaning jobs for low pay. It is probably among the least desirable work. Volatile hours, busiest times are weekends and holidays, literally cleaning up anything from bodily fluids to garbage and dealing with smells. No one outside of large unionized hotels in big cities is offering a decent salary with predictable schedule. The small franchise hotels have less than 50 employees, so they have no employer subsidized benefits either like access to 401k, public transit credits, or other tax advantaged accounts.
  - missedthecue 4y ago
    Why has the workforce participation rate cratered? If people simply changed to a better job, that figure would hold steady. Instead it shows us that millions of Americans decided to stop looking for work.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      I do not think it has cratered in the US. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab... Just 1 percent, 63% to 62%, which could just be aging demographics since a greater and greater proportion of people in America are going to be too old to work, especially for hard labor work like cleaning hotel rooms. Also, hotels (and other low pay to quality of life at work ratio employers) were already struggling before COVID. COVID just accelerated the inevitable.

mbg721 4y ago

I always assumed the previous frequent room cleanings were more for the benefit of the hotel owner checking up on things than because guests demanded them. So if hoteliers think there isn't very much risk of people trashing their rooms, they don't need to have somebody come in every day.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago

Probably shouldn't have fired people over some poorly researched procedure...

matt3210 4y ago

Its not a shortage of workers, it's a shortage of underpayable workers.

Natsu 4y ago
> Hotels have raised hourly wages by 25% since early 2020, and employers are offering greater flexibility in scheduling. Still, workers are nowhere to be seen. I dunno, my pay sure hasn't gone up by 25% in the past 2 years.
- notwokeno 4y ago
  Mine has gone up at a rate pretty close to that over three years. You might consider switching companies.
- ninth_ant 4y ago
  The rate it’s gone up is a red herring. If people don’t want to take the job at the posted rate then they are underpaying. Instead of comparing if your pay has gone up 25%, ask if you’d rather take one of those jobs than yours. Because apparently that’s an option if you want. There are almost certainly miserable working conditions, bad hours, and still an overall low wage. If people are able to find better jobs, then hotels need to treat people better or pay more to offset that. Are we seriously going to cry about megacorps not getting away with paying workers trash wages for miserable jobs? Boo hoo, pay more.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - kortilla 4y ago
    Megacorps is a red herring and emotional appeal. The same applies just as much to small businesses in the same industries.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]

ETH_start 4y ago

What this labor shortage indicates to me is that a significant number of people are willing to reduce the goods/services they consume, in exchange for having to work less. I'm not certain how COVID/lockdowns precipitated this change, but I'm fairly certain they were directly or indirectly the catalyst.

SoftTalker 4y ago
They spent weeks on end at home, and realized it didn't suck as bad as they thought it would. You can save a lot of money by not eating out, going out, etc. and just staying home and playing a board game with the family.
- supertrope 4y ago
  There was a lot of substitution of goods purchases in lieu of services.
acchow 4y ago
Reduce the goods and services they consume? This would show up as a drop in real GDP
- ETH_start 4y ago
  Yes it should show up as a drop in real GDP.
  - acchow 4y ago
    Then this can't be correct, since real GDP in 2012 dollars has been growing and is higher in 2022 than it was in 2019 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPC1 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPC1
    - ETH_start 4y ago
      Yep, that is definitely evidence against my theory.

mc32 4y ago

Some cheap European hotels are made like the expensive toilet booths where they basically just hose them down —-no fancy carpeting. All surfaces except the bedding are washable. Makes for easy cleanup and quick turnaround. It’s not for everyone of course.

SoftTalker 4y ago
In Europe it's not uncommon (or at least, it isn't unheard of) to need to bring your own bed sheets and towels from home.
- Eleison23 4y ago
- bbbobbb 4y ago
  Source? Because that's definitely not unheard of let alone common. In fact, as a European I've literally not heard something like that.
  - dazc 4y ago
    Only time I had to bring my own bedlinen was in a youth hostel. For some hotels I've stayed in though, it would have been a good idea.
  - forgotusername6 4y ago
    The only places I've heard of that do this are the most budget of holiday parks in the UK. The type of place where the TV is bolted down and you have to pay for your own electricity.
- switch007 4y ago
  Sorry that’s absolute nonsense Did you have some weird experience that you’re extrapolating wildly?
  - rippercushions 4y ago

boomboomsubban 4y ago

Doesn't hotel cleaning have a fairly famous reputation for hiring both legal and illegal immigrants? Could the policies started in Trump's term be part of what's causing this issue?

7373737373 4y ago

This is the kind of stuff I'd love to see rapidly accelerated through universal basic income.

myroon5 4y ago

Surprised how rare domestic automation attempts are. Thought businesses cleaning daily would try self cleaning things beyond vacuums by now: https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/self-cleaning-toilets-do-they-really-work-254692 https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/self-cleaning-toilets-do-th...

