Increase Your Hotel Employees’ Earnings with Cashless Tipping

If happy employees do better work, then it stands to reason that well-paid employees are a good investment for hotels! Hospitality staff have made it clear they want a better work environment and steadier income than 2020 was able to provide (in one recent study, 33% of hotel workers said they won’t be returning to the industry because they want higher pay). To help employees stay strong on their feet, hotel managers should be looking into any and all resources for increasing their employees’ pay. Thankfully, nowadays there are more resources than ever.

This has been a dire need for some time now, pandemic or not. According to ZipRecruiter, hotel housekeepers earn an average salary of $22,000 per year, which is about $1,833 (before taxes) in monthly pay. According to Apartment Guide’s Annual Rent Report, the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the United States is $1,972 – more than a whole monthly paycheck for a hospitality worker on that salary. These numbers fluctuate per situation but, for employees operating at or near those averages where salary isn’t enough, tips could make all the difference between making ends meet and being in a really tough predicament.

There’s just one problem: the process of tipping is becoming increasingly unreliable. Even pre-COVID, cash use had been on the decline. Now post-COVID, the physical nature of cash poses ongoing health concerns as digital payment options continue climbing. If a guest is preparing to leave their hotel room, checks their wallet for a gratuity and comes up empty, can they be relied upon to hit the ATM in the name of taking out cash for tipping their housekeeper? What if they decided, just this once, to skip tipping altogether? What if everyone skipped on tipping “just this once?” That could be invaluable cash flow kept out of hotel workers’ pockets, impacting their take-home pay and their essential bottom line.

It doesn’t have to be this way. With eTip’s digital platform, the amount a guest can tip no longer depends on the amount of cash they have in their wallet. Hotel managers can create “digital tip jars” that allow guests to instantly send tips that can be received by employees in several ways, such as directly from management or processed through payroll. Overall, our research has shown that employees can earn up to $5.00 more an hour if properties use eTip!