Now You’re Tipping At Check-In? Marriott Hotel Expands Tipping Culture To The Front Desk
Marriott’s LaSalle Hotel in Bryan, Texas (by Texas A&M) completed a two-year, $6 million renovation and the Tribute Portfolio property re-opened in September.
This hotel does something a little bit differently – something I have never seen before. They ask guests to tip the front desk agent checking them in.
Credit: LaSalle Hotel
We’ve seen QR codes in rooms to encourage guests to tip housekeeping. Hotels say that encouraging tipping saves them from paying higher wages. All that matters is that the employee gets more money, and that helps with retention. It doesn’t matter who does the paying.
But at most hotels the QR code tipping encouragement is limited to housekeeping. Not so at the LaSalle, according to a reader who stayed there. They report that they were given a slip of paper pushing tipping along with their key when they checked in, along with their elite breakfast vouchers.
Here was the QR code in their room suggesting a housekeeping tip.
And this was the QR code in their key packet to tip the front desk.
Tipping the front desk is only really Las Vegas thing – aside from this Marriott hotel – and there it is an explicit bribe in exchange for an upgrade.
What was once dubbed ‘the $20 trick’ it’s now more of a $100 trick, you slide the cash over with your credit card and ask whether upgrades are available (ideally mentioning the room type you want) and if they can do it they pocket the money.
It’s basically the desk clerk taking your money instead of the hotel owner doing it – or, rather, selling the hotel owner’s inventory to you at a discount where they keep the money for themselves.
Credit: LaSalle Hotel
At LaSalle, though, it seems to be the more traditional hotel strategy of getting gullible guests to pay more money, in order to keep hotel payroll down while still retaining staff. That’s great for the hotel if you fall for it, I suppose. Although perhaps the only thing I’ve seen more egregious is airport self-checkout kiosks that not only ask for a tip, but won’t accept $0 as the tip amount.