Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ease staffing shortages • Hacker News Board

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

#421

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Dec 22, 2022, 4:18 PM UTC

MarkPNeyer wrote: post #254

mcv wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really the heart of the issue with all these new "disruptive" industries. They're cheaper because they avoid a lot of the regulation, but all that regulation exists for a reason. Whether you're replacing taxis with Uber or hotels with airbnb, you're saving money by allowing room for all the problems that made the regulation necessary in the first place.

There’s always a trade off between “cost” and everything else. If you’re wealthy enough they cost doesn’t really matter to you, regulation is fine because it leads to higher quality experiences in general. But if you’re not as wealthy, saving money might be more valuable to you than having a room cleaned daily, or having a really nice tv, or a great mattress, etc. Regulation involves a group of people picking one poi…

> But if you’re not as wealthy, saving money might be more valuable to you than having a room cleaned daily, or having a really nice tv, or a great mattress, etc.

And perhaps saving money might be even more valuable to you than !

> Regulation involves a group of people picking one point on a trade off curve for everyone. Branding and reputation systems allow for multiple different spots on that reputation curve.

Yes, but that "one point on a trade off curve for everyone" works as a backstop against inevitable slide downwards. If globalization of trade and e-commerce taught us anything, reputation systems are trivially gamed, most branding exists primarily to fool people who still think it means something into spending more for less.

Even without talking about potential fraud, market competition naturally turns into race to the bottom. Regulation is what sets that bottom higher than "absolute worst possible before the market segment self-destructs".

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

#422

Post by akhmatova » Thu, Dec 22, 2022, 4:21 PM UTC

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…

Unstaffed hotels have a major (in my view, fatal) flaw staring you right in the face: poor security.

The one and only time I stayed in such a place - an intruder was caught entering my room and diddling with a phone I left there - and he only got caught because I happened to double back to get something, and just happened to do so while he was in there.

Never again. And the best part about staffed hotels? "I never have to use my phone, if I don't want to."

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

#423

Post by phpisthebest » Thu, Dec 22, 2022, 4:23 PM UTC

Scoundreller wrote: post #380

ghaff wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hotels would be happy to pay everyone more if customers would happily pay more for a room. The parent is providing an example of how their company categorically won't pay more.

Sounds like the words of someone that overpaid for a business/property. Or extracted too much capital when they could instead of paying down debt and got trapped under a rock when interest rates went up.

The hotel or the businesses with the cap?

Speaking for my org personally we have zero debt, and are cash positive largely because policies like a hotel expense cap that prevent sales people from draining to company coffers

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

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Post by CyberDildonics » Thu, Dec 22, 2022, 4:24 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #404

CyberDildonics wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many laptops or phones have exploded on planes?

I think you might be mis-reading the GP's point. It's not that it's a common occurrence for laptops to spontaneously combust, but rather than an adversary could intentionally cause one (or several) to do so.

And then what? Is someone going to hijack a plane by setting their laptop battery on fire?

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

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Post by kodah » Thu, Dec 22, 2022, 4:26 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #366

barbariangrunge wrote: post #357

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

Exactly. What's disappointing is that they quote this hotel owner saying the old "nobody wants to work" trope when it's 100% false. They even bring up a conflicting quote a few paragraphs later, but I really doubt when she said that the person interviewing her said "no, you're wrong, and here's why." And it's not immediately and forcefully disproven in the article. It's not a difference of opinion, it's just wrong. I…

I'd be curious if the hospitality industry has the margins to pay them more or if this is just greed. If they don't have the margins and $20k-$30k is all that position can make them this is just a job being handed over to machines.

As the article pointed out, people are getting more educated and they're able to sniff out opportunity elsewhere. Jobs like housecleaning don't have a trajectory and possibly can't (though I'm open for refute).

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

#426

Post by trevyn » Thu, Dec 22, 2022, 4:29 PM UTC

dashundchen wrote: post #320

yunwal wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure this is true anymore. The median American will never be able to afford their own home at current housing prices. Sure, we have a higher gdp per capita, but it doesn’t buy us the things we actually need like housing, health care, etc. Perhaps what’s needed is to bring back family homesteads, but that doesn’t feel like much progress.

