Hotel Chain CEO Wants Guests To Tip More, Rather Than Raising Wages

First off, on a 3 day stay, I don’t see staff. They don’t come into your room anymore to tidy up and make bed. That goes back before COVID. You must request that service at both Marriott and Hilton brands. Second, I make all reservations via my chain’s app and receive a digital key. I do this because sometimes I’m getting in a little bit mostly due to front desk staff have become unfriendly in some cases, not all, but some, mostly in the larger urban hotels. So I’ll tip after I have been served and it will not before so don’t ask up front. And it will be to the room staff not the desk, they are only order takers like the drive through.

Sorry I dont agree with this exec. Making guest pay for your ignorance is not the answer the answer is easy. PAY THE EMPLOYEES. Dont ask guest to pay fot something that is the companies responsiblity. I spent over 35yrs in the Hospitality Industry as executive and I always said the execs make money off the backs of the employees with crazy salaries cut ur salarues use that money to play ur employees and that will help to pay there salaries. Dont expect guess to pay for somethinf that isnt our resposibilities. PLEASE ITS AN INSULT TO UR GUEST.

I don't feel it's the responsibility of the customer to help pay "your" employees hourly rate. It's the employers responsibility to pay their staff better. As customers, we patronize the various businesses(hotels, restaurants etc) so stop trying to pass everything on to the customers while you as the owners pocket all the money. If we stop patronizing your businesses, you will close. Stop being so greedy and pay the staff better. They have bills to pay and need to keep a roof over their heads. Customers tip, however you only piss customers off by trying to pass everything over to them. Ask yourself, could you live off what you pay your employees? That would be a "NO". Be a better boss, and pay better.

Pay your employees a living wage and pay your taxes. Cooperate with labor.
BTW. There’s no such thing as an entry level job. There are just jobs. Hospitality, fast food, retail are sh&@hole jobs created for the service economy that replaced our manufacturing economy; thank you corporate America. Join a Union in manufacturing or construction. Organize those lifeless hospitality jobs into Unions with teeth. Trust me, housekeepers, cooks, receptionist and the like. This CEO doesn’t even know your name or care if your kid or parent is dying. His attitude is enough that you should walk out today. Don’t walk- run!

And the reason the hotels and restaurants are short staffed is because ownership doesn't pay them a living wage. I believe in capitalism but the chase for corporate profits has become unsustainable. Pretty soon it is going to be the 1% buying from and selling to themselves as they price everyone else out of existence. I just paid $75 for a small piece of fish at a 5 star resort that I paid over $300 a night for a room that could have been in a Holiday Inn. Corporate America should start becoming more concerned with their employees rather than stockholders' returns. If no one is working for them, there will be no rooms filled and no meals cooked. It's a shame the workers at these hotels and resorts can't afford to stay where they work.

This suggestion comes from someone who is not morally or intellectually qualified to run a 80 unit hotel chain. This is the admission of spiritual greediness from the core of the soul. If you run your hotel at a 63 to 72 percent annual occupancy rate, you only have to raise your hotel room rates $24 per night to be able to pay all employees $18 per hour. And set a new mandate in a advertising piece that we rent our rooms and guests are not expected to tip any persons on our staff. Your hotel would be the most sought after hotel chain in the world. Shortsighted greedy blindness brings everybody down.

This guy wants to pass his costs off to paying patrons for what reasons. Higher pay for him. Dividend increases to shareholders, stock buy backs, Sick people running these companies !

They want the person who is paying for the room at already an extraordinary amount! To tip more? WTF! See this is what all you tippers get! Don't tip! Don't tip!!

It is not the responsibility of the customer to pay the wages of the employer! Also, look how messed up places like Chili's are they make The waiters and waitresses give a percentage of their tips to the rest of the staff So sometimes they owe money at the end of the night!

Let's make companies give their employees fair wages and that should be the state minimum wage!

It’s beyond ridiculous. There is a labor shortage because people will not accept an unlivable wage. Besides taxes, “ resort fees,” I find this totally unacceptable. Room service fee, automatic 16% gratuity, plus a tip line was unacceptable to begin with.
It’s almost like hotels are trying to restructure their level of service to airlines “ add on business class fares. It’s not the same. I’m perfectly ok with day rates for” work away from home .” Excellent concept.
Hotels need to maintain their brand name, and levels of service without expectations of guests to add another 20 percent to entire experience. Pay your employees fair wages, lose your bonuses and incentives.

