I took down my "do not disturb sign," but my room never got cleaned. Should I have expected it to be?

4/18/2022 8:49:45 AM

This is not typical, though it probably depends a lot on the level/rating of the hotel, individual hotel policies and possibly how busy the hotel is (which may depend on the season and/or day of the week).

If it was typical my room would never be cleaned 🙂

In my experience they will respect the do not cleaning sign and then come back later in the day (a common issue in some places is that they actually come back quite late). If the sign is still up after a certain hour, they will usually leave a note under the door and ask you to call housekeeping if/when you need the room cleaned.

Of course this works in hotels where they have housecleaning staff for much of the day, usually in larger hotels or higher category hotels.

In smaller and cheaper hotels the housekeeping staff may just be there for a few hours in the morning, and if by the time they have finished all rooms they could the sign is still up, then there isn’t much you can expect them to do.

I wouldn’t expect any hotel to skip the room for the whole day if at any point during their round they see the sign, though. Usually housekeeping staff will start with all rooms checking out on the day which do not have the sign and/or which reception tells them the guests have checked out, then other rooms which have the “please clean my room” sign up (if there’s one, it becomes quite rare), then continue looping around, doing rooms as they become available.

In some hotels with limited staff, there may be the issue that one person will do a specific floor or wing or building, do all the rooms they can, and once they are done, move to the next floor/wing/building and not return.

4/17/2022 4:14:32 AM

The housekeeping staff told us that if they see the do-not-disturb sign on the door, that they would mark on their chart to skip the room for the day.

In my experience this is atypical: they will typically do the cleaning if they see the sign is removed and are still starting to clean new rooms. But each hotel has its own habits, so it’s always preferable to double check with the front desk, leave a post-it on the door and ideally have a word with the cleaning staff.

4/17/2022 2:54:27 PM

It was pointed out that I missed the part where the OP removed the Do Not Disturb sign during the "morning". So technically that invalidates my original answer below. In light of that, I’m offering this alternative viewpoint (and apologies to people who upvoted by original answer)

New Answer

At some point in time the staff will have to make a decision as to when a room will be cleaned. This will be based in-part on their observing of the Do Not Disturb sign being on (or not) on the door. This is likely to be a one time decision as hotel staff have limited time to clean rooms and they are under a strict deadline as to when to get the work done.

Thus in a busy hotel it is quite possible that the staff do not have time to revisit rooms that have been marked with a Do Not Disturb sign which has subsequently been removed. In addition it may be possible that the person compiling the list of rooms to clean may not be the person cleaning the room, so that they are simply following the list of rooms that they have in on a clip-board.

The only timing the OP mentions is "morning" which is vague enough to mean anything, but given that their room was not cleaned, it was obviously after the decision to clean/not clean was made.

Thus IMHO the OP is still the author of their own fate.

Original answer

You had the do not disturb sign up. But you are complaining your room was not cleaned when you weren’t there.

But the staff doesn’t know you are not in your room. So in order to clean your room, the staff would have had to knock on your door to find if you are in there or not – thus potentially disturbing you.

But the sign instructs them not to knock.

Hence, you created the dilemma that caused your complaint.

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Hello,My name is Aparna Patel,I’m a Travel Blogger and Photographer who travel the world full-time with my hubby.I like to share my travel experience.

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