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Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by crooked-v on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @09:44PM (#34089077)
I would assume the reputable but cost-cutting hotels would still be doing a full clean between guest visits, just cutting down on the daily room cleaning while a guest is still there.
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by lotsofpulp on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @09:48PM (#34089108)
Every single hotel or motel should be doing full clean between guest visits, otherwise it should not even be allowed to operate.

But if a hotel starts letting people stay weeks without checking their room, they will inevitably end up with hoarders and people that keep food lying around and then comes cockroaches and rats and odors, etc.

Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by midoridensha on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @11:09PM (#34089687)
>Every single hotel or motel should be doing full clean between guest visits, otherwise it should not even be allowed to operate.

The keyword here is "should". I don't have much faith that hotels will actually do this.

Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by vkou on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @11:29PM (#34089801)
Even bad hotels do this, because people lose their shit and do chargebacks if they end up in an uncleaned room.

Source: a close friend works at a really bad hotel.

Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by midoridensha on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @11:51PM (#34089953)
So if your friend says this, this implies that uncleaned rooms do happen from time to time, right?
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by vanviegen on Thursday December 22, 2022 @12:47AM (#34090246)
People make mistakes.
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by vkou on Thursday December 22, 2022 @05:11AM (#34091800)
No, it means that when housekeeping fails to clean a room, for whatever reason, he can't rent it out.

The people losing their minds and screaming at him is what happens when something else that isn't quite to their satisfaction happens. Like, say, the hotel requiring a deposit and a major credit card and ID to book a room.

Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by maccard on Thursday December 22, 2022 @05:21AM (#34091874)
This happens in 5 star luxury hotels too. People make mistakes.
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by Gigachad on Thursday December 22, 2022 @01:02AM (#34090319)
I recently made a bad choice in hotel and ended up at a fairly dodgy looking place, most of the lights in the room didn’t function and the shower didn’t work properly, but it was spotlessly clean so I accepted the mistake.
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by emptybits on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @11:44PM (#34089911)
> But if a hotel starts letting people stay weeks without checking their room, ...

Yet I think people regularly stay for weeks with Airbnb/Vrbo without any host inspection or cleaning. I agree with your conclusion (filthy guests who stay weeks invite pest problems) ... so if the big bad old hotel industry needs to market their advantages, maybe there's an Institutuionally Clean angle.

Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by thefounder on Thursday December 22, 2022 @05:04AM (#34091759)
That's one of the reasons some people(i.e me) avoid airbnb as much as possible. It seems airbnb is not even cheaper than a hotel (in most cases)
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by mcv on Thursday December 22, 2022 @05:17AM (#34091846)
This is really the heart of the issue with all these new "disruptive" industries. They're cheaper because they avoid a lot of the regulation, but all that regulation exists for a reason. Whether you're replacing taxis with Uber or hotels with airbnb, you're saving money by allowing room for all the problems that made the regulation necessary in the first place.
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by MarkPNeyer on Thursday December 22, 2022 @06:33AM (#34092333)
There’s always a trade off between “cost” and everything else. If you’re wealthy enough they cost doesn’t really matter to you, regulation is fine because it leads to higher quality experiences in general.

But if you’re not as wealthy, saving money might be more valuable to you than having a room cleaned daily, or having a really nice tv, or a great mattress, etc.

Regulation involves a group of people picking one point on a trade off curve for everyone. Branding and reputation systems allow for multiple different spots on that reputation curve.

Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by gtowey on Thursday December 22, 2022 @08:24AM (#34092969)
> But if you’re not as wealthy, saving money might be more valuable to you than having a room cleaned daily, or having a really nice tv, or a great mattress, etc.

The problem is that without regulation there is little incentive for business to be honest about the quality of service you're getting. It becomes a race to the bottom as they charge premium prices for cut-rate quality. It's hard for people to take your business elsewhere when you need a place to sleep and arrive late at night to a room that isn't what you expect. They just have to make their dispute process hard enough to keep customer money.

And if you day that's fraud, sure it is, but fraud is only something you can charge a business with because of regulation.

IMO regulation isn't perfect, but we should aim to fix it instead of throwing it out the window entirely

Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by gameman144 on Thursday December 22, 2022 @12:45PM (#34096120)
> It's hard for people to take your business elsewhere when you need a place to sleep

I think this is actually how most people end up deciding to take their business elsewhere: they give a company their business once, are let down, and decide to never patronize that business or chain again. This is why customer recommendations and reviews hold weight at all -- they help give signal before your first business interaction.

