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Showing results for tags 'Environment'.
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Green Housekeeping - Opting out of Maid Service in a Hotel
DonRocks posted a topic in Current Events
When I travel alone, I generally opt out of daily housekeeping, using it at most every other day. This fairly recent trend, "Green Housekeeping" and its myriad of other names, is billed as 'helping to save the environment,' and I suppose it contributes to some small degree. But the reason I use it has nothing to do with the environment; it's to give the cleaning staff - probably overworked and underpaid - a break. The important thing with this strategy is to tip on housekeeping days (including check-out day) as if you had gotten housekeeping each day; otherwise, you're just kidding yourself that you're helping. I've never really discussed this with anyone before. I suppose if I was traveling with someone, I'd use housekeeping more liberally, but since I travel alone, I can live with reusing my towel, and pulling up my own linens. That's my rationale - am I giving these people a mini-paid vacation? Or am I accomplishing nothing whatsoever? I am aware that my tips go disproportionately into one person's pocket, with nothing going into another's, and that does bother me some, but I figure if everyone did this, in the long run it would all even out. Plus, the hotel wouldn't be featuring it if it didn't benefit them, so they want you to do it (I'm not assuming the "hotel's best interest" equals the "cleaning staff's best interest" - I'm not *that* naive - my guess is that when enough people begin taking the hotels up on this policy, they can reduce the number of housekeeping staff, thus saving on labor costs). In a related article, "Be Wary when the Travel Industry Says a Policy is 'for Your Own Good'" by Christopher Elliott on washingtonpost.com -
The inventor of the Keurig, John Sylvan, says he feels guilty for having invented it. This is a bit amusing. And another good reason to favor better coffee whether inexpensively at home or out in better independent coffee houses.
