It’s not an altogether bad idea, although it has its bugs to work out. We should maybe try it in properties that will operate under our own brands.
I would guess that the biggest thing in the way of it at most hotels is that the select service/limited service hotel business model — with which most hotels line up nowadays, although some full-service hotels remain — was designed, in part, to eliminate tipped employees in hotels.
Getting us away from tipped employees was just one part of the overall campaign to simplify the hotel operation, make it possible to make most of the revenue on rooms rather than food, beverage on banquets, eliminate the high-overhead restaurant and bar and see if people could make do with a complimentary, easy-to-prepare buffet breakfast instead, and keep everything at a single, moderate if not altogether low, price for the guest.
One thing they definitely wanted to get away from was the number of employees in a hotel — the doorman, the bellman, the wait staff at the hotel restaurant, the washroom attendant, the guy in the fitness room — who always seemed to have their hand out to the guests.
That’s respectable. Tipped employees can be a little much in the sort of establishment where it’s a problem (although I’m older and wiser now, and don’t patronize “gentlemens’ clubs” any more).
I spent years running movie theatres. One of the big contributions that Samuel ‘Roxy’ Rothafel made to that business in his day, when the big movie palaces came about (he’s the guy who gave us the former Roxy Theatre in New York City and later, Radio City Music Hall), was paying high wages to his ushers at the Roxy, and asking from them in return an agreement that they forego tipping. Ushers were at the time traditionally tipped employees, like a waitress or a bartender, and the practice of tipping ushers (for example, if you want a better seat) prevails even today at some live performance venues. You don’t see tipped employees at AMC, or Regal Cinemas.
But in hotels, we overdid it in some areas. We don’t pay the housekeepers crap. (I was once the general manager of a hotel whose owners insisted on paying them minimum wage — “it’s a ‘minimum-wage job’”, they insisted. This is one of those jobs I look back on even today that I feel that I should have quit, they had several bad practices in place, in which I was asked to be a participant, and where I had to ask, ‘do you want to be a part of this?’; but if I quit, I’d be out of a job, I’d just be replaced with someone who’d do it more enthusiastically, I’d achieve nothing except martyrdom for myself, nothing would change, and the wrong side wins . . . One of the reasons I formed my own company was that I could negotiate opportunities to do it right.) We treat them like crap. And we’ve eliminated their tip income. They work very hard, at a very physical, very thankless, and often very nasty, job, and they deserve better.
I’d like to see it come back in smaller, select service properties like we run, but we’d have to address and work out the problems. Years ago, back around the time I was in college, I worked in restaurant and club operations where competition among the wait staff was stiff for the tip revenue — lots and lots of internal bickering about who would be assigned to which section of tables, who would be seated or not seated at those tables, which table they’d demand the busboy would clean first after a guest left (I always did it for the one who didn’t mind sharing a buck or two from her tips, so I’d have lunch money and smokes that day; although any waitress that I had the hots for would have her tables get pretty prompt attention as well, if I thought she might give me any attention in return).
An entire underground economy occurred in each of those restaurant and club operations around the flow, and occasional redistribution, of tip income that would defy vigorous efforts of management to mediate or control it, if management made the effort at all — or didn’t, through the introduction of some ‘tip pooling’ scheme, make it worse. (Of course, servers who raked it in on tips would scream bloody murder about the idea of ‘tip pooling’, while those who felt slighted in their opportunities to have good-tipping guests seated in their section never gave up the fight in favor of it, and the agitation and harangue from those servers never ended.)
I don’t need that in my hotel. Someone’s got to manage it. Perhaps I should seek some coaching on it from a restaurant manager: restaurants have to deal with managing tipped employees, and their tips, all the time. We’re running a hotel, not a coyote bar.
I want the housekeepers to be assigned rooms to clean each day fairly, not on the basis of which guests are likely or not to tip. I want each guest cared for in accordance with our standards, not on the basis of their perceived ability or inclination to tip. I don’t want any guest feeling slighted because someone else is tipping more (what if they’re in a situation where their trip to town is absolutely necessary, but they can’t afford to hand out tips?). I don’t want guests getting service, supplies or attention in excess of what they’re paying us for because they’re tipping an employee, and not because they’re paying the hotel enough to cover it. I certainly don’t want an employee bribed to do anything unethical or illegal. I want desk clerks and people taking reservations to assign each incoming guest the most appropriate room we can give him or her, not be incentivized to do it on the basis of which housekeeper will clean the room and collect the tip, or whether a bargain-hunting guest slips the clerk a few extra bucks for an unauthorized, complimentary upgrade. (or just as bad, does not give a guest an upgrade that I’d want the guest to have, because the guest didn’t pony up). And I certainly don’t want anyone on the staff trying to subtly (and certainly not overtly) hustle or ‘milk’ the guests for tips, or increased tips.
We’d also need a way to forestall, and mediate fairly when it does come up, any disputes between housekeepers on how to divide up a tip left by a a guest who stayed several days. It takes around fifteen minutes to service a room for a stayover guest, more like a half hour to make a room after the guest has checked out: if the guest stayed three days and different housekeepers did the room on one or more of those days, how do you fairly divide up the ten bucks so everyone involved, on any of those days, in cleaning or servicing the room, is happy? This is all the more important for us because our pricing models and marketing, at our own branded hotels, pursues guests who will stay for several days, and rewards them with an automatic discount.
And all of that’s before we even go there about how any more than a very discreet, very delicate, effort to bring it back, would go over with some guests, many of whom aren’t old enough to remember when the ‘maid’ was a tipped employee. Why can’t you cheap, skinflint so-and-so’s be responsible for paying your employees, why are you asking us to? Isn’t the high price we already pay for the room enough for you?
The accounting and recordkeeping logistics of allowing a housekeeper’s tip to be added to the guest’s bill at his request, as Yannick Noel expressed some concern about, would actually be the easy part. In my very first job as a hotel night auditor years ago, one of my chores was to process the ‘charge tips’ from the restaurant reports and write them off the daily report as an expense item. It would take very little to print up a tip envelope that offered an option for the guest to charge a tip and sign in the space provided, have it added as a line item on his room bill, and pay for it with his credit card when he checked out.
There’s also some room for concern about tax withholding requirements. We have to do withholding on the tip income by the housekeepers, but how much? And what’s going to happen if someone underreports it, or just plain doesn’t track it: are we going to be responsible to the IRS for that?
So, it’s not difficult to understand why most hotels are in no hurry to take on bringing back tipping for housekeepers, although Marriott put a toe in the water with the idea about a year and a half ago, and printed out some tip envelopes to leave in the rooms at some of their hotels.
But we’re going to keep looking for ways to deal with the problems, and try something.
Originally appeared on Quora
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