I am not a housekeeper, but I have been working in hotel laundry for a couple years now. I never saw the hospitality industry pre-pandemic, but for as long as I have been working in this hotel (I started only a couple weeks after they opened, over a year ago), I have heard the housekeepers and managers talk about all the shit they have to deal with, including understaffing. They've used temp agencies, paid maid services, and still don't seem to have enough housekeepers.
Today there was a staff meeting in which the new general manager said that they were going to start doing daily room cleaning. I asked the housekeeping manager later if there were even enough people to do this, and she said no. She mentioned how hard it's been to find people, and even literally said “no one wants to work anymore.” She's a good manager, but she's overworking herself because she cares too much. So that just tells me that the problem is that people don't want to do this incredibly demanding work for what they're getting paid for it.
So now they're going to add more demands onto an already limited staff. I had thought that daily room service was largely unfavored by both housekeepers and guests, but upon doing some searching later, I found articles talking about a union that was asking FOR daily room service so as to provide enough work for their housekeepers. And I get it; I imagine it was incredibly disruptive at the start of the pandemic when all the hotels just laid off a bunch of their people… but housekeeping seemed like it was never a great job to begin with. I have mad respect for housekeepers because I know it's a job I couldn't do. I try to go out of my way to make their jobs easier in any way I can, but it seems to me like the larger problems are that the companies underpay and overwork their people (not a new problem), and that there are some really shitty guests who deserve to get banned (but don't) that make their lives miserable (also not a new problem). Are there unions demanding better working conditions instead of MORE work? Does daily room service make your job better or worse? I know it was definitely stupid greedy for hotels to stop daily room service, fire a bunch of their staff, and keep their prices the same, but I had thought that the lessened workload was a positive side effect of the pandemic. I know I personally prefer my privacy when traveling. So… thought I'd ask all the housekeepers out there for their thoughts.