EricDeb 4y ago

As long as society is taking care of people I'd much rather have robots doing this type of work than low wage people.

moffkalast 4y ago
Yeah it's not like anyone exactly dreams to become a hotel room cleaner. Pointless menial jobs like these need to go. Unfortunately while I do see the profits from this getting taxed and going towards UBI-style services in some parts of the world, in the US it's just gonna be going to the owners with everyone else left to die on the street.

Animats 4y ago

Worlds smallest violin plays. A few years back, hotel workers were complaining that hotels were adding more linens to beds such as bed ruffles, to add "luxury", and expecting workers to do the same number of beds per hour. Now it's payback time.

colpabar 4y ago
Did that actually happen, or was that the headline of a breitbart article that you didn't read?
- Animats 4y ago
  See this CAL-OSHA complaint.[1] "During the past decade, hotel operators have increasingly competed on the basis of the level of luxury of their room offerings. This includes luxury bedding consisting of oversize mattresses and opulent bed linen, together with other upgraded room and bathroom amenities. One industry observer has aptly described the competition to introduce more luxurious beds and room amenities as the "bed-race." The trend started in the late nineties when Starwood Hotel Corporation introduced the "Heavenly Bed" at its Westin-branded properties. Other companies followed suit with their own luxury bedding programs: Hyatt the "Grand Bed," Marriott the "Marriott Bed," Radisson the "Sleep Number Bed," Hilton the "Serenity Collection," and others. Although first confined to upper-end hotels, the new bedding and room packages are now commonplace throughout the hotel industry. The new bedding packages are characterized by heavy, plush mattresses weighing in excess of 100 pounds. They typically feature a bulky "duvet" or quilted comforter, triple sheeting using flat (instead of a fitted) bottom sheet, up to six pillows on a bed, pillow cases that fit tightly over plump pillows, and other amenities such as decorative pillows and blankets. Major players in California's hotel and lodging industry have acknowledged the hazards that the new bedding packages pose to housekeepers..." [1] https://www.dir.ca.gov/oshsb/documents/Hotel-Housekeeping-Musculoskeletal-Injury-Prevention-dr1.pdf https://www.dir.ca.gov/oshsb/documents/Hotel-Housekeeping-Mu...

Renaud 4y ago

Hotels should start proposing discounts for not cleaning the room every day. If I stay in a place for a couple of weeks, I’d be happy to have the bedsheets and towels changed once and the room made like every 3 days at most. I mean, most of us don’t do more than that at home. Less room cleaning would save on staff and laundry et be a net benefit for the environment.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> Hotels should start proposing discounts for not cleaning the room every day. Hotels have, in many cases, just stopped having daily room cleaning, without offering a discount: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hotels-end-basic-amenities-no-more-housekeeping-skimpflation/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hotels-end-basic-amenities-no-m...
- grogenaut 4y ago
  But that is a discount, they didn't raise your rates.
  - PakistaniDenzel 4y ago
    It's equivalent to the shrinkflation you see in supermarkets, I wouldn't call that a discount
    - grogenaut 4y ago
      I think the same way you can't a have a sale year round if it's been a year it's just what they sell.
bombolo 4y ago
You mean same price for not cleaning and paying premium for cleaning
rippercushions 4y ago
Many Marriott hotels have been offering 500 rewards points for not cleaning your room for years now. It's all or nothing though, you can't just reduce the frequency of cleaning.

pasquinelli 4y ago

maybe they could consider raising wages--for real--to take care of their staffing shortage. $10 to $16 an hour clearly doesn't cut it. $16 an hour is trash, $10 an hour... i don't know what to call it.

huijzer 4y ago

For people interested in how this would look, there are some videos on YouTube, such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnGpSZmj-cA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnGpSZmj-cA, where people visit Alibaba's high-tech hotel.

coderoffortune 4y ago

As a person who used to work for housekeeping department in various London hotels I can tell there's no shortage of labour, there's a shortage for slaves. Hospitality jobs, housekeeping in particular, is modern slavery.

switch007 4y ago
And London hotel prices can be crazy high. They should be able to pay their staff decent wages

Quequau 4y ago

I gotta wonder how much of a "staffing shortage" they would have if they raised the pay 10-15%. Everywhere else I see claims of employers having difficulties finding and retaining competent employees, it just happens that they're low wage, low respect jobs with unpleasant & unreasonable management. Hotel cleaning staff is probably no different.

qwerty456127 4y ago

The world needs big industrial vacuum robots. Why don't they exist? I live in a rather rich condo in Europe yet it's only once a year our vast underground garage is cleaned. In winter there are lakes of dirty water from the snow melting off the wheels, the rest of the year there are layers and tumbleweed-like balls of housedust (looks depressing). The floor itself is almost perfectly leveled and polished - ideal for a vacuum robot. I wish the bots would roam there and clean the mess. We have human jaintors but they only clean the stairs.

