In appreciation for the service supplied, many resort friends select to depart a gratuity for his or her room attendants both every day or as a lump sum on the ultimate morning of occupancy. That is normally completed by leaving a nominal amount of money on the desk or bedside desk, typically with a short thank-you word or merely by inserting the tv distant management on high of the foreign money to make sure it doesn’t blow away, signaling that the cash was left deliberately. Some motels provide an envelope or tent card for this objective with a scripted message from the room attendant. This could function a mild reminder for friends to recollect the contributions of resort housekeeping personnel, whom most friends hardly ever work together with, particularly throughout short-term stays. A 2017 New York Instances article reported that solely about 30 p.c of resort friends go away a gratuity.
The Challenges
There are quite a few challenges that housekeeping managers should take into account when deciding the best way to implement and administer a gratuity coverage for his or her departmental associates. A few of these issues embody whether or not the room attendant can hold the gratuity or whether or not it needs to be shared with different housekeeping associates. For revenue reporting and taxation functions, are recipients of those gratuities required to report such tricks to their employer? Relying on the quantity of gratuities tendered, might the resort search an offset or credit score of a portion of an worker’s hourly wage or employer-paid FICA taxes, much like what many restaurateurs are permitted to do? Will the gratuity program doubtlessly battle with a resort’s established resort payment? On condition that it could be a number of hours earlier than a guestroom is entered by the room attendant for servicing, what prevents another worker from getting into the room in search of to abscond with a gratuity meant for the room attendant? Moreover, room attendants should not at all times assigned the identical guestrooms to scrub each day, nor do they usually work seven days every week. Therefore, if a visitor who stays for a number of nights opts to attend till the morning of checkout to depart a gratuity, it’s attainable {that a} totally different worker will obtain the tip than the one who serviced the visitor’s room.
Leveraging QR Codes
Whereas most of the aforementioned challenges have existed for years, know-how has created an obstacle and maybe additionally presents an answer. In in the present day’s hospitality realm, many friends journey with minimal money, counting on bank cards, debit playing cards, and cell cost choices resembling Apple Pay, Google Pay, or contactless cost methods resembling Sq., Venmo, and PayPal. Equally, many motels now not hold massive quantities of money on the entrance desk, making it troublesome to alternate massive payments for smaller denominations for use for gratuities. The potential tech answer is the usage of a singular QR code positioned in every guestroom, the place a visitor might click on and render an non-obligatory gratuity through cell machine. The date and time of every cost can be linked to the resort room quantity and dates of keep, thus enabling the resort to manage a housekeeping gratuity program with certainty. Gratuities might be paid and reported to the suitable worker(s) who serviced the rooms by means of their weekly paycheck. Whereas not an ideal system, it’ll doubtlessly lead to elevated gratuity ranges for housekeepers over time.
