Hot Sheets!
Travel Blog • Alexander Basek • 03.09.09 | 10:19 AM ET
Linen reuse programs in hotels: are they helping the earth or just passing the burden onto the guests? Those little cards appeal to a sense of environmental guilt and ask guests to conserve by keeping hotels and sheets a second or third day, but Jill Hunter Pellettieri suggests that hotels view these programs in terms of reduced energy and water costs alone. The nerve! It’s not surprising the businesses would act business-y, but it galls nonetheless.
I expect fresh sheets every day, especially at a higher-end stay. (At some pensions, you might not get them even if you want them). A bed with fresh sheets every day is a luxury, and, well, that’s something that’s nice to have at a luxury hotel.
As for the hotels getting greener, weatherproofing the windows or using recycled materials is a lot better for the environment than a tsk-tsk note asking to leave the sheets for days on end. Go down that road, and a Ryanair-operated chain of hotels where you have to bring your own sheets could be close behind.
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Grizzly Bear Mom 03.10.09 | 1:53 AM ET
I don’t understand this view at all. I change my sheets once a week a home, and believe it appropriate for the hotel to do the same, unless a new guest comes in.
Erika Goodell 03.10.09 | 9:13 AM ET
Considering how most areas (ours included) are experiencing drought conditions, I wonder where this writer expects the water to come from to wash linens and towels every day?? We do as much as we can to preserve water in order to offer luxuries such as a whirlpool bathtub, which my guests prefer to have rather than clean linens every day.
We change on the third day should we have a guest stay that long, which is not often. Our guests usually come for two day stays.
This view is very impractical and wasteful.
Alexander Basek 03.10.09 | 9:44 AM ET
My sheet view is really dependent on the property. If I am paying over $200 a night, I expect fresh sheets every day. I don’t need fresh towels, but it’s nice to have fresh sheets—and, let’s be honest, hotels almost never clean their comforters, so at least they’re splitting the difference. As for hotels shaming guests into feeling bad about having their sheets washed, it’s a business decision, not an ecological one.