Many hotels don’t really change the towels and sheets between guests if the towel is still hanging in the bathroom and the bed doesn’t look slept in. Sometimes housekeepers will clean the glass cups with the toilet bowl cleaner. And don’t even think about leaving out your toothbrush on the bathroom counter.
- Housekeepers are increasingly under a lot of pressure to clean more rooms than ever, faster than ever, as hotels try to cut down on labor costs.
- There’s a brand standard way of cleaning a room, and then there’s on the ground reality when nobody’s looking. It’s only natural to cut corners.
- But sometimes the corner-cutting is even baked into the training.
A reader sends along this video from a franchised Marriott. It appears that when the video was posted, the property was Point Clear, Alabama’s Marriott Grand hotel – since rebranded as an Autograph Collection property. It appears to be from the management company.
Ever wonder how hair gets in random places? The video shows the housekeeper using her bare forearms to fold linen for the bed and put it on the cart. So those little pieces of hair on sheets could very well be a housekeeper’s hair.
The video never instructs the housekeeper to change gloves. So we have a housekeeper wearing one pair of seemingly unchanged gloves. She touches rags, uses the toilet scrub brush handles chemicals, touches surfaces, handles in-room amenities, etc.
The same towel or rag used to clean surfaces with chemicals is used on the drip tray in the coffeemaker. See about the 3:17 mark.
You see the what appears to be the same towel or rag used to clean multiple services. Maybe they’re changed, maybe they aren’t. Chances are they aren’t.
Remember that this video is training housekeepers. Everything should be perfect. This is what they aspire to. And the video long predates the pandemic, after which things in hotels got worse.
If this is the baseline, then the overworked housekeeper is only going to cut corners from there. Imagine if you don’t tip!
It’s always a Marriott.
Huh, so, it’s totally fine to blame the ‘overworked housekeeper,’ yet, please do not challenge management or the owners of these ‘establishments.’ Easier to attack the workers, just like some on here love to denigrate flight attendants. Got it. Good one, Gary. ‘Aspire!’
Read “Heads In Beds” for an excellent behind the scenes view of hotel practices.
Time to think about Hyatt…but probably the same.
Um… If one starts with the coffee maker, then wipes the counters etc, then the shower, and only THEN (LAST) the toilet, maybe I’d almost accept the single cleaning towel “method” (top to bottom)… BUT I’ve been in a Staybridge suite (before I “fired” IHG) and SEEN same-rag wiping going on, up, down, middle, around, wherever – without following any plan, and without changing towels, and without EVEN using ANY cleaning product, wetting the rag with just tap water…! So there.
Better off not knowing how the sausage is made.
For many years — long before Covid — I have traveled with disinfectant wipes. While I am not usually a “clean freak” in my day-to-day life, on planes and in hotel rooms, where other people’s infectious germs could easily be on surfaces I am using, I immediately wipe all touchable surfaces with disinfectant wipes. It only requires a few minutes of time and has probably prevented various colds, flus, etc, through the years.
Test
At the Charlotte airport, American now has a sign that they will charge you three dollars a bag to use a red cap at curbside check-in. Now they are competing for worker tips!
I talked to the red cap and he agreed to cart my bags to the ticket counter, and I tipped him directly.
This is why you don’t let them in during stays. Do your wipe down and Definitely Don’t TIP
View from the Wing seems to have an ongoing smear campaign with Marriott. You “obtained a training video”, but can you 100% verify that this antiquated Y2K video is still being used?
The branding doesn’t even align with the current Autograph property. Did you do your due dillegence and inquire what the current housekeeping training protocols are at Marriott?
Housekeeping is one of the most thankless jobs in the hospitality industry, and this Karen-like article is encouraging folks not to tip. I always tip my room attendant because they have the hardest job in the industry cleaning up after you entitled slobs.
And you’re maligning all housekeeping staff with cutting corners? I watched the video where you accuse the member in the training video not changing cleaning cloths, but there are clearly edit points in the video between each task. But there you go, slandering the world’s largest hospitality brand with unverified assumptions. Who’s the one cutting corners, Gary?
I have 80 Hyatt stays this year and a dozen nights at other properties. I don’t want to know this.
4 flights a month, all these hotels. I am blessed to have good health, not getting sick once this year.
Wash your hands regularly and keep things out of your mouth.
I pay good money to stay at Drury, Holiday inn Express, and others and expect them to clean the right way. I do not tip. Why would I when the Drury offers points to not clean. I opted in to cleaning. If it is dirty anywhere I complain.
@Heather – thanks for the book recommendation.
FWIW, this is not how the majority of janitors and housekeepers are being trained post-COVID across the hospitality industry. The proper technique is to spray down everything with a cleaner/sanitizer, do something else while the product dwells for the required time to do its sanitization work, then work from the least contaminated areas to the most contaminated. That would mean work surfaces, refreshment stations, to sink, to shower to toilet. Then that towel goes to be laundered and sanitized. This video shows housekeepers without a cart, using cleaners without letting them dwell, equipped only with a bucket of cleaning supplies and one towel. That’s how you clean when you want something to look clean, but not be clean.
I read an article about this , It recommended customer should wash the glasses before using them as the housemaids just rinse them and put the them back for the next customers . It said paper cups are more sanitary.
Good idea!
This video is clearly edited between each task. The assumption should be that a different rag was used rather than assuming the same rag is used for each task.
No hotel changes gloves. The gloves are there to protect the housekeeper from chemicals not to avoid bacterial contamination.
Bonvoy members should at least be issued free hazmat suits upon checkin.
That hotel was trying to sell itself as high end yet has old rundown rooms and showed 2 old people fresh out of Walmart as guests. It didnt look very nice, and looked like the sort of place that would use the same rag on the toilet and coffee maker…