Hotel housekeepers have for years waged a fierce battle to restore automatic daily room cleaning that was scaled back at many properties during the coronavirus pandemic.

With up to 17 rooms to clean each shift, Fatima Amahmoud’s job at the Moxy hotel in downtown Boston sometimes feels impossible.

There was the time she found three days worth of blond dog fur clinging to the curtains, the bedspread and the carpet. She knew she wouldn’t finish in the 30 minutes she is supposed to spend on each room. The dog owner had declined daily room cleaning, an option that many hotels have encouraged as environmentally friendly but is a way for them to cut labor costs and cope with worker shortages since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unionized housekeepers, however, have waged a fierce fight to restore automatic daily room cleaning at major hotel chains, saying they have been saddled with unmanageable workloads, or in many cases, fewer hours and a decline in income.

The dispute has become emblematic of the frustration over working conditions among hotel workers, who were put out of their jobs for months during pandemic shutdowns and returned to an industry grappling with chronic staffing shortages and evolving travel trends.

  • arglebargle@lemm.eeEnglish
    31·
    3 months ago

    I have yet to see a pet friendly hotel with vinyl floors. It’s always been wall to wall carpeting.

    Personally I am all in favor of hard floors dogs or not. I stayed In hotel recently that mops the floors after every stay and that seems preferable to carpet and a vacuum.

    But oddly enough, it was not pet friendly. The last two i stayed in with carpet were though.