How Much to Tip Hotel Housekeeping (2026 Data)

How much to tip hotel housekeeping? Recommended nightly amounts run $1 to $5¹² in cash, usually left with the room each day rather than saved for checkout, since a different attendant may be assigned to a room from one day to the next.² Every other hotel job a guest actually meets - a valet, a bellhop, a doorman, a concierge - has its own tip, priced nightly, per bag or per request, and a resort fee often shows up on the same folio, usually as a separate charge from tipping.³

This page gives the full range for every hotel role guests tip, checks it against what travelers actually report doing, explains why the tip matters so much to the people who receive it, and adds what a resort fee costs on top. Only 25%⁴ of Americans who use hotel housekeeping say they always tip it in 2025, a share that has moved only a few points either way since 2021.⁴

How much to tip hotel housekeeping

What to tip

How much to tip for hotel cleaning? Cash left for hotel housekeeping typically runs $1 to $5¹² per day, with $2 to $3 inside both recommended ranges.¹ The tip is usually left daily rather than saved for checkout, since a different attendant may clean the room from one day to the next.² It is left with a note marked for housekeeping, rather than as plain cash.¹

Leaving cash in the room

How much tip to leave in a hotel room? The same $1-to-$5 nightly range applies, in cash, left on the pillow.²

Budget vs luxury hotels

No separate rate applies to a budget motel versus a full-service resort; guests who want to tip more at a nicer property can use the high end of the $1-to-$5 range. How much to tip a hotel maid per day? It does not change with the length of the stay - it is a nightly amount, repeated for every night, not a lump sum handed over once.

How much to tip the valet, bellhop and doorman

How much to tip the valet at a hotel

A tip is not necessary for parking the car, but is expected when it is returned: $2 to $5¹² is the recommended range, and $5 is the ceiling published, not a floor to build on.²

How much to tip a bellhop at a hotel

Bag-handling is typically priced by the bag: $2¹ for the first bag and $1 for each additional bag, plus $2-$3 more for any extra service such as a room delivery,¹ or a flat $1 to $2² per bag, paid when the bags reach the room.²

Doorman

A doorman who only opens the door earns a smile, not a tip.¹ Add $1 to $4¹ if he carries luggage, and $1-$2 for hailing a cab, plus $1 more if it is raining.¹ How much to tip a doorman at a hotel? It depends entirely on what he actually did: nothing for the door, up to $4 for the bags.

Bellhop sits at the bottom of that chart for a simple reason: it is priced per bag, not per stay, so the total climbs with luggage rather than with the room rate.¹ Housekeeping and valet, priced per night or per return instead, are the two services most guests tip more than once on a single trip.

Concierge and room service

A concierge who just answers questions is under no obligation to be tipped at all.² For a routine reservation, $5 to $10¹ is the recommended range; for something genuinely hard to get, such as a sold-out show or a hard-to-book table, the figure rises to $15¹ - or 10-20% of the ticket price.¹

Room service is typically tipped 15 to 20%² of the total charge, or nothing beyond a token $1 if the hotel has already added a gratuity to the bill.²

Do Americans actually tip housekeeping?

In 2025, only 25%⁴ of Americans who use hotel housekeeping said they "always" tip it - up from 22% in 2024, but still below the 27-28% recorded in 2021-2022.⁴ Five survey years are too few for a long-run trend, so no projection is drawn: a straight line through them falls by about 1.1⁵ points a year and would pass below zero by the mid-2040s, which a share cannot do.⁵

The 2025 uptick does not reverse the pattern of the last five years: the 25% share is 3⁵ points lower than 2021's 28%, even though it is also 3⁵ points higher than 2024's 22% low.⁵ Set against other tipped services, housekeeping sits right in the middle of the ranking: sit-down restaurant servers are tipped always by 70%⁴ of the people who use them, hair stylists and barbers by 54%, food delivery by 52%, and taxi or rideshare drivers by 43% - all ahead of housekeeping's 25%, with only coffee baristas (18%), furniture delivery (15%), takeout pickup (12%) and home-repair services (9%) tipped less often.⁴

