Should You Tip The Hotel Maid?Â
Ever wondered if you should tip the hotel maid? How much should you tip? Do most people tip? On a recent stay in Vegas, we started talking to our maid to get the inside the scoop.
The maid, now called a room attendant, has been in the business for twenty years and has seen a lot over her time. When it comes to tips she said only about 25% of the guests at her hotel tip her and it can range from some change to a few dollars to upwards of $20. The vast majority of guests who tip leave around $3-$5 for her.
When Should You Tip?
If you’re thinking you should tip at check-out, she recommend a better idea of tipping after the first day. This Vegas property doesn’t change their linens every day, however a tip is a sure way to get your linens changed every day. In addition, if a guest tipped her, she’d be more likely to leave extra bath amenities.
If she started talking to you and builds a rapport, she said she’ll even  send up amenities to her guests ranging from sweets to even wine or champagne! This is all coming from the room attendant cleaning your room.
What Does She Find In Your Room?
Being Vegas, she finds all sorts of items in the room after checkout, while mainly empty bottles of wine, champagne and beer, she’s found sex toys, condoms, clothing, shoes, purses, iPhone chargers, cell phones, wallets, car keys, medication, illegal drugs, yoga mats, umbrellas, and even a turtle!
When it comes to lost and found, she’s supposed to turn everything into their lost and found department in security, and then after a month if an item is unclaimed, she’s able to keep it if she wants. Some items she has no interest in, though she’s racked up a few nice purses and electronic devices over her tenure at the hotel.
Dou normally tip the maid at your hotel? Will you start tipping earlier in your stay? Feel free to share below!
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once left checked out of a hotel and forgot $50k in cash in the room, tipped the maid 1000 and ever since then always tipped the maids.
50k cash? Are you a drug dealer??? On the other hand, in an episode of Seinfeld, a serial killer was a generous tipper…
We tip a few dollars each day when we stay at a hotel. We add a few extra if our room is larger or we are requesting extra things.
That said, we accidentally left $300 in gift cards in our safe at a Hyatt Place in Orlando and never saw them again…
I always leave a few dollars as my high school summer/weekend job was working as a housekeeper. It was exciting to find a tip, although rare. The best thing a stay-over guest could do for me was tell me no service, after I’d already started my shift and the schedule of rooms was set. Then I could take my time a bit with the other rooms on my list. I have absolutely no need for my linens to be changed every day – that seems excessive as well as a waste of water! I usually only ask for new towels/trash pick-up every three days and leave my tip at the end. I leave the room in great condition, too – place all my trash in the bin (including used soap!), put remote/magazines/other things back where they originally were placed, etc.
Being a hotel maid has to be one of the toughest and most thankless jobs that exist, and I always tip. One time I spent a week (on points, fo course) at a 5 star Arizona resort for a week and, out of curiosity, asked the friendly and efficient maid if most guests tip. Surely, in a resort where guests freely spent big bucks for activities like golf and fancy dining, on top of the hefty room rate, they would tip generously. I was surprised when she said that leaving a tip was the exception, not the rule. Go figure!
This tipping culture in America has gone way beyond limits. We have paid the advertised price for a hotel room (these prices are continuously rising), why should a guest then have to subsidize the cost and pay for the hotel’s employees? You help pay for the costs in a business out of which you will not get any profits.
All i read from the article is either bribery (fresh linens, free wine/champagne) if you tip, or blackmail (keeping your belongings or lost and found) if you don’t tip, when it is the hotel’s responsibility to pay its employees and the guest has no obligation to make up the wages. Why should the guests get blamed if the maids feel they are underpaid? If a maid doesn’t like the agreed pay then she should quit. When enough maids quit, the market would have to adjust the pay to the equilibrium at which supply and demand meet.
Curious where is the pride and a strong work ethic of those workers? The tipping culture in this country has created one of the most self-entitled people in the world. When you travel a lot, especially to East Asia or some European countries, you’d know the tipping system is not working.
I tip $5 a day cause I am nice and can afford it.
I’ve travel extensively all over the world on business and pleasure. When I am in a hotel, no matter in what country, I tip (with a thank you note) every day instead of leaving a large tip at the end of my stay. I prefer to do this because room attendant’s schedules change. Depending on the hotel, you don’t get the same room attendant every day. BTW. I few times I’ve forgotten to tip the first day I’ve noticed a difference in treatment. When I tip I find the room is cleaner. Another reason why I tip is that room attendants make minimum salaries, some may not even receive benefits because they aren’t allow to work 40 hours per week. The hotel business must keep investors happy, plus the industry is very competitive. To offer you a lower room price, they pay lower salaries to their employees. So next time you make room reservations, factor in your tip stipend and bring a smile to your room attendant.
I regularly tip in restaurants and adjust my tip based on service. I have never felt that my tip was required for good service, but that my tip is an expression of thanks. I usually add my tip to my bill when I pay. Hotels need to come into the 21st century. Cruise lines allow passengers to tip with their bill and distribute the tip to their employees. I don’t know why hotels don’t do the same! Saying that I need to have cash on hand to tip my maid every time my room is cleaned is a practice that is outdated and cumbersome. It also requires tipping before service is given. Tipping is supposed to be a thank you for service rendered. That means that tipping should be given after the service not before. While I don’t know who cleans my room in a lot of hotels. The hotel management certainly does! It should be easy for them to apply tips to the appropriate personal, so that customers can tip at the end of their stay. I believe in showing appreciation for a clean room and would often like to tip the person who prepared my room for my stay. That would be easy if the hotel allowed me to tip when I payed for my stay.