Is it a ‘thank you for prepping my room’ or ‘please clean my room today’? If you tip post cleaning, it’s likely going to someone else the next day. Many hotels now only do housekeeping on demand. How do employees feel about this - do they miss the tips or are they happy for a less stressful workday?
ETA- I’m in the US. Does the rest of the world tip housekeeping? I always have when traveling because I do at home, but I don’t know what the norm is.
In pretty much every other country, you pay once and the worker gets paid from that.
It’s pretty much only America where you pay once for the food and then again for the service because the employees wage is so horrifically low that they can’t survive with out your direct subsidy.
Earning enough from your hourly rate/salary isn’t a punishment, it just simplifies the process and removes the need for the “how much do we tip” conversation.
If you think the service was exceptional, you can still tip, it’s just the difference between rewarding great work and tipping out of obligation.
The problem is that people in this thread are in the mindset that tipping encourages lower wages, when in reality, low wages encourage tipping. The US has an absurdly low minimum wage relative to the cost of living, and that minimum wage of $7.25 has an exemption for tipped employees who can earn as little as $2.33 an hour. While it’s true that many states have higher minimum wages than the federal wage, there are several that are the same as federal.