Covid allowed the hospitality industry to make some major changes to its standard operating procedures under the guise of social distancing. Many hotels, for example, stopped cleaning people's rooms on a daily basis. You could get towels dropped off or make other requests, but unless you had a protracted stay, housekeeping never came to make your bed, clean up your room, and bring you new amenities.
That change has not been fully reversed in many cases even though nearly all covid-related rules have been changed. Many hotels have cut back on the frequency with which rooms are cleaned and others have maintained only cleaning after a guest leaves for short stays.
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Basically, the industry used the pandemic to make a change that saves money. That won't fly at high-end properties, but long after social distancing disappeared many lower-level and mid-tier resorts kept up these changes which created a new normal for much of the industry.
Cruise lines essentially operate hotels that happen to be at sea. Even the mid-tier lines including Royal Caribbean (RCL) and Carnival Cruise Line (CCL) have traditionally cleaned passenger cabins twice a day. Generally, your room steward cleans your room once in the late morning and again when you're at dinner.
That has been the standard even after the industry's return from its 15-month covid-related shutdown. Now, however, it appears that Royal Caribbean is at least testing the idea of cleaning passenger tooms only once a day.
Image source: Daniel Kline/The Street
Royal Caribbean Tests a New Cleaning Policy
Royal Caribbean has been testing the idea of only cleaning passenger cabins once a day, according to a new report from Matt Hochberg at the Royal Caribbean Blog. The cruise line has, on select ships given passengers in basic rooms -- interiors, ocean view rooms, and balconies -- the option of a morning or an evening cleaning.
That's something the cruise line shared with passengers on Quantum of the Seas, Ovation of the Seas, Spectrum of the Seas, Independence of the Seas, Wonder of the Seas, and Harmony of the Seas via printed materials left in their room under the heading "Housekeeping Services Update."
"In an effort to be more sustainable and to align with global hospitality trends, we will be adjusting our stateroom cleaning to 1 time per day. Junior suites will maintain 2 services per day. Please work with your Housekeeping staff to ensure your individual needs are met."
Royal Caribbean has not publicly commented on the changes and did not respond to an email from TheStreet asking for comment.
Carnival made the change to once-day-cleaning late last year, at least partly due to onboard staffing issues.
Royal Caribbean Has Had Staffing Issues
If Royal Caribbean makes this change fleetwide you can be sure that stateroom attendants will simply have more rooms assigned to them. The cruise line (or any cruise line) is not likely to meaningfully cut the workload of its employees.
All cruise lines have struggled with staffing levels Carnival has talked openly about its issues with getting the needed visas to hire workers and had some service cuts last year due to lower levels of staff.
Carnival Loyalty Ambassador John Heald addressed the staffing issue on his Facebook page back in May 2022.
"Because of the situation with the U.S. government, who are themselves short-staffed, we have a massive backlog of visas that the crew need to come to the U.S. and on to the ships to work," he shared.
And, while neither Carnival nor Royal Caribbean talks about this openly (at least since the Centers for Disease Control stopped tracking it) covid remains a problem for crew members. When a crew member contracts covid, they must quarantine until they can no longer spread the virus. That impacts staffing levels on the ship since covid -- even though it's generally not making crew members very sick -- can have a huge impact on staffing levels.
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