jl6 4y ago
Probably some combination of: * Lots of places don’t care if their garage is an unclean space. * Places that do care will hire cleaning staff that are probably cheaper. * Liability concerns for having something semi-autonomous roaming around peoples’ expensive vehicles.
seydor 4y ago
We also need retrofitted houses that can be easily cleaned/serviced.

rjh29 4y ago

Even Japan, a country fairly famous for overemploying people, is doing this. Hotels - self-service checkin, although you do at least speak to a human at the beginning, and if they're not busy they'll do the whole thing the old-fashioned way Convenience stores / supermarkets - self-service registers, or self-service payment Karaoke - self-service sign in and payment, even ordered a beer and was told to open the door, a robot was waiting outside with a beer balanced on its head. Izakaya - sit down, use a tablet to order everything I have mixed feelings about it, in the UK I want everything automated, but in Japan their service is so good that I find myself missing it.

armchairhacker 4y ago
I see it as a good thing, in that we really don’t need people for that stuff, so overall it saves time and effort. I see it as a bad thing when those former people are now unemployed, and also people are lonelier because we don’t have small talk. Those are 2 issues that absolutely need to be addressed. However bad (i.e. low paying and toxic) service jobs and lack of small talk are issues which we seem to be having in general

cafard 4y ago

For some years, I have taught ESL. One recent student worked on a hotel cleaning crew. She did not particularly enjoy it. She also said that when traveling she always took her own sheets, since she did not trust hotel crews to keep them clean or change them between guests.

amelius 4y ago

I personally hate it if someone comes into my room and cleans it. Home sweet home is a so much better experience than being in a hotel, even the more expensive ones.

tim333 4y ago
I actually rather like the experience in ultra cheap third world places where you can put your own padlock on the door. There's something nice about being able to leave your stuff including valuables around without worrying about random staff coming in.

deleted 4y ago

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smcg 4y ago

Hotels have gotten by too long on exploiting workers with long hours and low wages. $16 is not a liveable wage and people know that. Market forces go both ways!

barbariangrunge 4y ago

Again, it’s not a staffing shortage, it’s an entire population fleeing an industry due to a pay shortage

tantalor 4y ago
Fleeing to where? Are other industries paying better? Except for niches like tech, wages are stagnant across the board.
- BeFlatXIII 4y ago
  Amazon warehouses, mostly. It’s also a worker treatment shortage. They leave for somewhere with equally low wages but less nonsense to put up with.
  - Zigurd 4y ago
    Amazon warehouses are no picnic, and their attrition numbers show it. But compared to industries that exploit immigrants and where wage theft is common, a warehouse job is objectively better. A lot of people don't understand how hard it is at the bottom of the labor force.
- pc86 4y ago
  Housekeeping/cleaning is pretty low wage regardless, and the pandemic gave a lot of people an opportunity to get new skills. Not saying they went into tech but almost any industry pays better. A lot probably also went into industry that pay comparatively the same but offer more flexibility in scheduling.
- fundad 4y ago
  Catering, retail, call “center” (often remote positions).
- VLM 4y ago
  Risk avoidance. Poor people can't economically handle "someone sneezed so you get no income for months". Plenty of low paying jobs never closed during covid and everyone's crowding into them to avoid possible economic disaster. Normally you fix lack of employees with higher pay, but low pay is baked into the cake they can't pay more and stay in business (which is the step right before going out of business, BTW).

transfire 4y ago

You’d think for new hotels there be a robot vacuum in every room these days. Surely there are enough hotel rooms in the world to get industry vacuum bots to cost less then 10k a pop.

