I have had great success with Costco travel, fyi. No hidden fees, 100% transparency on what is and isn’t included.
Your trip sounds fabulous… but for next time. It is aggravating to think you’ve arranged a trip which is affordable based on your budget, only to learn that three key elements are not included.
Oodles of hotels are doing this now due to those of us “Green” folks who are happy about it. 
I’m sure it saves them money too. But all of them I’ve been in have signs saying you can request typical daily service if you like - you just have to request it. When we’ve needed new towels instead of being content reusing ours (as we do at home), all we had to do was ask and they were at our door within minutes.
I’m glad the default is there to not do daily housekeeping (we try to purposely choose these places), but since you prefer what’s been traditional, just ask next time. Perhaps there are some places that will say no, but I suspect they are few and far between.
They can’t do much at all about who’s using the pool. When we had kids we happily would use whatever was there. Now that we’re adults and prefer kid free or few kids we just remind ourselves that we’re at a different point in our lives. Parents today should have the same options we had. That said, we enjoy it when we get a pool, esp to ourselves! If they’re out of towels they’ve always had them at the front desk. It just takes asking.
I’ve stayed at several mid-level Hilton brand hotels over the past 6 months and each of them had stacks of towels and toilet paper behind the front desk, so if you needed it, you had to go to the front desk and get it. No doubt that it’s saving them money but it takes away part of the “glamour” that used to be associated with a hotel stay.
The higher end brands I’ve stayed in are back to full service. Most hotels have been doing a “Green” campaign for years (hang your towels and reuse if you care about the environment, leave them on the floor if you drive a giant, gas-guzzling SUV and we’ll replace them 
)
Or, to be cynical, it saves them money by not having to wash their towels if you rehang them.
I don’t mind less housekeeping but I do mind that I’m paying the same or more for less services.
I put those towels on the floor every day. I want fresh towels if I’m paying hundreds of dollars a night for a room.
This is not exactly correct. The local/tourism/etc. taxes are listed as separate line items from the so called resort fees and room rates. Our HI hotel bills can have multiple line items for each night not counting the dining charged to the room. Not all resort fees are taxed by every tax though because technically these fees are not lodging which is subject to some of those taxes. It is NUTS!!
Sadly we don’t live near a Costco.
And I knew the other items were add ons. I just didn’t expect the triple the price premium for an English speaking driver (and most likely tour guides, etc, for our entire trip) in a country where I’ve read that most speak English along with Spanish, and the main economy is tourism. I mean I’m not against traveling to countries where I don’t speak the language well. I took my 4 and 7 year old daughters to China for six weeks on my own while speaking only a few phrases of Chinese. We had a great time. It’s just in this case, I’m sure they have plenty of English speaking drivers, and what if you opted not to pay for the English speaking drivers? Would the Spanish ones be willing to be patient with you as you fumble through Spanish since you took the cheap option? (every where else I’ve traveled, the locals are happy to assist you without charging you triple if they speak your language). It was the principle of the matter.
I have stayed in hotels that offered a credit if you used this option for 3(??) days. That was long before covid. But tbh, I have not seen this option offered recently.
I have been at a number of hotels that will give you points if you decline daily sheet and towel changes. I always take this option since we don’t wash towels and sheets every day at home.
Same here. We’ve rented many airbnbs. The only thing we’ve ever had to do is run the dishwasher.
I got in the habit a long time ago of just calling when I want housekeeping to make up my room. I usually do it as I’m on the way out the door so I know it’ll be done when I get back. It eliminates all the hit or miss of not knowing if/when housekeeping will show up.
These days I’m on the fence about having the room made up every day - sometimes I’ll skip a day or two.
One unintended consequence of skipping housekeeping is that the maids don’t get tips for the days you skip (assuming you leave a tip). Just something to be aware of and relevant to the original thread topic.
Hotels are short staffed. They can’t find labor so that’s why they clean rooms only after x amount of days.
I was just at one in Miami - full service. Breakfast didn’t open til 8 because the staff no showed and they had to get back ups.
Hotels / restaurants - many are crippled. Can’t find staff.
I know we’re odd, but we’ll pay more for hotels who have a good “green” policy. Same with grocery items and other things. Taking care of the planet is that important to us so we encourage it with our $$.
We leave the equivalent of a tip for each night to compensate. I know it’s not always the same person on duty, but often it is. When it isn’t it hopefully makes up for tips they don’t get on other rooms. When we stay for longer periods of time we often leave an unopened nice bag of expensive candy too. The couple of times we’ve overheard the staff find these it’s seemed to have made their day. That’s worth it to us.
Which is why I wish the US would change their policy and legally let immigrants and travelers who want to work do so. It would solve quite a few problems with staffing, plus provide income taxes.
