Hotels want you to tip housekeeping and the real reason is so that they can pay housekeepers less. If part of the wage comes directly from the guest, it’s easier for the hotel to attract and retain staff without increasing pay.
They also want you to tip at the self-service breakfast buffet and even tip the foreign hotel ownership group. In fact, just tip everyone because it’s better for the owner’s bottom line.
I’ve written about a Marriott that wants you to tip the front desk staff at check-in, and not even for an upgrade. They use a QR code, so the employee probably doesn’t even know right away that you’ve paid. The Hyatt Centric Boston was doing this too.
This really is spreading. Here’s the Fairfield Inn New York Midtown Manhattan Penn Station:
F*ck “tip culture”, and Marriott for even asking.
byu/MTonmyMind inmarriott
A couple of hotel employees report front desk employee tips of $500 a week to $500 a night.
I worked Full Service as FD Supervisor and made anywhere from $400-$500 a week in tips.
…the property i work at has a lot of repeat corporate clients that build relationships with the front desk and tip 20$-50$ regularly, i’ve seen front desk walk out with 500$ in tips, all the check inns tipped 25$ from a account
The front desk’s job is to ID you, swipe your credit card and hand you a key. And they’re being automated away by kiosks and mobile check-in. I’m not sure what you’re tipping for, unless it’s to give you a room upgrade you didn’t pay for, creating a principal-agent problem between them and the property owner.
They used to call it the $20 trick for an upgrade, although it’s more like $100 at nice hotels. This is especially common in Las Vegas.
At the Bellagio $100 got me a Penthouse Suite with two bedrooms and five bathrooms for a four night stay. There was a front desk supervisor standing behind the agent who took my hundred, so presumably the agent was kicking up. You’re not going to get much at a Fairfield Inn though!
Is it any wonder that hotel booking websites have even gotten into the act of asking you to tip? There’s no person even involved in making the reservation! I’m not even sure these days whether there’s a person involved in coding the website, or it’s just an LLM. Though I suppose there’s no downside to asking customers to paying a higher price even after the transaction – ‘it doesn’t hurt to ask, free money from stupid people’.
And of course these employees in non-tipped salary or hourly wage jobs are almost certainly pocketing the money and NOT paying tax on their extra income.
And they wonder why a bunch of us just refuse to tip anymore other than when we sit down at a restaurant…
“Five bathrooms for a four night stay”? Wow!
Did you poop in a different one each day or what?
It’s a shame. Owner can afford. One day they going to less people sleep on Marriott
I generally don’t mind tipping but this is too far, for the prices they charge and they want you to tip. I think as a guest I should ask for a tip. Here is a badge I would wear.
“Was I a good guest?
If so, feel free to tip me!
Scan the QR code to Venmo a tip—
I’ll make sure to mention you in my glowing review.”
The tipping has become a cancer to our society. I actively avoid it unless an until I’m at a sit down restaurant where I’m being provided service.
At $500/night in tips, the person can earn more than some lawyers and doctors. If they earn that much at age 20, they can have a 10-15 year head start over a doctor as well as have no medical school student loans.
All those years of carefully learning appropriate USA tipping etiquette for various and sundry personal services have been tossed into the dustbin of history.
Now, I try to avoid this criminal shakedown as much as possible without getting personal injury or damaged properly as retribution!
Thank you, Gary, for naming and shaming the location and these unfortunate practices.
@ FNT Delta Diamond — On taxes, yeah, like, maybe DOGE shouldn’t have fired IRS agents, you know, who ensure proper reporting of income and payment of taxes, both large and small. Yet, it wouldn’t be this petty ‘theft’ (relatively speaking); it’s the super rich that don’t pay their fair share. (Oh, wait, you’re not actually for solving the real problems? Quick wins. Instant gratification. Go after the little guys. Forget about the big fish. Ah, what a shame…)
“…and NOT paying tax on their extra income.”
Good! We need more of that.
It’s not a “principal-agent problem between them and the property owner” LOL: it’s CORRUPTION, and both the person offering money and the one accepting it are equally guilty of it in front of the law.
Please call a spade a spade.
@Mike P – no wonder the US has awful infrastructure, potholed roads, and rampant criminality Enjoy the bed you made for you: with that attitude it’s only going to get worse.
One of the Marriott properties in Sicily now displays a similar QR code for tipping on the reception desk.
I was pretty appalled since there’s traditionally no tipping culture in Italy, not even in restaurants.
I was hoping decreased cash use would eat into tip culture, buy my expectation was that cheap business owners and tax-evading/income-reporting cheats would do what they could to keep the scam going. But they didn’t just do what they could to keep the tipping scams going, they expanded the scope and scale of the tipping scams that fleece nations as a whole, debase the culture by making corruption more acceptable and help keep people more vulnerable to the whims of employers and customers than is good for the employees and society as a whole.
Will be interesting to see what sent the above post from me into the moderation queue. 😀
Something triggered the auto-moderation engine.
The moderation queue is often inscrutable. I sometimes disassemble my moderation queue posts into single sentence posts to find the offending sentence since no feedback is given. Once I know the offending sentence, I can state it a different way after guessing about the offending word or phrase. I have never found anything truly offensive. I suspect some odd rules behind the scenes are causing the trip to the moderation queue.
Aww, Mary, that’s so cute. You actually “think” our problems stem from government not taking more of our money.
Hotels should go with mobile and kiosk check in. They can fire most of the front desk staff, check in will be quicker and you won’t be hassled for a tip.
@Mary: “Please call a spade a spade.”
Some people know that this term is sometimes used pejoratively and is racist in that sense.