Hospitality in trouble: The human cost of an uncleaned hotel room

When Alex Diaz was furloughed last March, along with most of his colleagues, he did not expect to be back anytime soon. “The feeling walking out the door that day was that this was going to be pretty drastic,” said Diaz, who had worked as a convention banquet bartender for the Red Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas for 15 years. But he thought that when he did return to work, he’d retain the seniority benefits he’d acquired, which would soon guarantee him a full-time job with health insurance. 

Instead, this spring, he found himself interviewing for his old position and was only rehired after a state law went into effect in July requiring employers to give preference to furloughed staff in filling open positions, but he lost his seniority benefits. The labour shortage in the hospitality industry has been widely reported, as have the lengths to which hotel owners are going to hire new employees, including offering higher wages, cash bonuses and free hotel rooms. But at the same time, nearly half of the more than one million jobs cut in the lodging industry during the pandemic have yet to be recovered, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics. And the recovery has been uneven, with resort markets bouncing back more quickly than cities, which rely on business travel and large conventions or conferences that have not yet returned. 

Now, some hotels say they want to make permanent changes that were instituted during the pandemic, like offering daily housecleaning only upon request, and adding options like mobile or contactless check-in. Guests, they say, don’t miss the old ways, and the changes would let them reduce costs. Michelle Millar, an associate professor at the University of San Francisco’s School of Management who studies sustainability and corporate responsibility in the lodging industry, said that there had already been a push toward technology-enabled services, but that “the pandemic exacerbated it.” “It makes, in some ways, operations more efficient,” she said, “but at what cost?” Some hotels have said that they are following the lead of consumers, many of whom were in favour of eliminating daily housekeeping during the pandemic, according to a survey by the American Hotel and Lodging Association last August. Hilton announced in July that it would make daily housekeeping optional for most of its U.S. hotels, with the exception of its luxury brands like Waldorf Astoria and Conrad. And Julie Rollend, Marriott’s director of public relations, said that company was leaving it up to guests to “elect their preferred cadence of housekeeping services during their stay.” 

“Throughout the pandemic, we discovered guests enjoyed the flexibility of on-demand housekeeping services and have varying levels of comfort with someone entering their rooms after they have checked in,” Meg Ryan, Hilton’s senior director of corporate affairs, said in an email. She added that the hotel still offers room cleaning upon request, and that “the single biggest challenge for the industry right now is the availability of labour.” 

Christopher Anderson, a professor at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Management, said that post-pandemic there is “more acceptance of reduced in-stay attention” among consumers, and that he could see an a-la-carte model similar to that adopted by many airlines becoming more popular, in which guests can choose the services for which they are willing to pay. 

“As we reduce the actual labour, then firms can operationally deliver upon what they can deliver via technology, and then it now becomes a win-win,” Anderson said. “Consumers get more of what they want as far as selection, and then if costs are reduced and prices are adjusted accordingly, again, that’s a further win.” But some employees say they would be the losers. A report by Unite Here, a hotel workers’ union, found eliminating daily housekeeping as the industry standard would cost at least 180,000 jobs, held by women of colour, and $4.8 billion in lost wages.