Hotel housekeepers can lose in 'optional housekeeping' hotel trend

By Barbara De Lollis, USA TODAY



File photo shows housekeeping supervisor Maria Nunez cleans a mirror in the bathroom of one of the rooms at the Westin Kierland Resort & Spa in Phoenix on Tuesday, June 22, 2010. The hotel is among a small but growing group who have taken their in-room CAPTIONBy Michael Schennum, AP Photo/The Arizona RepublicHousekeepers have much to lose as more hotel chains make daily, full-room housekeeping an optional service - and some customers decide they don't want a lengthy cleaning, so Sunday's article by the Province paper of Vancouver caught my eye. The piece looks at Starwood's "Make a Green Choice" optional housekeeping program and its impact on some Toronto housekeepers.



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Starwood last summer rolled out the program at 140 hotels last summer, inviting guests to "conserve natural resources" by declining housekeeping in exchange for loyalty points or vouchers for food and beverages.

Housekeeper Brigida Ruiz - a Sheraton Centre Toronto attendant for 18 years - tells the paper that reducing daily room cleaning isn't as green as people might think. After guests opt out of daily room cleaning, she says that giving the room a proper cleaning when the guest checks out takes more time, electricity, water and cleaning chemicals.

"Can you imagine how a room gets after one week without cleaning service?" Ruiz tells the paper. "It's dirty, filthy. Really stinky."

The towels alone are "like a mountain," and since the rooms take longer to clean, workers are forced to rush the job in order to meet their daily quota, the article says. Guests are officially allowed to go three consecutive days without a room cleaning, but guests sometimes go without for longer periods, the piece says.

The optional housekeeping program also has implications for housekeepers that extend beyond how hard they need to work. If 45 rooms opt out of housekeeping in a day, three housekeepers lose shifts, the story says.

"This has been a real problem for housekeepers for the hotels," Michelle Travis of Unite Here Local 40 tells the paper. The union chapter represents 8,000 hotel workers in British Columbia.

The Sheraton Centre Toronto hotel, meanwhile, defended the program to the paper, saying that it helps the hotel save energy and reduce water and chemical use. About 5% of the Westin Bayshore hotel's customers opt to participate in "Make a Green Choice," vs. 8% companywide, the hotel spokesman told the paper.

The conversation about the new housekeeping trend extends beyond one hotel.

Speaking to bigger picture, Rachel Dodds, associate professor of hospitality at Ryerson University in Toronto, told the paper that hotels should be commended for trying to reduce their environmental footprint. After all, she said, hotels are just behind hospitals as the most wasteful and consumptive buildings - and yet, there is a social impact that's not being considered by hotels. She sees it as the latest example of a travel industry trend in reducing services offered to consumers in exchange for lower costs.


Last week, I asked hotel consultant Michael Juell, a 30-year hospitality veteran who has run hotel housekeeping departments, to share some of his insights on the topic.


Hotels, he said, today a typical, mid-priced hotel will budget about $40 to clean a single hotel room - outside of New York City, the USA's most expensive market. The actual price will depend on other factors including the hotel's location, room size, bed linens and furniture, housekeeper wages and labor union representation, he said. Housekeepers are expected to clean between about 17 and 19 rooms per day, Juell says.