When did hotel door hangers stop saying DO NOT DISTURB on one side and PLEASE MAKE UP ROOM on the other?

I first started seeing door hangers that had 'Do Not Disturb' printed on both sides of them thirty years ago, when I started in this business. While those are increasingly prevalent, you can still get the ones printed with the 'Please Make Up Room Now' request on one side (http://www.americanhotel.com/Pro... ).

At the select service or economy level, our housekeeping schedule cannot always allow our compliance with a request to make a room at a particular time, if we get such a request; so it's risky to have something in the room that would imply an offer or promise to do so. The housekeepers are given a list of rooms to do, and sent on their way, and stay pretty busy getting them done. They don't patrol the corridors looking for any suddenly-placed 'Please Make Up Room Now' door hangers, and never did -- even in hotels with the hangers.

Checked-out rooms are always made up first. We have incoming reservations beginning at the 3:00 pm check-in time, and need to have them ready . Once the checked-out rooms are made up for the next guests, the stayover rooms that are due for service are serviced. If you're staying over, a request to have your room serviced in the morning is a bit awkward for the housekeepers.

Only at a more upscale property, is there any assurance that a room attendant will be able to deviate from that to make someone's room precisely between 9:00 and 9:30 am. But at that price point, they'll keep room attendants on the property as late as 2:00 am (for turn-down service) or even around the clock.

In many hotels, if you leave your room at, say, 1:oo pm for an hour or so, and have some reason to want it done while you're gone and before you return, you can make a request at the desk. If I were there, I'd make some effort to have someone do it.

But if you're staying at a hotel with no restaurant and a free breakfast, that charges less than $200 per night, try not to get too mad if they're running behind and can't get to you at exactly that time. They should make the effort, but few guests at that price point are that picky, so it's an unusual request (which is perhaps another reason why the door hangers with 'Do Not Disturb' printed on both sides are increasingly prevalent -- not that many people make a request to have their room serviced at a certain time anymore.). Your request, in most hotels, will be competing with the housekeepers' need to get all of the rooms done and get the room attendants finished for the day and off the clock as soon as possible.

Originally appeared on Quora