Lucky, to your statement, "rather than saying “just pay everyone a good wage so we don’t have to tip.” That’s not how many parts of our economy have worked for decades, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon." Well, it has been no problem for governments globally to totally change how we former consultant "road warriors" work in a matter of weeks and we're expected to deal with it and adapt - like it or not. I don't see why we cannot take the same opportunity to eliminate this tipping relic of the past which Europe did away with long ago.

Funny how people will pay $40+ for a bottle of aged squashed grapes but can't tip the person who cleans up after their drunken debauchery. Instead, they say the hotel should pay more, yet the same people whose heads are tilted back to expose their nose hairs complain when the hotel's services get cut or prices go up because somehow they are entitled to something at a price only they think is fair.

What you consider a livable wage is arbitrary...if you need the latest $1K+ iPhone each and every year and need to dine at the finest restaurants, you definition of "livable" is rather laughable. Income goes up with performance and skills...more you perform and the more skills you pick up, the more marketable you become and the more leverage you have. Raising the minimum wage will cause many employers to simply not consider someone who is at entry level...not worth wasting time trying to train someone who ultimately may not work out....and labor laws simply don't let them take a chance.

I'm all for raising wages for employees...when their skills and work performance are to the level required and when the government stops supporting and paying people to stay home and/or being irresponsible, then sure, count me in. If you think raising the minimum wage will pull people out of "starvation" you are grossly mistaken.

I just stayed at a few hotels in the last few weeks.....no breakfast (covid), no workout facility (covid) , no daily cleaning of the room (put your own excuse here) and this idiot wants me to tip. So laughable it is beyond comprehension!! Tell you what....stop hiding behind the "covid" excuse and you might have a deal. The gall is mind blowing...it's just not the hotel industry but many industries are using covid as an excuse to maximize profit over customer satisfaction.

Hotels need to pay team members more and charge less. When Chris Nesetta of Hilton says he wants to increase margins via using less labor, not cleaning rooms until guests check out and finding a use for more automation in the industry he is feathering his own nest. When the stock goes up due to higher earnings his stock gains value. Nasetta thinks he is a wonderful people person, he is not.

When Blackstone purchased Hilton he became CEO, within 2 years he let go 80% of the corporate staff under the guide of a "reduction in force". Then he stated several years later the best thing he ever did was to terminate 80% of the staff. He kept the other 20% to bridge the time it took to hire and train a new group if team members. How he has the nerve to reduce staff and services now for the benefit of the stockholders is unbelievable. If he is a Catholic he has needs to spend a lot of time in the confessional.

This so called CEO should be F I R E D immediately. The UNITED STATES is one of the richest Country's in the world claiming it cares about human rights issues and yet within its own country it permits starvation wages for sweat labor given by human beings so grossly underpaid by billion dollar even trillion dollar corporations and CEOs who could rightly care less about this serious human rights issue. Most politicians could care less while they make 6 plus figures of tax dollars doing zero to fix this wage problem because they are bought off by dirty money called donations in the billions. The American way of society is so backwards where the customer is made to feel ashamed for not leaving a tip when what we need is truly to make people feel ashamed and embarrassed that they needed to leave a tip because that employer pays starvation wages, and that customer is made to make up the difference in wage payment shortage. That employer is the embarrassment not the customer. No one should be working in 2021 for SEVEN dollars and hour let alone in the restaurant industry for THREE dollars and your. Oh yes the UNITED STATED says loudly it cares about human rights, (politicians especially),
when in reality actions speak louder than words, yea lack of action. Minimum wage needs to be twenty dollars and hour not just fifteen with benefits such as profit sharing, medical, dental, etc. Lets see a CEO do their job for seven dollars and hour let alone fifteen dollars and hour oh no that would be starvation wages. Actions speak louder than lying words and yet so does inaction.

A tip is giving something extra to someone who did something extra, not just a salary supplement. CEO's, owners, and managers telling their customers to tip more (especially up front) does not create the sort of relationship you really want with your customer. It's talking out of both sides of the mouth. "Our workers work so hard that you need to pay them more because we refuse to."

