How do hotels dispose of 'slightly dirty' towels?

'Slightly dirty' towels go into the hotel laundry: we don't give up on them that easily. Towels are only retired if they show a stain that won't come out  or they start to get discolored or frayed. (If it's not too noticeable, we dye it blue and use it as a pool towel: otherwise, it gets dyed red and the housekeepers use it as a cleaning rag.)



Originally appeared on Quora

Is it stealing if you take certain items in your already paid-for hotel room like soap, shampoo, stationery, etc?

We expect guests to either use or to take consumable items - soap, shampoo, stationery, etc. You're welcome.

Things like towels, hair dryers, lamps, TVs, TV remotes (I think some guests are mutant aliens who eat TV remotes. Like, gee, the remote can't be counted upon to work with any TV anywhere except the one in the room, but they do travel . . . ), alarm clock radios, comforters, coffeemakers, bedspreads, blankets, etc., are obviously intended for the next guests, are part of the furnishings, and we don't want you taking them. They are also a bit more costly - in a cheap motel, almost as much as you paid for the room in some cases, and definitely more than our profit margin in many more cases - so yes, we go a little nuts when people help themselves to them.

Bathrobes occupy a grey area in the middle. Some hotels provide them as part of the bedding, and want to launder them and hang them for another guest when you check out. On the other hand, in a more upscale property, some people actually assume that they're gifts - with the hotel's blessing. Something like that is a good promotional item, if a little on the pricy side for a midscale hotel: if you did it at all, you'd only do it for your most important customers. I wouldn't provide them in every room to every guest, but a VIP might find a bathrobe monogrammed with the hotel logo left in the room, as a gift. (Not all of them get opened or taken in places where I've seen it done that way.)

Why don't hotel rooms have liquid soap dispensers?

Like this?

It's too high-tech for a hotel. Seriously. 

And it's unsanitary. 

(Are you already starting to not believe a word of this one? . . .)

This past week I've been letting daylight in upon magic and holding us up for ridicule as an industry disinclined to have our technology keep up with the times and modern needs (Michael Forrest Jones' answer to Why does it take so long to check in at hotels? ), but oddly enough, this really is too high tech for a hotel. Before you start laughing . . . well, here's why: 

Why are hotels often slow to innovate?

Because we don't have to if we don't want, so why the heck should we? 

Investment is risky. Leave things be, and we can still have enough people come in the door at a rate we kvetch and whine isn't high enough, to keep the property running in the black and get a low return that we kvetch and wine isn't high enough. And people have little to no patience with results that aren't immediately apparent. 

That's the way most people do it, anyway. Asking me why they don't innovate is like asking me, why would someone not eat, or why would someone not breathe? I can only speculate. But there are a lot of natural human flaws that get in the way, so some of this stuff even comes up for me more than I should let it.

So here goes with some speculation, based on my observations and experience over the years:

What is the one feature, outside basic necessities like running water, that every hotel room should have?

A bed, some clean bedding, four walls, a floor, a roof, a clean bath, and a locking door. 

And then, the question becomes, do you want to be able to rent the darn thing to human beings that you wouldn't mind having as guests? Because that's what it comes down to: each person measures their own 'need'. Define essential. Whatever item you name, you might feel very uncomfortable without it, even though not that many people feel the need for it. Or you could do without it just fine, but the guy next door will suffer through his stay for lack of it. (Do you actually watch all the channels you have on your cable TV? Yet, even if one of the 'amazing TV offers' channels were eliminated, someone would complain to the cable company.)



We once tried to come up with a hotel with bare-bones amenities, where we could rent the rooms cheap cheap. (Twitter was a new thing, then, and people seemed to like the little blue bird, so inspired by that, and the 'cheap cheap' description, we even came up with a brand for it: 'Bluebird Hotel'.) 

I mean, we were downright shameless and aggressive about it, looking for every way in the book plus a few no book would dare print, to cut costs and make it possible to rent the rooms for forty bucks a night or under.

Why do most hotels use only white linen?

When you have to buy more, white is just about the easiest color to match. 



And you're always buying more. Why? Occasionally rips are a problem, but usually it's because of a stain that won't come out. Which is another reason: stains show up more readily on white linen. Sometimes, stains are a good thing -- they tell you that it's time to retire that sheet or pillowcase and replace it with a new one. A guest who finds a stain on a colored sheet won't spot it until he or she is looking at it much more up close and personal - and then he or she will be very unhappy about it.  (It's like a law: in the mind of most guests, any mystery stain on a sheet or other bedding will be blood, or something even more disgusting.) I want my housekeepers to spot any stains on my linens before they go on the bed, and then exchange it for one that isn't stained.

You can't always count on getting your replacement linens in the same shade of blue, green, peach or pastel yellow that you got last time if you go with colors.

Indeed, hotels that still use bedspreads at all are moving in a big way to white bedspreads - for all the same reasons.

Originally appeared on Quora

How often do hotel workers notice that their luggage carts are missing? How often do guests become upset when they are not available for use?

How often? All the flippin' time, and there's little anyone can do about it. It's one of the crosses to bear in this business (like little old ladies calling the desk in the middle of the night to complain that the guest in the next room is noisy, but when you go up to check, there's not a sound coming from the 'offending' room). 

All you can do is try to keep enough carts around (you should have two for the first fifty rooms, plus one more for each additional fifty rooms). But no matter how many you have (and they are surprisingly expensive, by the way -- even a 'cheap' one runs about $600-700 -- which is why a lot of hotels tend to skimp on them, or keep them around after they've obviously been worn out more than ten times over), when they're gone, they're gone.



And yes, guests do become upset when they need a cart and none are available, but we can't make them reappear by magic.

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.

What happens if a guest steals a towel or pillow from a hotel room?

If you can get it out of the building without us spotting you, we’ll let you keep it. Since that usually involves smuggling it out in your baggage with your dirty socks and underwear, it’s conceivable that we might not want it back.

If you do it several times, if every time you rent a room from us the housekeepers tell us that there are things missing from the room, and we’ve become pretty confident that it’s you, we’ll stop renting rooms to you.

Originally appeared on Quora