How much to tip hotel staff, and why housekeeping is hard to keep staffed

Wage data explains why the tip matters. Maids and housekeeping cleaners in all industries earn a nationwide median $17.07⁶ an hour ($35,510 a year); baggage porters and bellhops earn $17.83 an hour ($37,080); $18.73⁶ an hour ($38,950) goes to concierges; and parking attendants, the closest official occupation to hotel valets, earn $16.90 an hour ($35,150).⁶ The four annual medians span $35,150 to $38,950 - a $3,800⁵ range, about 11% of the lowest figure - so these jobs cluster within a few thousand dollars of one another rather than spreading across a wide income scale.⁵

Those medians cover each occupation across every industry that employs it, not hotels specifically; most maids and housekeeping cleaners work outside hotels. Measured only within the hotel industry, housekeeping's median hourly wage was $16.79⁷ in 2025, and the hotel industry alone employs 415,160⁷ housekeeping workers - more than the other three tipped jobs guests meet, combined.⁷ Housekeeping, bellhop/porter, concierge and parking-attendant jobs together account for 444,480⁵ of the 1,929,500⁷ people employed across all occupations in the hotel industry - about 23%⁵ of every hotel job in the country.⁷

Nationwide numbers only tell half the story; measured just within the hotel industry itself, the same four jobs look different.

Pay follows a different order than headcount: measured inside the hotel industry, concierges earn the most per hour, not housekeeping.

That hotel-industry wage has also been moving, year by year.

Since 2011, the hotel-industry median for housekeeping has risen from $9.07¹³ an hour in 2011 to $16.79 in 2025,⁷ an increase of 85%⁵. Most of that climb came after 2015, when the median still stood at $9.50¹⁷; it reached $11.71²¹ in 2019 and $13.92²⁴ in 2022 before passing $15 in 2023.²⁵ The projection line on the chart is therefore fitted to 2015-2025 only. The 2006-2025 line (+$0.43⁵ a year) understates the recent pace and would start about $1.20 below the 2025 actual; since 2015 the median has risen about $0.75⁵ a year.⁵ Hotel room prices moved far more slowly. Between the 2011 and 2025 annual averages, hotel and motel room prices (CPI) rose about 32%⁵, and the index for all consumer prices rose about 43%⁵.²⁷ The cash pay of the median hotel housekeeper has outrun both the room rate and general inflation.

That matters for the tip, because a tip is a fixed number of dollars, not a percentage of anything. A $2 nightly tip equaled about 13 minutes⁵ of the median hotel housekeeper's pay in 2011 and about 7 minutes⁵ in 2025, so the same bill left on the pillow is now a smaller slice of an hour's work than it was in 2011.⁵

Headcount tells a bumpier story. Housekeeping employment in the hotel industry grew every year from 409,450¹³ in 2011 to 467,270²¹ in 2019, fell to 355,930²² in 2020 and 307,930²³ in 2021, then climbed back to 417,160²⁶ in 2024 before slipping to 415,160⁷ in 2025. That leaves the 2025 workforce about 11%⁵ smaller than in 2019, even though the median wage is 43%⁵ higher than it was then.⁵

The $2.13 federal cash wage is a legal floor, not what hotels typically pay - it is the minimum cash wage any employer may pay any tipped employee (someone who customarily receives more than $30 a month in tips) before counting tips toward the rest of the minimum wage,²⁸ and the median hotel housekeeper earns $16.79 an hour nationwide before tips, well above it.⁷ 16²⁸ states set that floor at exactly $2.13, unchanged since 1991;²⁹ Washington state, by contrast, requires $17.13²⁸ an hour in cash before tips, and 7²⁸ states altogether ban a tip credit outright, requiring the full state minimum wage: Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.²⁸

The map below shows every state, not just the top eight.

Group those states by their tip-credit rule instead of their wage, and a different picture appears.

Housekeeping is also the hotel department most often left short-staffed. Among departments hotels report the most trouble filling, housekeeping was named most often, by 38%³¹ of surveyed hotels, ahead of front-desk roles (26%), culinary (14%) and maintenance (13%), in a survey fielded at year-end 2024.³¹ 71%³¹ of surveyed hotels had open positions they could not fill despite active searching, and total hotel employment remained about 10% below pre-pandemic levels.³¹ By early 2026, more than half of surveyed hotels still described their properties as somewhat or severely understaffed.³²

The shortage eased over the course of 2024: the share of surveyed hotels reporting any staffing shortage fell from 76% in May 2024 to 65% at year-end, and the share describing themselves as severely understaffed fell from 13% to 9% over the same stretch.³¹

