Marriott’s Grand Adirondack Hotel in Lake Placid, New York doesn’t automatically provide daily housekeeping. That’s bad enough. They tell you it’s for the local environment.
This is getting out of hand …. out of the blue rant…
byu/albsirtux inmarriott
Probably my biggest theme is the disconnect between travel company marketing claims and reality. Be the thing that you are. Just be honest with customers.
I didn’t mind hotels looking to save money on housekeeping so much when it was voluntary, the default was to provide the service, and they split the savings with guests who opted out (“Make a Green Choice”). But this hotel isn’t supposed to set the default as no housekeeping, and the savings is fully captured by the hotel.
When the default is no housekeeping,
- Guests have to expend the effort to get the service (one hotel’s trick is to actually require paperwork from guests who want housekeeping)
- That means actually reaching the front desk to make the request, and they may not be answering the phone or they may be a long line in person – remember, hotels trying to reduce labor costs are often short-staffed across the board not just in housekeeping
- And the hotel is guilting guests, so the request may feel awkward.
At this hotel it appears there is only “one or two housekeepers on the whole property” and they just come across as cheapening the experience across the board,
They used to give you 2 bottles of water now they dont even mention “thank you for being …… elite” just what do you want points or breakfast. The restaurant downstairs is always slow for no apparent reason and always something on the menu is missing.
As another guest puts it, “the quality has definitely dropped off” at this hotel, “I do wish they would be more honest rather than pitch this as an environmental initiative.”
Hotels face an existential threat from short-term rental platforms like Airbnb. Why eliminate their differentiation?
If you don’t want housekeeping that’s fine, just opt out of it, but many guests want it and want it to be easy. Staying at a hotel isn’t supposed to be like being at home.
I’ve spent about 100 days in hotels this year, and I’m a fan of housekeeping. Hell, I’m a fan of turndown service at a nice hotel—nothing like coming back after a long day and seeing your room ready for you.
While it may feel good to comment that you’re “understanding and low-maintenance”, some of us doing 100-150 nights/yr and paying $250+/night average want a tidy fresh room daily. I have zero guilt about that expectation.
[C]hoosing not to get benefits that I pay for…is like being proud that they didn’t put pepperoni on your everything pizza. Sure, you may not care, but it’s literally what was expected when you paid for it.
This was at a different Marriott brand:
Here though maybe the most Marriott thing ever is allowing a hotel using their brand to get away with failing to meet brand standards and treat customers well – with a sign about how they aren’t going to do housekeeping, and proving it with a used band-aid in front of it that hasn’t been cleaned up by housekeeping.
Most of the entire “green thing” is a scam. And people fall for it.
@George N Romney
Well, with that attitude, for sure, the way greedy corporations have ‘green washed’ everything, yes, they are cheating us out of real solutions, but please do not conflate their pretend ‘action’ as proof that the seas won’t rise or the rivers won’t run dry.
Don’t worry, though, we’ll be long gone, and generations of our future offspring will curse us for our willful inaction on this issue of our times.
‘Be best,’ as they say.
The no garbage bags in the trash bins thing makes me wonder who’s making these decisions. Sure, it saves a bit of plastic (super thin grocery store produce section thin plastic bags, lol), but what about the banana peel that I threw in there that’s now stuck to the bottom? Or that used bandaid in the article? Or the coffee machine pellet/k-cup/baggie that just puked coffee grounds into that bin? Is there a bean counter somewhere who’s keeping track of the gallon or two of water to wash the thing out and the maid-hours of labor to fiddle with the bin and go get a dry one to take its place?
Note, I am not a hotel manager or a hotel chain executive. I just sometimes wonder deep thoughts, late at night in a hotel, when the thermostat motion sensor inexplicably turns off the HVAC at 3am while I was peacefully sleeping with the drone of the fan drowning out the noise of the elevator doors and the fart can muffler impromptu convention/fast and furious fanboi club meeting going on a few blocks away.
I thought Marriott was requiring all full-service brands to provide daily housekeeping. At this property, they require you to select housekeeping before 3 pm but I suspect the check-in time is 4 pm. So that means nobody staying two nights will likely receive any housekeeping services whatsoever.
Like JimC2 said, not only is not using trash bags in room wastebaskets not much of a savings, but it’s also unsanitary. Bacteria and viruses are airborne, too.
The only thing that will stop this non-delivery of services is for enough people to stop using the hotels and tell them why via email. Verbal complaints are routinely ignored by overstressed, overworked staff. Hit them in the wallet.
Inconsistency is the main reason I have no brand loyalty when it comes to hotels. When you book at a Marriott, for example, you have no idea what you’re gonna find thru those doors. It’s a crapshoot!