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Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ease staffing shortages

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Re: Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ease staffing shortages

#221

Post by umeshunni »

fein wrote: post #102
dawnerd wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need to let their phone check in work with OTAs. I just stayed at a Hilton and couldn’t use my phone as a key because I booked through hotels.com and the front desk refused to add my hhonors info to set it up. I know you can call in but not something I want to deal with after traveling all day.

The one rule I learned while traveling over the years for work is to only ever book with the hotel directly. You open yourself up to much more annoying problems when dealing with third party booking regarding any sort of problem resolution with the reservation.

That applies to airlines too

Re: Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ease staffing shortages

#222

Post by thefounder »

emptybits wrote: post #74
lotsofpulp wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single hotel or motel should be doing full clean between guest visits, otherwise it should not even be allowed to operate. But if a hotel starts letting people stay weeks without checking their room, they will inevitably end up with hoarders and people that keep food lying around and then comes cockroaches and rats and odors, etc.

> But if a hotel starts letting people stay weeks without checking their room, ... Yet I think people regularly stay for weeks with Airbnb/Vrbo without any host inspection or cleaning. I agree with your conclusion (filthy guests who stay weeks invite pest problems) ... so if the big bad old hotel industry needs to market their advantages, maybe there's an Institutuionally Clean angle.

That's one of the reasons some people(i.e me) avoid airbnb as much as possible. It seems airbnb is not even cheaper than a hotel (in most cases)

Re: Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ease staffing shortages

#223

Post by Nextgrid »

scarface74 wrote: post #210
Nextgrid wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would link it to other pseudonymous identifiers that don’t (yet) know who you are but would very much like to.

And what are these “pseudononymous” identifiers that you worry about? It’s much easier to track across the web than apps. And how is installing the Hilton app going to allow another app to find out information about you?

Web/apps have a lot of pseudonymous data points but rarely have a link to your real-life identity. Real-life things like hotels have the latter but rarely the former. Installing an app allows data brokers to bridge the two identities.

> And how is installing the Hilton app going to allow another app to find out information about you?

Both apps rat out whatever they have on you to a data broker which then does the matching.

Re: Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ease staffing shortages

#224

Post by ls15 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #108
yardstick wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After the Las Vegas massacre, a lot of hotels will enter even if house keeping is always declined. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/las-vegas-shooting-hotels-revis...

Especially since the hotel and the hotel’s insurers ended up paying $800M: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/las-vegas-shooting-settlement-m... > Jim Frantz, whose San Diego-based law firm represents another 199 victims including Romo, said Thursday's settlement is a good first step. Now MGM must strengthen the security protocol at all their facilities, he said. >"I would assume a responsible business, after going through…

> Muller says new hotel security measures are being developed, including new luggage scanners, which – unlike those at the airport, which may require an officer to open a customer's bag -- uses new technology to detect what's inside without the person even knowing it.

Great if you like paranoia. I guess I am not going to Vegas.

Re: Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ease staffing shortages

#225

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

scarface74 wrote: post #193
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another app to install and leak my privacy. No thanks. I’ll wait in line for a key card.

What privacy do you think you’re giving up by using an application? The hotel may find out you are staying there and when you come into your room - ie something they already know?

Anything and everything the app and its 30 social, ad, and analytics SDKs are able to capture and exfiltrate from the phone.

Maybe they won't upload the list of my installed apps (which can leak information like religion or medical issues), maybe they won't track my location through the entire hotel (or everywhere), maybe they won't snoop on my pictures... but maybe they also will, and I don't like maybe.

Almost certainly I'll have to agree to lengthy ToS that will then be used as justification to inundate me with spam.

The Android permission model is particularly messed up because it changes every few SDK target versions, so it's hard to build a mental model what exactly you're allowing. Many apps that had a built-in photo-taking capability required storage access and wouldn't work without. Any app using bluetooth had to request and be granted location access (because Bluetooth could be used to track location... so any app acting as a key automatically also got to track you via GPS on top of that, and even if the app maker didn't want to they had to request the permission for Bluetooth to work).

I've seen too many companies pushing their apps aggressively and with massive rewards. They're clearly getting something out of it, and probably not something I want to give them. If you're very, very lucky, the main goal is only to make them more "sticky" (make it easier to use them over someone else next time), but that's the thing - I don't want past service providers to stick to me.

Re: Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ease staffing shortages

#226

Post by hinata08 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #51
refurb wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the most reasonable explanation. I even know a couple people whose jobs were affected by Covid took the time (and government support) to do a career change. It happened with the airlines too. When you're without a job for more than a year, people move onto new companies, new careers or just retire early. Singapore airlines continued to pay their pilots to not fly during Covid, knowing it would be tough as hel…

I've personally watched people go from the food industry into software development because COVID reduced demand for restaurants for years.

I went from engineering to IT too

Engineering companies spent all my uni years at fairs to show politicians how they develop business in the area, but lack workers and need assistance from the public services

Fast forward to covid, they wouldn't hire you because they didn't have the projects, they wanted to hire workers with experience, market was tight so you had to understand the pay was low, they could find someone else, ...

So I went to an IT company, they really hired workers. And I'll stay. I declined interviews with these engineering companies that called back a few months later. And I can't wait to go back to these fairs to call them liars.

In my place, there is also the same case with restaurants. The government gave them money to continue to exist through covid. But most of them fired workers to use the money to buy new kitchens. Now they're complaining about the lack of workforce, blame unemployment benefits (ironic) and are lobbying to give visas to underpaid foreigners.

Re: Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ease staffing shortages

#227

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

wenc wrote: post #184
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another app to install and leak my privacy. No thanks. I’ll wait in line for a key card.

What information will the app have that the hotel wouldn’t have at check in?

Answered the same question here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34091783

Re: Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ease staffing shortages

#228

Post by vkou »

midoridensha wrote: post #79
vkou wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even bad hotels do this, because people lose their shit and do chargebacks if they end up in an uncleaned room. Source: a close friend works at a really bad hotel.

So if your friend says this, this implies that uncleaned rooms do happen from time to time, right?

No, it means that when housekeeping fails to clean a room, for whatever reason, he can't rent it out.

The people losing their minds and screaming at him is what happens when something else that isn't quite to their satisfaction happens. Like, say, the hotel requiring a deposit and a major credit card and ID to book a room.

Re: Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ease staffing shortages

#229

Post by Quequau »

I gotta wonder how much of a "staffing shortage" they would have if they raised the pay 10-15%. Everywhere else I see claims of employers having difficulties finding and retaining competent employees, it just happens that they're low wage, low respect jobs with unpleasant & unreasonable management. Hotel cleaning staff is probably no different.

Re: Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ease staffing shortages

#230

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

matt3210 wrote: post #31

Its not a shortage of workers, it's a shortage of underpayable workers.

This, in the article they complain that they already raised pay from $10/hour to $16/hour. In Baltimore, where minimum wage is currently $12.50 according to the DOL.

"To keep the employees they do have, the couple tries to accommodate staff needs" yeah, that's what good employers should have been already doing before.

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