dbg31415 4y ago

I have a cousin who... lots of reasons... but life hasn't gone her way. She had a kid way too early with the wrong guy. She never had much of an education. Her main job has been working at hotels as a cleaner, and makes something like $8 / hour. The work was "on demand" -- the hotels wouldn't even give her regular hours. If they didn't have people staying, they wouldn't call her to show up. But, for $8 / hour, they expected her to be on-call -- even though she only got paid if they called. It was just so cringe-worthy hearing her talk about what was expected of her to make $8 / hour. She was only allowed like 15 minutes per room. She was never to talk to guests in the halls, unless they spoke to her first. She was told, "Never make eye contact with guests." One supervisor told her, "Better to just shrug and pretend like you don't speak English if a guest talks to you." My cousin has blonde hair and blue eyes. The cleaners all got cut loose the moment the pandemic hit. No severance pay or Covid bonuses -- pissed me off knowing these companies were claiming pandemic hardships, and getting bailed out, but not passing assistance on to the employees most in need. My family had to come together to help my cousin during that time -- and that's what family is for, but her employer sure wasn't there for her the way my employer was there for me. She's never one to complain, or ask for help, but I know from how excited she got when I gave her a handful of $5-50 gift cards that she's never gotten more than $20 as a Christmas bonus. The highlight of the job for her was when someone would leave a tip, forget something trivial in the room (a phone charging cable or something they wouldn't call lost and found over), or throw something out and she'd get to keep something she found in the trash. But she said they weren't allowed to keep anything from the rooms any more, even if it had been put in the trash. And they were supposed to report if someone left cash in the room, even if it was clearly a $5 tip. Pretty shitty. Oh, and the kicker... she worked a lot, she was always on call for a few of the different hotels in her area. But if she made "too much" money she would lose her food stamps. There was an "un-sweet" spot, where if she worked too much it would cost her. Anyway, I don't know what the moral of the story was. It all seemed shitty. Probably best to have robots do more of it. I spent 7 years in my 20s and early 30s basically living in hotels for work. I have a "lifetime" status with one prominent chain. I didn't put a lot of thought into the lives of the people who worked these jobs back then. But I probably should have. Anything that seems to good to be true, probably is. Pretty much any time someone walks away feeling, "What good service!" I'm sure there's an army of people being exploited.

skybrian 4y ago

I recently stayed a couple nights at a nice “boutique” style hotel in Philadelphia that has no staff there most of the time. You get in with a keycode or an app (the app didn’t work). It’s sort of like an airbnb, but a hotel. Presumably they do have staff to clean the rooms, but only between visitors as far as I could see? We never saw any staff. There is a number to call.

akhmatova 4y ago

"Hotels turn to robots to keep wages down" is the title they meant to use.

typest 4y ago

There is a take that consistently comes up in discussions like this (and indeed is prominent several times on this post), which says "the problem isn't a shortage of workers, it's that employers don't want to pay workers enough." This seems somewhat limited to me, and there is an alternate explanation I would like to explore. It seems to me rising cost of labor, while good for the people being paid that rising cost, can actually be bad for society overall, because you some businesses and industries will just disappear when the cost of labor goes high enough. And sure, you can respond that those businesses shouldn't exist if they can't pay workers enough, and yeah, fine. But the result is that we just then don't have those businesses (making society worse off?). For this hotel example -- maybe cost of labor continues to go up, and it's much harder to automate making a bed than vacuuming a floor, and in 10 years, we all generally stay at hotels where robots vacuum our floors every day, but no one ever makes your bed for you -- that becomes a relic of the past. I live in NYC, so a more prominent example I think about frequently is how we can no longer afford beautiful stone masonry on all our buildings. When labor was cheaper 100 years ago, it was easier to pay someone to carve stone -- now, not so much. I want workers to be paid a lot so they can live good lives, but it's worth thinking about what happens to society as cost of labor continues to go up, and why the cost of labor is going up in the first place (Baumol's Cost Disease? Land rent?).

cudgy 4y ago
Seems like you are forgetting about laborers getting more of the profits of companies and the inverse of non-profitable or barely profitable companies surviving on artificially low labor rates. You mention “society” as if it is distinct from the laborers, but society consists of these laborers.
- typest 4y ago
  I think this makes sense with what I'm saying. Laborers get more of the profits of companies and in turn get wealthier. However, the costs of services in turn go up (due to rising cost of labor), so those laborers (society) cannot actually afford more services (provided by people). Workers can more easily purchase goods which benefit from increasing automation and technology. So, these workers which are capturing more of the profit can afford to buy fancier kitchen appliances and cook themselves better meals. But, can they all then afford to go out to eat more -- when going out to eat is primarily an endeavor dependent on the labor of others (and thus it becomes more expensive)?

thinkmcfly 4y ago

The craziest part of this to me is all of the business owners who weren't having to work their asses off before, raging about not having a $10/hr labor pool to exploit anymore These hotel owners can get fucked

SergeAx 4y ago

Last time I traveled was in Germany in September. Several hotels there offered options for 2-3 nights with no cleaning included, for a discount. They call it "green stay", ironically.

green-digger 4y ago

I think there is the other side to why hotels are unable to raise wages and therefore are unable to raise prices. With the introduction of services like Airbnb, the increase in supply of accomodation means that it is very much a consumers market where accomodation is almost indistinguishable is competing purely on price. This is combined with the fact that the opportunity cost of owning a property for the purpose of short term let is very high. Each night your property is vacant you are unable to resell that night in the future (unless you are doc from back to the future). I think this all leads to a situation were there is very little a hotel can do to raise wages: raise wages and raise prices then consumers will pick the cheapest practically identical accomodation near by.

puffoflogic 4y ago

> Hotels have raised hourly wages by 25% since early 2020 Assuming annual inflation of 8%, that is a reduction in real wages over three years.