The daily hotel room cleaning is now an innocent relic of our pre-covid days, that much is certain. Among the many ramifications beyond the lower expenses for hotels is that the cleaning staff is now getting paid less, for less work. And when they do clean the rooms after a guest’s stay, because they haven’t been cleaned daily during their stay, the rooms are dirtier and harder to clean, according to the largest U.S. hotel union Unite Here.
“Hotel housekeepers are sharing stories about filthy rooms, painful workloads, and lost income as they ask guests to choose daily housekeeping in a new digital ad campaign…the ads…will be served to frequent travelers and bookers of business meetings,” says the announcement from Unite. The union estimates that ending daily housekeeping industrywide would eliminate up to 39 percent of all U.S. hotel housekeeping jobs and cost housekeepers – overwhelmingly women of color – $4.8 billion in annual lost wages.
The WSJ has more details: Daily cleanings come down to guest preference, hotel operators say…Hotel operators say that in some cases, they lack workers to service rooms daily. There were 17% fewer payroll workers in the accommodation sector in April than there were in April 2019…Chip Rogers, president and CEO of the hotel association, says hoteliers in the group are hiring housekeepers quickly, in some cases on the day they apply for the job.