> but fraud is only something you can charge a business with because of regulation.

I don't think almost anyone is in favor of no regulation, only the prescriptive step-by-step guideline regulations. If a hotel says "we have beds!" and then they don't have beds, that's a very different regulatory case than a hotel saying "our bed are comfortable!" and then their beds are not comfortable.

Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by ghaff on Thursday December 22, 2022 @10:00AM (#34093923)
There are many different levels of hotel rooms. But, as with many things, service worker labor has gotten more expensive relative to other things (Baumol cost disease basically). So it makes sense for hotels and other industries to automate or simply eliminate things like daily room cleanings that most customers don't actually value a lot.
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by TeMPOraL on Thursday December 22, 2022 @11:18AM (#34094954)
> But if you’re not as wealthy, saving money might be more valuable to you than having a room cleaned daily, or having a really nice tv, or a great mattress, etc.

And perhaps saving money might be even more valuable to you than <what you wrote above, but every "or" being progressively replaced with an "and">!

> Regulation involves a group of people picking one point on a trade off curve for everyone. Branding and reputation systems allow for multiple different spots on that reputation curve.

Yes, but that "one point on a trade off curve for everyone" works as a backstop against inevitable slide downwards. If globalization of trade and e-commerce taught us anything, reputation systems are trivially gamed, most branding exists primarily to fool people who still think it means something into spending more for less.

Even without talking about potential fraud, market competition naturally turns into race to the bottom. Regulation is what sets that bottom higher than "absolute worst possible before the market segment self-destructs".

Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by phpisthebest on Thursday December 22, 2022 @07:38AM (#34092700)
The problem here is when regulation moves beyond safety into protectionism, which I submit ALOT of regulation for both hotels and taxis is FAR FAR FAR removed from simply protecting health and safety and instead is more about preventing new entrants into the market and protecting current business models
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by robbiep on Thursday December 22, 2022 @08:48AM (#34093163)
Here in australia (sydney) we’re still paying $1 per rideshare ride as ‘compensation’ for the taxi disruption.

If that isn’t regulatory capture? I don’t know what is

Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by Retric on Thursday December 22, 2022 @09:03AM (#34093312)
Could also be compensation for a medallion system the government was forcing Taxi company’s to buy into.

Force people to spend X00,000$/car to enter a market and then let ride-shares ignore that requirement that’s going to push all these companies to bankruptcy simply because the newcomers don’t have to pay interest on these loans.

Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by nly on Thursday December 22, 2022 @07:32AM (#34092667)
With Airbnb you're on the hook for cleaning costs..at a hotel the assumption is the hotel will clean up your mess (as long as it's not extreme or unreasonable)
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by cudgy on Thursday December 22, 2022 @11:53AM (#34095455)
Hotels are certainly charging the guests for cleaning up; it is just not broken out as a separate charge. Of course, Airbnb’s do not have the economies of scale that a hotel has and in some cases for short term rentals charge more for the cleaning than the rented space. I stay with the pros and avoid Airbnb’s for both cost and convenience reasons.
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by washywashy on Thursday December 22, 2022 @08:08AM (#34092849)
Pretty sure some airbnbs don’t even clean between guests. I’ve had some iffy experiences, and because of the consistently issues, it’s why I prefer hotels now unless there’s no other option.
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by ejb999 on Thursday December 22, 2022 @09:38AM (#34093662)
same here - airbnb had its day in the sun for me - its back to hotels for me whenever I can.
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by tbihl on Thursday December 22, 2022 @10:47AM (#34094522)
Without knowing what sort of information sharing exists among hotels, I'd suspect that AirBnB has a much stronger reputation signal that can be relied upon, which should disincentivize and blacklist people who are trashing places or causing pest problems.
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by rob74 on Thursday December 22, 2022 @02:19AM (#34090740)
Even if there is some food lying around in a room on the 3rd floor, the cockroaches and rats won't just materialize out of thin air. Unless the hygienic conditions are generally bad anyway, but then the hotel has a bigger problem than one dirty room...
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by TeMPOraL on Thursday December 22, 2022 @04:26AM (#34091456)
> the cockroaches and rats won't just materialize out of thin air

In practice, you can assume they do - it's a simplified but accurate model of reality when you're not researching the life of insects and rodents.

