Less work for housekeepers and more money for hotels

By Barbara De Lollis
October 31, 2010

The new environmental initiative rolled out by Starwood's Sheraton chain - in which the hotel pays guests to decline housekeeping service - is an environmental fraud aimed mainly at cutting labor costs.

That's what some housekeepers are saying in Toronto, according to an interesting Toronto Star report highlighted in the Starwood-tracker blog - *wood - yesterday.

Sheraton rolled out the "Make a Green Choice" program chainwide last fall to "conserve energy." It gives guests who give up housekeeping services to "conserve natural resources" for a day a $5 voucher for food and drinks or 500 Starwood points.

"From our perspective, these programs are doing virtually nothing for the environment," Brigida Ruiz, a houskeeper at the Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel told the newspaper. "Instead, what they are really intended do is greatly reduce the number of room attendants employed by the hotel each day."

Ruiz told the the Star that when hotel guests deny housekeeping services, it takes more time, electricity and cleaning chemicals to get the job done resulting in little savings.

"Do you know how dirty a room gets when it hasn't been cleaned for three days?" asked Ruiz, who has worked at the Sheraton for 18 years. "Normally I clean a room in 30 minutes. After three days of no service, it takes me almost an hour and half to clean the room and I use just as much cleaning fluid because the bathrooms are filth."

In a statement to the newspaper, Starwood said that 200,000 guests in North America participated in the program in its first six months. That helped hotels save 8.2 million gallons of water, 38,000 kilowatts of electricity and 11,000 gallons of cleaning chemicals.

"Starwood believes the most sustainable sustainability initiatives are those that are economically viable, so there are indeed operational efficiencies driven by this program," Starwood's statement to the newspaper said.

Some groups that are holding conferences at the Toronto Sheraton have asked the hotel to remove the "green choice" cards from their attendees' rooms, the article says.

According to Ruiz, 70 to 100 guests hang out the notices on their door knobs each night at the Sheraton hotel. About 35, eight-hour shifts are being lost by room attendants daily due to the program, according to the union representing the hotel.

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