Many travelers motivated by cheap airplane tickets and discount hotel rooms are also environmentally conscious. Starwoods Sheraton claims that environmental concerns have lead them to offer vouchers or points to guests who decline daily housekeeping service.
Sheratons Make a Green Choice program is motivated, according to Sheraton, to conserve energy. To help motivate its guests to give up daily housekeeping services during visits, Sheraton is offering a $5 voucher for food or drinks or 500 Starwood points for each day a guest declines housekeeping service.
Sheraton claims that 200,000 guests in North America have participated in this program in its first six months results in the following benefits:
Saving 8.2 million gallons of water
Reducing 38,000 kilowatts of electricity
Not using 11,000 gallons of cleaning chemicals
Sounds impressive? Not according to what some of Starwoods housekeepers are saying. They view this program as an environmental fraud targeted mainly at reducing labor costs. The impact of this program is that it significantly reduces the number of room attendants needed at each hotel each day.
According to Unite Here, Sheratons labor union, about 35 eight hour shifts are being lost by room attendants daily at the Toronto Sheraton as a result of this program.
Clearly this program is an attractive marketing ploy that appeals to environmentally conscious guests. Sheratons environmental benefits are disputed by some room attendants who claim that far more cleaning chemicals are needed to clean a room after three days of no service vs. daily cleaning.
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