Yes, life does not appear "out of thin air", but it constantly tries to get in, will exploit any crack in your defenses or attention to chase after anything that looks or smells like food or safety. It's simpler to just assume annoying critters materialize out of thin air if you leave the right conditions, and ensure those conditions are never present.

It's kind of like thermodynamics / statistical physics: the air around you doesn't really have "pressure" or "temperature", but you may just as well assume they're a thing, since the alternative would be to talk about kinematics of air molecules.

Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by MarkPNeyer on Thursday December 22, 2022 @06:38AM (#34092361)
We had a mouse problem once. The ended up being a small hole drilled in the side of the house to install a cat5 cable for a security camera. The hole couldn't have been more than 1.5 cm in diameter, and it had a cat 5 cable running through it - but apparently this was enough space for a mouse to squeeze through.
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by thirteenfingers on Thursday December 22, 2022 @07:27AM (#34092637)
Obligatory Matthias Wandel video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHOx39xJack
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by ghaff on Thursday December 22, 2022 @07:51AM (#34092771)
Living in a couple hundred year old house in the country, I find the idea that you'd actually keep mice out of a house like this somewhat hilarious.
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by cudgy on Thursday December 22, 2022 @11:58AM (#34095524)
All you need are some outside cats roaming the spacious yard to discourage the small cute furry little rodents from “cozying” up in your house. When living in an urban dwelling with 50 other families, other strategies are needed.
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by danaris on Thursday December 22, 2022 @02:40PM (#34097558)
Yeah; we've had mouse problems in our 90-ish-year-old house ever since we moved in a decade+ ago. Then in the winter of 2019-20, a cat started sheltering in our garage on a regular basis.

We had no mouse problems that winter, and very few since then.

Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by mcv on Thursday December 22, 2022 @05:19AM (#34091861)
I once heard that nowhere on Earth you're ever more than 6 meters away from a rat. I don't think that's true, but it's probably still a bad idea to blindly assume that there's no vermin anywhere. You keep vermin away by not feeding them.
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by toyg on Thursday December 22, 2022 @06:51AM (#34092446)
> owhere on Earth you're ever more than 6 meters away from a rat. I don't think that's true

I see that as realistic, if we are talking 2D spaces. In urban environments, they live in sewers, and you have sewers under every building. In the countryside, they obviously live everywhere.

I can see that 6-metres rule broken only if going 3D, i.e. in multi-storey buildings with spotless maintenance of any nook and cranny, living on the third or fourth floor, you might be a bit further away than that.

Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by tectec on Thursday December 22, 2022 @07:53AM (#34092784)
The province of Alberta in Canada is famous for trying to be rat free, and I think they mostly succeeded
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by LarryMullins on Thursday December 22, 2022 @03:27PM (#34098202)
Alberta is ostensibly free of invasive Norwegian rats, but overlaps with the natural range of native bushy tailed wood rats.
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by sokoloff on Thursday December 22, 2022 @10:51AM (#34094580)
It's probably not worth it just to avoid the rats, but Antartica is rat-free. (Other extremely cold places are likely to be as well, at least enough to make the 6-meter distance.)
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by cultofmetatron on Thursday December 22, 2022 @11:44AM (#34095320)
I'm pretty sure you an find places free of rats in the antarctic
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by ChuckNorris89 on Thursday December 22, 2022 @05:16AM (#34091835)
>Every single hotel or motel should be doing full clean between guest visits, otherwise it should not even be allowed to operate.

'Should be' yes, but you'd be surprised how many don't follow through on this, and not necessarily due to lack of policy. Cleaning staff have very tight schedules, being allocated only a few minutes to completely clean and setup the room for the new guest but if the old guest didn't follow through on the exact checkout time, then that throws of the schedule of the cleaning staff completely, meaning they often cut corners to meet their deadlines.

Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by robertlagrant on Thursday December 22, 2022 @06:40AM (#34092372)
This is undoubtedly true, but I don't think it affects the main point. Doing less room-cleaning (or charging more for each time it happens) doesn't mean inter-guest cleaning is affected.
Re:Hotels turn to robots and room cleanings every 4 days to ... by snarfy on Thursday December 22, 2022 @08:33AM (#34093030)
This is how you get bed bugs.