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Notes -
“Rolled back regular room cleanings posts covid”
Where did our workers go between pre and post covid? The illegal immigrant surge occurred post COVID - during the Biden administration. Somehow pre-COVID we had a lot of workers. Post Covid despite a surge in supposedly illegal workers we had an accute lack of labor?
It seems like wages have doubled since Covid but we have a lack of workers. Where did everyone go?
I'm not sure whether the roll back was entirely supply-side. Hotels probably thought that consumers wanted hotel staff to stay out of their rooms during COVID. Then, different consumers likely had different preferences over time (some folks wanted to "get back to normal" very quickly, while others stayed in "pandemic mode" longer), they probably pretty rationally came up with the idea of just making room cleanings a bit more optional rather than routine. At some point, the light bulb probably flipped, and they realized they could probably save a fair amount of money by just fiddling with the default.
Even pre-COVID, it was still 'optional'. You could just put up the Do Not Disturb sign if you didn't want it. But the default was every day. More recently, I've seen defaults that are every other day or twice a week or whatever; I don't remember the details of every one. It's always been, "Don't worry, we obviously thoroughly clean for new guests, and also if you ever want a cleaning, just ask," but this allows them to skimp on costs with almost no consumer bad will. Honestly, this is probably part fluke that they just somehow didn't think of it before (or felt like they couldn't get away with deviating from the 'industry standard' until they had COVID push everyone off the equilibrium).
The labor shortage is definitely real. Most of these people are now either in the gig economy or sponging off welfare at lower consumption rates than pre-covid.
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