Higher pay is hotels' most common response: 70%³² of surveyed hotels in early 2026 named higher wages as a retention incentive, ahead of flexible scheduling and hotel discounts (54% each) and enhanced benefits (31%).³²

Where hotel housekeepers work, and what they earn by state

Hotels employ nearly half of all housekeepers

Hotels are by far the largest employer of housekeepers in the country.⁷ Of the 860,670⁶ maids and housekeeping cleaners employed across the US economy in May 2025, 415,160⁷ worked in traveler accommodation - hotels, motels and similar lodging - or about 48%⁵ of the total. The next-largest employers were services to buildings and dwellings (92,440⁷), general medical and surgical hospitals (80,780⁷) and nursing care facilities (68,940⁷); together, those three employ 242,160⁵, fewer housekeepers than hotels do alone.⁷ Pay differs by employer, too. The median housekeeper earned $16.79 an hour in hotels, $17.13⁷ in services to buildings and dwellings and $18.70⁷ in general hospitals, but $16.04⁷ in nursing care facilities.⁷

Housekeeper pay by state

Where a housekeeper works matters as much as who employs them. Across all industries, the state median runs from $24.81³³ an hour in Hawaii and $22.38³³ in Nevada down to $12.79³³ in Louisiana and $12.19³³ in Mississippi, so the best-paying state's median is about double the lowest.⁵ Four more jurisdictions top $20 an hour: California at $20.51³³, DC at $20.32³³, Washington at $20.28³³ and New York at $20.17³³.³³

Set against the tipped-wage map above, the gap between the legal floor and actual pay is wide. In the 16 states where the minimum cash wage for tipped workers is $2.13,²⁸ the median housekeeper earns between $12.19³³ (Mississippi) and $17.44³³ (Utah) an hour before tips.³³ The table lists every state; figures cover housekeepers in all industries, since state-level pay is not published for hotels alone.

Where housekeeping jobs are most concentrated

Hawaii and Nevada stand out for a second reason: housekeeping is a much bigger part of their job markets. Hawaii has 17.7³³ housekeeping jobs for every 1,000 jobs in the state and Nevada 15.7³³, about 3.2³³ and 2.8³³ times the national concentration.³³ Montana, Wyoming, West Virginia, Florida, Maine, South Dakota, Alaska and Idaho complete the top 10. In those states, housekeeping is a bigger share of local jobs than in the rest of the country.³³

How hotel tips are taxed and reported

The rules for workers

Tips are taxable income, whether they arrive as cash on a pillow or on a card slip. A hotel employee must keep a daily record of tips and report cash tips to the employer in a written statement each month, unless they total less than $20³⁴ in a month from that employer; the report is due by the 10th³⁴ day of the following month.³⁴ Since 2025, qualifying workers can also deduct tips from federal taxable income: up to $25,000³⁴ a year per return, for tax years 2025 through 2028, phasing out above $150,000³⁴ of modified adjusted gross income ($300,000³⁴ for joint filers).³⁴ The deduction covers only occupations that customarily received tips on or before December 31, 2024, and the final list names maids and housekeeping cleaners ("hotel maid, housekeeping staff"), baggage porters and bellhops (doormen included), concierges, hotel desk clerks, parking and valet attendants, and shuttle drivers.³⁵

How often hotel tips reach a tax form

Reported tips are rare among maids and housekeeping cleaners (all employers, not only hotels). Among workers holding a single job in tax year 2023, only 2.7%³⁵ of maids and housekeeping cleaners had at least $100 of tips reported on a W-2 or on their own tax filing, against 17.4%³⁵ of parking and valet attendants and 16.7%³⁵ of shuttle drivers.³⁵ These shares count only tips that reached a tax form, so they measure reporting, not how often guests tip: cash left in a room and never reported does not appear in them. The shares cover each occupation in all industries, not only workers employed by hotels.³⁵

Among the workers who do report tips, the tips make up very different shares of pay. For hotel desk clerks who reported tips, those tips equaled 42.8%³⁵ of their wages; for maids and housekeeping cleaners who reported tips, they equaled 10.6%³⁵, the smallest share of the six occupations on the list.³⁵

