I was just booking a room in the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco for an upcoming conference. When I filled in all details and my credit card number (unfortunately no bitcoin payments yet for Starwood hotels…) I was asked whether I was interested in a $5 coupon per day for food & beverage if I would opt out of housekeeping services.

I had never seen this before and was surprised to get such a question. The Westin is not a cheap hotel, so I can’t imagine anybody taking the offer to get $5 back (rooms start at over $300/night even if you book well in advance). I did a quick Google search and it seems to be a standard thing for Starwood hotels when you book through their website (which I normally don’t do), and instead of $5 you can also get SGP points that apparently are more valuable.

The official reason Starwood Hotels offers this is that you can ‘Make A Green Choice’, but on FlyerTalk it was described as a marketing ploy to get more people to sign up for the Starwood program. If it’s really about making a green choice they should give you the option to hang a ‘no housekeeping services required’ sign on the door without offering a financial reward. Whatever the reason, I like a clean room with fresh towels after a long day of meetings (isn’t that the reason people stay at decent hotels?), so I kindly declined their offer.