Hotel Gratuities Debate Reaches Tipping Point
Photo Credit: The debate continues on whether leaving cash or going touchless is the future of gratuities for staff in hotels. Getty Images / Olena Ivanova
Skift Take
The shift to a touchless society shouldn’t put guests out of touch with those who need a display of gratitude. Technology is on the brink of impacting wide-scale change when it comes to virtual tipping — and it can’t come fast enough.
Mark Fischer counts himself lucky. The general manager of the Revere Hotel in Boston is in the heart of the city, just across the street from an ATM for guests to grab a few bills for staff tips.
But whether those guests actually brave snow, rain, or traffic is another story, which is just one of the reasons why the Revere is in the final stages of beta-testing mobile solutions for collecting staff gratuities.
“With the pandemic pushing us in the direction of ‘touchless’ with keyless entry for guest rooms and checking in via phone, this will continue to enhance the touchless and tech-forward components,” Fischer said of his HEI group hotel. “Technology is definitely where the hospitality sector is going more and more.”
Cashless tipping technology is one strategy that’s encouraged across HEI Hotels & Resorts, but rolled out on a property-by-property basis. CEO Ted Darnall faced heat last year for comments encouraging the training of guests to tip more, as opposed to raising an hourly wage for staff. In 2021, the 80-property group instituted a policy enabling customers at check-in to authorize that tips be added to their final bill. Others like Hampton Inn & Suites Las Vegas-Henderson made headlines for automatically adding gratuities onto the folios for guests who used their mobile app to check in.
The battle over who tips what, when, and how comes