Service charges are not tips

A charge the hotel adds to the bill is a different thing from a tip. A payment counts as a tip only if the guest chooses to pay it and sets the amount; mandatory service charges and automatic gratuities are treated as wages paid by the employer, and they do not qualify for the tip deduction.³⁴ A daily housekeeping or service fee on the folio is therefore not a tip in tax terms, even when it is passed on to the staff.³⁴

Resort fees and other hotel incidentals

How much are hotel incidentals? Tips are only one line on the folio; resort fees are the other, and they can range $15 to $50³ a day.³ In one sample of 160 hotels worldwide with summer and fall check-in dates - a sample that deliberately included resort-fee-heavy destinations such as Las Vegas and Orlando, so it is not a market-wide figure - 30³ of them, about 19%⁵, charged a resort fee, averaging $33³ a day.³ The 81%⁵ majority in that sample charged none, but at the hotels that do charge one it adds up fast: over a 3-night stay it comes to $99⁵, more than the low end of tipping every service on this page combined.⁵

Room prices and the total-price rule

Since May 12, 2025, a federal rule has required any business that advertises a price for short-term lodging - a hotel, motel, inn or vacation rental - to show the total price, including mandatory fees such as a resort fee, more prominently than any other pricing information; government taxes and optional extras may be left out.³⁶ The rule governs how mandatory fees are shown, not how large they are.³⁶

The room itself has been getting pricier, though more slowly than housekeeping pay. Hotel and motel room prices (CPI) averaged 274.2²⁷ in 2005 and 379.9²⁷ in 2025 (1982-84 = 100), with a fall to 299.2²⁷ in 2020 and a high of 389.7²⁷ in 2023.²⁷

What the numbers mean

How much tip to leave at a hotel? Summed across every role on this page, the honest range is $1 to $5 a night for housekeeping, $2 to $5 per valet return, $1-$2 per bag for a bellhop or doorman, and $5 to $15 for a concierge who actually books something.¹² Add a resort fee, where one applies, and a 3-night stay's incidentals can run from $113 to $138 once a $99 resort fee is included.⁵

For the worker, the wage data changes the picture from etiquette to economics. Housekeeping pay, $16.79 an hour before tips inside the hotel industry, is about 43% higher than in 2019, while hotel-industry housekeeping employment is still about 11% below its 2019 level.⁵ The $2.13 cash-wage floor is a legal minimum for tipped work generally, not the typical hotel-housekeeping paycheck - but it still matters: in the 16 states that set the floor at exactly that level, an employer may pay as little as $2.13 in cash, and federal law then requires the employer to make up any shortfall so that cash wages plus tips reach the full minimum wage.³⁷ In those states, tips fill the gap between $2.13 and the minimum wage that the employer does not pay in cash - not a bonus on top of a guaranteed wage, but the part of the legal minimum itself that depends on the guest.³⁷

Conclusions

1. The honest answer is a range. Hotel housekeeping runs $1 to $5 a night; $2 to $3 sits inside both recommended ranges, and a traveler who tips anywhere across the full range is well within normal practice.
2. Housekeeping is tipped less often, yet hardest to staff. Only 25% of Americans who use hotel housekeeping always tip it - fewer than restaurant servers, hair stylists, food-delivery drivers and rideshare drivers - while housekeeping is also the hotel department properties most often name as short-staffed (38% of surveyed hotels).
3. The $2.13 figure is a legal floor, not a typical paycheck. It is the minimum cash wage the law allows for any tipped employee, and federal law requires the employer to make up any shortfall to the full minimum wage;³⁷ the median hotel housekeeper earns $16.79 an hour within the hotel industry itself, well above that floor, which has still not moved since 1991, even as the standard federal minimum wage rose from $4.25 to $7.25 over the same stretch.
4. A resort fee usually costs more than the tips. In one hotel sample, a 3-night resort fee ($99 on average, among the hotels that charge one) is more than double even the high end of this page's sample tipping total ($39).
5. Housekeeping pay has outrun room prices, so a fixed tip counts for less. The hotel-industry median hourly wage for housekeeping rose 85% from 2011 to 2025 ($9.07 to $16.79), against about 32% for hotel room prices and 43% for all consumer prices; a $2 nightly tip went from about 13 minutes of the median housekeeper's pay to about 7. The workforce has not fully come back: 415,160 hotel housekeepers in 2025, about 11% fewer than in 2019, even as nearly half of all US housekeepers work in hotels.