ETA: I know we’re odd. We’re ok with that. I’m not trying to convince anyone that they have to do what we do. I’m just letting folks know that “voice” is out there even if it’s a minority. To each our own with what we want to pay for (or not). I opt to skip out of expensive clothing, handbags, weddings , and similar.
I don’t mind the green policy of reusing towels and bedding, but empty the teeny tiny trash can. We weren’t even eating very often in our room because we were out all day, but we stayed 5 nights, at a very expensive hotel, and I did expect them to empty the trash, replace the toilet paper, and at least see if the carpet needed to be vacuumed if we spilled something.
It also took them more than 30 minutes to check us in as they’d spelled my last name wrong in their system but it was correct on the reservation confirmation (which they couldn’t use because the # wasn’t the same as the reservation system?) and instead of helping us, the clerk asked us to ‘stand aside’ while she helped other people. Well, we were there first.
I just wasn’t impressed with a Marriott charging $200/nt
BTW, we did use the same bedding and towels all week, no problem with that, but IF we’d had one we wouldn’t have had a backup. One night we returned through a drenching downpour, with the street flooding our shoes . No extra towels at all. Traipsing all the way back to the front desk wasn’t an appealing option.
I don’t feel a lot of pressure to tip in the scenarios being described. I tip when I want to (for waitstaff, deliveries, and personal services like hairstyling), and I feel absolutely fine not tipping when it doesn’t seem warranted (most other types of purchases). No guilt. When I do tip, I tend to tip 20%.
Sometimes I wonder if it would be better to always tip at most types of business but use a lower amount like 10% rather than tipping 20% at some places and tipping nothing at other places. If I am feeling ambivalent, I tend to just throw a buck or my change in the jar. But mostly I don’t worry or think about the issue much. I have two teens who are currently working in service jobs so it makes me a little more sensitive to how poorly waitstaff and counter help gets paid, but even before they got those jobs, my behavior was similar. Neither makes minimum wage for the base salary so tips make up the difference and on a good day, the average rate is higher. On a bad day, the tips barely bring them to minimum.
In any case, going back to the title, who do you think is being greedy when you tip? The sellers? The people waiting on you? The business owners? I do worry that some of my tips may not actually being given to the staff who waits on me. It is hard to know. At one of my teen’s jobs, tips go directly to the person who provides the service. At the other kid’s job, the tips get pooled among everyone on for that shift.
Blockquote
“Which is why I wish the US would change their policy and legally let immigrants and travelers who want to work do so. It would solve quite a few problems with staffing, plus provide income taxes.”
There are visas for this. Some places use them to great advantage. (Visit Bar Harbor in the summer!) But the catch is that the employer has to pay minimum wage (or perhaps faif market?), which many don’t want to do.
Went to a place tonight with a drive thru and counter service inside (but a liquor license, so a step above fast food). You order from a screen and pick up a tray from a slot. A guy introduced himself as the ‘one taking care of us tonight’ and our bartender. Um, we had two chicken sandwiches, some tater tots, a coke and a water (served ourselves).
No tip. I know he’s making at least $17.29/hr (new minimum wage). He was nice, but we didn’t need help.
We went on a trip to Europe this fall. I know the euro was down but found that even in some of the most expensive places that dining was pretty much on par with dining out in the US. The difference was that the price listed was basically the price paid. No 20% tipping expected. The food was also freshly made and the produce was so good.
We were in countries where locals learned English as young children. We assumed that if we met someone who didn’t speak English (there were a few) were immigrants. Europe is teeming with Ukrainian refugees and other immigrants. So I’m guessing that finding English speaking guides and drivers would mean that they would be at a premium as they would have to know the local language plus English.
I tip 20% to pretty much all food service folks that have that option. It’s a crap job even if minimum wage is $17-something. You don’t know how many hours that your server is allowed to work, etc. You have no idea how much they are bringing home total. I definitely feel bad and stingy if I don’t tip. My oldest used to work at Starbucks and I heard some stories about the entitled jerks who would come in and order literally hundreds of dollars worth of fancy custom drinks, but then not tip. When my kid was working there we would sometimes go order something and just leave a really big tip like at the holidays, maybe $50 on a $5 drink.
As far as hotel rooms, I just ask if I need extra towels or the trash emptied. Mostly I don’t stay in hotels more than 1 or 2 nights (usually get a rental if it’s going to be that long) so no problem usually. Occasionally we have stayed longer, but honestly I really have never liked housekeeping coming in my room during my stay, way before there were ever green initiatives, which I think are awesome, btw. I don’t have anything valuable I habitually leave in the room, but I just don’t like other people in there while I’m staying. Feels like a wee invasion of privacy.
We almost never check bags on airplanes. I don’t trust 'em to get it to me when I land. We traveled to the UK for 3 weeks with carry on only. I might check a bag on the way home if I buy a lot of stuff, but we try to avoid it.