There's more to it, though. This is a cagey proposal from the CEO. He wants the customer to "tip" more (rather than impose a "service charge") because tips aren't treated as income to the employer by the IRS and, so, are not handled as gross income. A "service charge," however, is considered gross income and must be recorded and handled accordingly.

But that's not it. HEI likely farms out housekeeping services to a third-party janitorial provider as just about every hotel, office building, retail center, apartment complex, etc. does. About the only folks who directly hire housekeeping any more are homeowners and janitorial service providers. So, HEI doesn't actually pay the workers. HEI pays the workers' employers so that HEI doesn't have to do the payroll or do the (extensive) record-keeping for those workers and the distribution of collected service charges. That complicates the whole "service charge" idea. Want to solve that? Encourage tipping instead. Collect the tips, pass them to the third-party provider, and you're done. At the same time HEI is encouraging tipping, they probably are telling their janitorial providers to keep costs low or lose their contracts.

The service charge also does not appeal to HEI because it nets them nothing on paper. It's a revenue that is collected only to cover certain expenses (higher wages). On paper, that lowers the profit margin, and that makes the management look bad. Now, HEI could charge a higher service charge and then retain part of it as profit, but that will look bad for PR and morale.

If I stay two nights at a hotel, I've spent over 200 hundred dollars for less than 12 hours of sleep.
If I'm forced to pay tips at the places I stay...I'll stay at home or rent a condo with extended stay perks. I make it a habit to tip the person who clean my room without being forced to do so.
I'll give up my weekend getaways to different states (where I stay at the Hilton's Hotels) and where I spend my money at outside venues, and simply stay at home.
Pay the people a descent wage and stop trying to pass the buck.

I think to really include workers they should be included in the profits. Include them in profit sharing quarterly, 401k's, give them stock options yearly. Give them something thats actually increasing as they stay there. Make it a "real job" instead of a throw away job. Just like someone else said these executives don't care about the workers they only care about money and their stock options. So level the field by giving the same as what you get and I bet people will have loyalty and stay.

Better idea.

CEOs and senior executives stop shafting the company with ridiculous stock options, bonuses when the company is losing money and exit packages for screwing up their one job.

I work for a hospital and we all know hospitals lost a lot of $$$ during the pandemic. My hospital did not do any rounds of layoffs or cut our salaries. While there were no bonuses or pay increases even though we worked our behinds off for the last 14 months. Instead they did the unheard of thing. The CEO and top execs and senior managers took pay cuts and no bonuses. Other companies should give that a try. CEOs not getting their 19th house in the french Riviera this year won't kill them.

Tipping is just a shameless way for employers to be off the hook and dodge their responsibilities, keeping their employees on miserable incomes. Once a salary is set, that"s it: they are liable to pay it. But with tips, they can always blame the customers' "lack of generosity" for their employees' misfortune. It infuriates me how us consumers have let ourselves be manipulated by these greedy and devious businesses to transfer more and more of their responsibility to us. Not long ago, 10% was a reasonable tip: suddenly, it went up to 12%, 15%, 18% and now, 20-25% is customary??? Why? Where did that "custom" come from? And guess what: everyone works hard! Get the service industry to pay the salaries their employees deserve!

I am completely opposed to the concept of paying a tip to hotel management, which is what is really being suggested, at check-in. I tip members of the hotel staff quite well even if they do their most basic job. They are often underpaid, overworked, and already at the mercy of many petty tyrants. Guest tips to the cleaning staff, bartenders, waiters, valets, etc. are not currently shared with the managers, the lawn staff, and the maintenance team. Nor should they be as is effectively being proposed. Unless you can show that you, your COO, CFO, and your GC are working for minimum wage it is pure BS to claim that higher wages aren't necessary to attract more and better customers.

I am totally down with this. Yes there's a long drawn-out conversation to be had about whether cheapskate hotels should be paying their people more but in the end I always think of this: I would thoughtlessly drop a good size bill on the bar for somebody who did nothing more than hand me a drink. Why would I not give some serious cash to the person who's making my sheets up, changing my towels, cleaning my toilet and vacuuming my room? I actually think it's a bit of a caste system where we don't think of compensating for menial labor like room cleaning but we do for Restaurant and bar service. So a lot of us are not that different from the hotel ownership. So come on people, let's show some courtesy and generosity. If you can afford to travel you can afford to tip your housekeeper.

