Why Hotel's Don’t Use Roomba: Because That Would Be Retarded
I’m always amazed when I see something in a major publication like the New York Times (even if only on their website) and immediately think to myself “man, that is retarded.”
Take this entry “Why Don’t Hotels Use Roombas?” on the Freakonomics blog. You can get the gist of the article from the title. The author goes on to propose 7 theories as to why they don’t, ranging from social status to powerful hotel maid labor unions.
I have a theory, and Occam’s razor would seem to prefer it:
8. Because to do so would be retarded.
For one thing, Roombas suck. They’re kind of a pain in the ass even for the moderate use required in a home. For a hotel they’d be a logistical nightmare.
They’re expensive, with a good model priced at around $350, which is probably about what it costs to pay a maid to vacuum one room for over a year. How long does sweeping a hotel room take, 3 minutes each time? So every 20 days of maid service costs one maid’s hourly wage in vacuuming. That’s about 18 hours a year. If your maid is getting paid under $20 an hour (and I since I spent almost ¼ of my time in hotels for 5 years and have yet to meet one that speaks English, I’ll assume that’s true) it would take at least one year to recoup just the initial cost of the Roomba if you left one in each room. My guess is it would be closer to two.
And that’s just the initial cost. Also there would be theft, breakages, etc. You won’t get anywhere with customers by trying to charge them for stepping on a vacuum that roams around in its own. And you can try to charge them for theft, but they’ll just tell their credit card company “there was no Roomba when I got there” and the charges will be reversed.
So the maids would instead have to carry them around and set them to work. Roombas aren’t built for long periods of vacuuming. They could do very few rooms without a recharge (an Amazon review I found estimates 3 rooms in one house, and those are presumably smaller than hotel rooms) meaning a hotel with 300 rooms might need 100+ of them, and have to deal with recharging them all daily.
A maid tasked with cleaning 30 rooms is supposed to do what? Take 10 fully charged Roombas with her a and put them in each room after she is done cleaning it? It’d be a pain in the ass for her to change sheets, etc. while that free-wheeling tripping hazard was roaming around, so she’d probably put it in each room after she left, then come back and get it.
They have a tiny storage tank, so it would have to be emptied after each room. Then when she’s done with a room, she has to go back to the previous room, collect the Roomba, and check to see if its battery was depleted. At the end of the day she then has to go put 10 Roombas on charging stations (presumably in a room somewhere that has 100 of them). The life of any rechargeable battery deteriorates over time, and with full use every day that will happen quickly, so there’s lots of maintenance there.
And they have trouble with wires or other small things lying on the floor, so they’ll inevitably get stuck on things and ruin customers’ property. All of that to replace carrying one cheap vacuum that is probably used for a few minutes per room?
Hotels don’t use Roombas because it’s a stupid idea.