Do you know what life was like 100 years ago in the US? 35% of households had access to electricity. About 20% had some sort of indoor plumbing, running hot water would be even rarer. Most people heated their houses by shoveling coal or feeding wood fires. Society was even more racially segregated and legally codified and brutally enforced by the government. In warmer rural areas it wasn't uncommon for hookworm to be…

We have electricity, plumbing, literacy, low hookworm rates, and rapidly declining human fellowship, companionship and participation.

Strange times indeed.

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

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Post by wpietri » Thu, Dec 22, 2022, 4:32 PM UTC

jltsiren wrote: post #155

matt3210 wrote: post #31

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

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…

I think this:

> Maybe the issue is just that hotels don't want to pay enough.

doesn't get at the point of this:

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

For centuries, rich people have had servants. Somehow, there have always been enough people in bad enough situations that taking grueling and poorly paid servant jobs has been their best option. Somehow!

In the US, for a long time we "solved" that problem by having a social hierarchy of race. Legally backed in many places first by slavery and later by Jim Crow, or just socially backed through perfectly legal discrimination. That finally changed for the better with the civil rights acts of the 1960s plus 50 years of hard work eroding the discrimination. So yay, partial victory, good for us.

That changed the targets, but it didn't change the structures that create people who expect to have servants and a much larger number of people who are desperate enough that they have to be servants, putting up with the often-terrible working conditions.

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

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Post by supertrope » Thu, Dec 22, 2022, 4:33 PM UTC

factsarelolz wrote: post #354

enumjorge wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we ignore the low pay, physically demanding work, bad benefits and and unpredictable work schedule, then yeah I guess these jobs sound great for moms.

Physically demanding? What's the difference between cleaning a hotel room and cleaning your house or bedroom? There's absolutely zero heavy lifting. You change the sheets, vaccuum and wipe down everything. I would option to say taking care of kids is more physically demanding than cleaning. If it's just supplementary income it wouldn't really matter about benefits as the spouse would already have benefits.

Being on your feet all day and bending over to scrub a toilet is physically demanding relative to a project manager sitting in front of their laptop. Yes it's not as physical as working in a moving company, in a steel mill, or as a home health aide who lifts disabled people. "If you've got time to lean you've got time to clean."

There's not always a spouse with a good job. When the employment market is in favor of employers people just have to accept shitty jobs. In tight labor markets these low wage no benefit jobs are hard to fill and current workers at an establishment don't lose much by quitting for greener pastures. Even with a spouse who has benefits through work, many employers don't subsidize family benefits. Their solution is a "spousal surcharge."

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

#429

Post by typest » Thu, Dec 22, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

There is a take that consistently comes up in discussions like this (and indeed is prominent several times on this post), which says "the problem isn't a shortage of workers, it's that employers don't want to pay workers enough." This seems somewhat limited to me, and there is an alternate explanation I would like to explore.

It seems to me rising cost of labor, while good for the people being paid that rising cost, can actually be bad for society overall, because you some businesses and industries will just disappear when the cost of labor goes high enough. And sure, you can respond that those businesses shouldn't exist if they can't pay workers enough, and yeah, fine. But the result is that we just then don't have those businesses (making society worse off?).

For this hotel example -- maybe cost of labor continues to go up, and it's much harder to automate making a bed than vacuuming a floor, and in 10 years, we all generally stay at hotels where robots vacuum our floors every day, but no one ever makes your bed for you -- that becomes a relic of the past.

I live in NYC, so a more prominent example I think about frequently is how we can no longer afford beautiful stone masonry on all our buildings. When labor was cheaper 100 years ago, it was easier to pay someone to carve stone -- now, not so much.

I want workers to be paid a lot so they can live good lives, but it's worth thinking about what happens to society as cost of labor continues to go up, and why the cost of labor is going up in the first place (Baumol's Cost Disease? Land rent?).

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

#430

Post by wpietri » Thu, Dec 22, 2022, 4:35 PM UTC

jltsiren wrote: post #381

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…

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…

> If people think people like them don't do certain jobs, they may be reluctant to take such jobs.

Ah, "people like them". You might try thinking through the who and the why here. Then you'll get to the "useful" part.