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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

#381

Post by jltsiren »

michaelt wrote: post #258
jltsiren wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've started to dislike this perspective, because it feels like an "if the only tool you have is a hammer..." kind of explanation. It's a valid perspective, but it's not the only one, and other perspectives are often more useful. Maybe the issue is just that hotels don't want to pay enough. Maybe there is an actual shortage. Then any single hotel can solve the shortage by paying more, but hotels in general can't. Or…

> Maybe there is an actual shortage. Then any single hotel can solve the shortage by paying more, but hotels in general can't. Sure they can - by drawing workers from other, non-hotel sectors; and other locations. You think all those people delivering for uber eats and making 1-hour amazon deliveries couldn't learn to make a bed? And if your hotel's in the expensive city centre and your workers have to travel from th…

Of course hotels can attract people from other sectors if they choose to pay ridiculous wages (like $100/hour). That observation is true but not necessarily useful.

Sometimes other perspectives are more useful. Maybe the shortage is real and the reason for it is cultural. In some places, hotel housekeeping is seen as temporary work. It's something people in specific demographic groups do for a few years before moving on. If there are fewer people in those groups than there used to be, or if those people have found better opportunities, there may be a shortage. In such situations, raising wages may not be an effective way of attracting new workers. If people think people like them don't do certain jobs, they may be reluctant to take such jobs.

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

#382

Post by gnicholas »

codazoda wrote: post #2

In some Las Vegas hotels I no longer need to stop at a counter or stand in a line and it’s 1000x better experience. I can walk directly to my room and scan my phone. I can scan my phone for parking. I can grab extra keys at a kiosk, if I need them. I never have to talk to anyone, if I don’t want to. I also select the option not to have my room cleaned each day. I’ll ask someone in the hall for towels if I stay long e…

App-based check-in is great, but I’ve found the phone-as-key system to be lousy when it comes to elevator swiping (to get access to higher floors). What hotels do this well?

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

#383

Post by Zigurd »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #364
tantalor wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fleeing to where? Are other industries paying better? Except for niches like tech, wages are stagnant across the board.

Amazon warehouses, mostly. It’s also a worker treatment shortage. They leave for somewhere with equally low wages but less nonsense to put up with.

Amazon warehouses are no picnic, and their attrition numbers show it. But compared to industries that exploit immigrants and where wage theft is common, a warehouse job is objectively better.

A lot of people don't understand how hard it is at the bottom of the labor force.

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

#384

Post by Scoundreller »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #311
dalyons wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It pretty much always costs more going direct though, which is counterintuitive and annoying. Unless you call and negotiate which I ain’t doing.

All the hotel brands offer best price guarantees where they will give you a discount if you are able to reserve with a lower price elsewhere. The reservation systems are setup so that the pricing that goes out to priceline and Expedia is higher than what is on the hotel brand’s website. https://www.marriott.com/look/claimForm.mi https://www.hyatt.com/info/best-rate-guarantee https://www.hilton.com/en/p/price-match-gu…

Unless you do a “mystery” deal, where you can save a ton in exchange for some uncertainty.

It’s always worked pretty well for me, tbh.

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

#385

Post by Zigurd »

Karunamon wrote: post #340
michaelt wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe there is an actual shortage. Then any single hotel can solve the shortage by paying more, but hotels in general can't. Sure they can - by drawing workers from other, non-hotel sectors; and other locations. You think all those people delivering for uber eats and making 1-hour amazon deliveries couldn't learn to make a bed? And if your hotel's in the expensive city centre and your workers have to travel from th…

Those people driving for those gig apps often value the flexibility of not having a set schedule. I don't think that style of work is very compatible with hotel housekeeping.

They also get paid reliably. Gig apps advertise for workers, in part, by touting their fast reliable payouts. Hotel cleaning is often contracted out to shady operators.

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

#386

Post by notwokeno »

alphabettsy wrote: post #169
kortilla wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they support a family on a service industry income? Living paycheck to paycheck just hoping nothing bad happens?

Service industry doesn’t necessarily mean poverty wages. For hotel housekeeping and similar it probably is though. Had a friend making about $50k waiting tables depending on the year in a city you’d likely never heard of before switching to sales. Another working in a kitchen planning to buy a home soon. I know a couple local bartenders who do much better than I expected for a neighborhood bar. Met a guy years ago wh…

Yeah, you didn't mention their families though. And regardless divorce rates are way up.

If the incentive to work is "yeah you can show up and nothing will go wrong." Great. The same thing happens if you don't leave your parent's basement/subsidized housing/your friend's couch and you won't have to put up with as much crap or pay for a car. Do you see why people aren't bothering?

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

#387

Post by areyousure »

codazoda wrote: post #2

In some Las Vegas hotels I no longer need to stop at a counter or stand in a line and it’s 1000x better experience. I can walk directly to my room and scan my phone. I can scan my phone for parking. I can grab extra keys at a kiosk, if I need them. I never have to talk to anyone, if I don’t want to. I also select the option not to have my room cleaned each day. I’ll ask someone in the hall for towels if I stay long e…

Five years ago, in Las Vegas, it was cause for suspicion if you refused housekeeping for more than one or two days, see eg: https://www.wltx.com/article/news/local/hotels-revise-room-s...

But people forgot the reason why.

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

#388

Post by notwokeno »

themitigating wrote: post #112
trevyn wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is about a snowballing larger societal collapse, led by the US and UK. (But it will reach everywhere eventually.) If you and your friends are rich and dull enough, you can ostrich-hole it for a while yet. If you want to see the canary in the coal mine, try befriending someone who works in the service industry.

People were working harder for even less a hundred years ago and society didn't collapse.

Tradition, nationalism, religion etc. were much stronger a hundred years ago. IE there was a society worth working to participate in.

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

#389

Post by Natsu »

pessimizer wrote: post #325
Natsu wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If people don’t want to take the job at the posted rate then they are underpaying. Well, that's why they're going to robots I guess. > Instead of comparing if your pay has gone up 25%, ask if you’d rather take one of those jobs than yours. Because apparently that’s an option if you want. I worked a much worse factory job for years. I don't blame people for not wanting such a thing, but sometimes it isn't all about…

They're going to "robots" called "not cleaning for 4 days."

It's a bit of both, though it looked like the robots were roombas or something. And I think the cleaning would only matter on longer stays, since I believe they'd still have to turn over the room between guests.

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

#390

Post by VLM »

tantalor wrote: post #360
barbariangrunge wrote: post #357

Again, it’s not a staffing shortage, it’s an entire population fleeing an industry due to a pay shortage

Fleeing to where? Are other industries paying better? Except for niches like tech, wages are stagnant across the board.

Risk avoidance. Poor people can't economically handle "someone sneezed so you get no income for months". Plenty of low paying jobs never closed during covid and everyone's crowding into them to avoid possible economic disaster.

Normally you fix lack of employees with higher pay, but low pay is baked into the cake they can't pay more and stay in business (which is the step right before going out of business, BTW).

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