Skift Travel News Blog

Short stories and posts about the daily news happenings around the travel industry.

Hotels

Los Angeles Becomes One of the First U.S. Cities to Mandate Daily Hotel Room Cleaning

2 years ago

Los Angeles City Council has adopted a bunch a hotel workers protection measures, undoing some of the changes that happened during the pandemic such as foregoing daily hotel room cleaning. These measures come after intense lobbying and ad campaigns from the largest U.S. hotel union Unite Here.

Most hotels in the city will be required to limit the daily workload of housekeepers, offer overtime pay under certain circumstances, provide “panic buttons” to protect their workers from sexual harassment and do away with policies that automatically forgo daily cleaning, according to LA Times.

No surprise that the hotel housekeepers measures were opposed by business and hospitality trade groups, their argument being this would lead to higher labor costs, higher room rates and a drop in tourists.

Hotels

Hotel Workers Want Guests to Demand Daily Room Cleaning in New Ad Campaign

2 years ago

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.