Everyone who has stayed at a hotel since Covid-19 knows that something is off.
You’re not losing your mind.
Room rates have gone way up. Business is way up, yet housekeeping services have been scaled back—sometimes you won’t receive much hospitality at all. Amenities are being cut. Guests aren’t getting fresh towels, trash isn’t being emptied, breakfasts are being cut back, and front desk staffing is often inadequate, multiplying normal wait times. At many hotels, customers are still being charged resort fees despite the cutbacks.
Don’t blame the hotel staff—there aren’t enough of them anymore. According to Unite Here, a group representing about 40,000 hospitality employees, staffing at American hotels went down 13% from 2019 to 2022 even though room rates have ballooned by 20%. Many hotels have maintained their skimpy staffing levels from Covid-19 despite a giant upswing in travel.
Despite being full, U.S. hotels employ some 200,000 fewer workers now than before the pandemic, and the workers who remain are seeing their hours cut, minimizing opportunities for overtime. So employees are being forced to do the jobs of several people—without an increase in pay.
Amid all those challenges, hotel workers face the same price inflation and rent increases that have slammed all of us. What’s more, about 9 in 10 housekeeping workers in the U.S. are women, racial minorities, or immigrant workers, according to federal statistics. Those groups already have to deal with outsize economic and social pressures.
“During Covid, everyone suffered, but now the hotel industry is making record profits while workers and guests are left behind,” Gwen Mills, international president of Unite Here, has said. “Many can no longer afford to live in the cities that they welcome guests to, and painful workloads are breaking their bodies. We won’t accept a ‘new normal’ where hotel companies profit by cutting their offerings to guests and abandoning their commitments to workers.”
They’re getting less, and you’re getting less. It’s a terrible situation for travelers.
Workers are now pleading for change. On Labor Day weekend, more than 10,000 hotel workers called a strike nationwide to beg their employers to help make ends meet.
At this moment, around 2,000 workers—housekeepers, front desk clerks, cooks, dishwashers, servers, bartenders, bellhops, door staff, and others—are on strike at Hilton, Marriott, and Omni hotels in Boston and San Diego.
But travelers have social responsibilities, too. Considering about 66% of U.S. hotels are now controlled by the same big corporate brands, many of which are reporting new highs in profits but are squeezing workers anyway, pressure must also come from customers.
Unite Here has set up FairHotel.org, a directory of properties that the group says are doing right by workers. According to Mills, when you choose a hotel that you find at FairHotel.org, “you’re staying at a hotel where workers have fair wages, quality health care, and protections against harassment on the job.”
“[By using FairHotel.org], you’re helping build a future where that’s the industry standard,” said Mills.
But being a socially responsible consumer involves more than advance research. I asked Unite Here’s Gwen Mills what else regular travelers can do to ensure they’re not contributing to the dire economic problems facing hotel workers.
What else can travelers do or look for to make sure that fair labor practices are supported?
GWEN MILLS: Do not eat, sleep, or meet at a hotel that’s on strike—and always check the Labor Disputes Map at FairHotel.org to avoid labor disputes.
Hotels rarely notify guests of a strike, and travelers sometimes learn of a strike only upon arriving at their hotel and being met by a boisterous picket line.
Hotels may suspend services while trying to operate with skeleton staffing, and picket lines will run outside struck hotels for up to 24 hours a day. During the recent Labor Day strikes, guests experienced serious disruptions including unavailable daily housekeeping, towels and linens piled up in hallways, piles of trash visible outside, closed bars and restaurants, and reduced pool hours.
How can travelers tweak their in-room and/or in-hotel behavior to ensure that hotel workers are being supported (or at least not exploited)? What can customers do to spot unfair treatment during their stays?
MILLS: The best way to support hotel workers is by opting in for daily housekeeping. Guests might think they’re doing housekeepers a favor by declining housekeeping or putting up the “do not disturb” sign, but that actually hurts housekeepers in two ways.
First, if there are fewer rooms to clean, the hotel will take housekeepers “off the schedule” and tell them not to come in to work. That means housekeepers, who are paid hourly, lose out on wages, and they may also lose their eligibility for health insurance benefits.
Second, hotel rooms that have gone multiple days without housekeeping service are dirtier and harder to clean, and housekeepers report that cleaning these dirty rooms at checkout can cause pain, stress, and injury. Opting in for daily housekeeping is free and easy, and housekeepers want to clean your hotel room every day.
What do hospitality workers wish consumers would know or change about how they stay at hotels?
MILLS: Hotel workers love their jobs. They love people, and they want to honor the brand standards and keep guests coming back year after year. Unfortunately, hotels are in danger of becoming like the airline industry—where guests pay more and get less while workers are left behind.
Guests and hotel workers share a common interest. We all want hotels to reverse their Covid-era cuts, restore services like automatic daily housekeeping and room service, and staff appropriately so workers can give the best possible hospitality.