I think he should be fired. Or at the very least take a pay cut so he can pay his workers that make his property is Success a better wage. People hate to be forced to tip. We tip on our own based on the service we get. That's an incentive for the worker to give better service so they get a better tip. It's the employer's job to pay a decent wage to his workers. We are now in an age where we appreciate our employees that helped to make our company a success not pawning off what you should be paying them and make the customer pay them for working for you. He obviously doesn't value his employees enough and since they are the ones that make the company a success and he doesn't realize that he needs to be replaced. The old adage happy workers make happy customers still Rings true.

Higher wages. Offer employee packages that inspire, motivate and engage workers. Provide real incentives, rewards and bonuses inline with what is offered to frequent guests. I don’t have an issue paying for excellent accommodations or extraordinary amenities. I don’t have an issue paying for excellent service. I have an issue with being nickel and dimed at every opportunity. Most corporate CEOS and other C level folks just don’t get it. They’re raking in millions of dollars in salary, incentives, stock options and other perks that most employees will never enjoy. How much is enough? If staff is the reason for success than share the profit. Employee profit sharing would change the way employees think about these jobs. Most people set out to do a good job, to exceed expectations. Recognition goes a long way.
Think about this: a waiter/waitress working at a diner works just as hard (or harder) than a waiter/waitress at an expensive restaurant. His/her tip isn’t based on the actual service one provides, it’s based on the amount of the check! Is that fair? I’ve never thought so.
We live in a society that reward mediocrity. A baseball player gets paid millions of dollars and hits less than 300! If a heart surgeon failed 7 out of 10 times would that be acceptable? A company loses hundreds of millions of dollars but the CEO gets paid millions of dollars in bonuses or severance when fired. I believe we should pay people fairly and reward them for results - providing outstanding service/results.

As a business traveler I see firsthand the price game that hotels play, changing the room rate every night. I maintain that if the rate changes from $120 to over $400/ night, for the same room during my stay, they can adjust their staff wages accordingly. I typically opt for no housekeeping services while I'm in the room, so what am I tipping for? Am I now expected to tip for the privilege of checking into a clean room? Hotel chains are making plenty of money to pay their staff living wages. I am speaking from the perspective of being a hotel maid as my first paid employment outside of babysitting and housecleaning for neighbors. It is a hard and sometimes disgusting job. The lack of cleanliness can make or break a business, and housekeepers, janitors, and landscapers should be more valued than they are... especially by the EMPLOYER. Don't try to guilt me into tipping when you just raised my room rate by $300/ night.

#1 Stop hyperinflation in this country and maybe people could live on what they make.
When Government is doing everything they can to destroy the tax payers of this country it becomes near impossible to keep up.
#2 Not one of these hotels are worth what they charge to stay in their dirty, nasty rooms, and if this ass clown with a title thinks they are well than kick back what you have robbed from John Q Public and pay your damn employees more money and quit treating them like 2nd class citizens.
#3 Mr 6 figure income, quit asking for handouts

For several years before COVID, we already had adopted a 20%+ tip policy at restaurants. Over the past 15 months on take-out food, we went to the 30% level. On longer resort vacations requiring air travel, we’ve found that leaving more generous tips for hotel housekeeping doesn’t significantly affect our travel expenses. And those folks especially work very hard. We’ve already saved the money. So we think we’re already being “responsible diners and travelers” on this tipping issue.

I’m a better than average tipper. I like that to be known and I like to be thanked. I particularly tip well to folks that usually don’t get tipped, e.g., housekeeping. If possible, I like to provide the housekeeper a tip in person. Thus, the check-in tip does not appeal. Story time: I got on an elevator and there was a woman cleaning the glass walls. I said, “everyone in this hotel gets tipped except you. This is for you.” I gave her a $20. She said nothing. I was disappointed and thought perhaps she didn’t see the size of the bill. Then the doors opened and two workers got on. She spoke to them in Spanish. They got big smiles on their faces and they shook my hand. I felt great all day.