Hotels want you to re-use towels, not have your sheets changed, and even decline housekeeping entirely. They tell you it’s for the environment, but it’s really about reducing labor costs.
Sometimes they just tell you you’re doing it for the environment. That’s a stretch. Hotel housekeeping isn’t among the top environmental threats. And hotels don’t mind one big encouraging you to fly out to visit their hotels, eat beef in their restaurants, and extend your stay by flying your family out too.
When a property wants to split the savings with you, though, by rebating points that’s fair. Starwood was known for their Make a Green Choice program offering 500 Starpoints per night you skipped housekeeping. Marriott still offers a similar, albeit less rewarding, program.
Reader Ryan shares a photo of the offer to earn 250 points for skipping housekeeping, a test at a Hyatt Place where he was staying. That’s on par with Marriott’s offer which so angered the much larger chain’s unionized housekeeping staff (“Marriott’s Dirty Choice”).
You can only earn 250 Hyatt points for the number of nights of your stay minus one (it isn’t allowed on one night stays, and isn’t allowed on the last night of your stay). It’s unclear whether there are other restrictions, like requiring housekeeping every so many nights on long stays.
This Hyatt Place was also waiving their $7 parking fee for World of Hyatt members, a perk that currently exists for top tier Globalists on award stays.
We’ll see if either test gets extended more broadly. The Green Choice program has been tested occasionally by some Hyatt properties since at least 2016, though at Hyatt certain innovations can take time to catch on — the free bottled water benefit included in World of Hyatt was originally tested five years before launch of the program.
Currently at Hyatt Place Austin downtown and I got the same offer. I think 250 points is a bit stingy.
1,000 points? Okay. 250 points? Forget it!
Saw this at Hyatt Place Indianapolis Airport FWIW.
Thanks for the post.
I agree with Tom and Edward, 250 points isn’t worth it.
I could see maybe 500 points for a HP or HH and 1000 points for everyone else
Maybe they’ll come out with another credit card to compete with Marriott Bonvoy?
Incredibly stingy
3 to 4 dollars to not clean your room?
No less than 500 points or forget it!
They not only abuse their help but their guests
@dwondermeant No, they are obviously not “abusing their guests” because you have a CHOICE.
And no, they are not “abusing” their help by making them work less, LOL.
I cannot think of a more egregious case of greenwashing in the travel industry today.
If they cared at all about the environment, they’d sell transit passes and charge for all parking. Or they’d stop using building materials loaded with formaldehyde. But that’s not really the objective.
I want to believe that if there’s a hell, there’s a special place in it for the folks who dreamed up this means of screwing housekeeping staff and making that into an opportunity to signal environmental virtue.
Yuck.
So let me get this right…I can either “choose” to save the planet or pay the housekeeping staff. Choices…. 🙂
Santa Clara HH is participating. Not worth it, except I don’t like staff in my room anyway
I would much rather pay the cleaners a fair wage. No way I would choose “points” resulting in someone being paid less.