Hotels should stop shaming guests who don’t donate to charity during their stay
by Gary Leff on July 9, 2023
Extra charges and tips are everywhere when traveling, especially in hotels. And it’s not just about resort and destination fees, either.
You may be asked for a tip by the website you made your reservation on or by the hotel’s ownership group, in addition to a mandatory surcharge for property taxes disguised as environmental benefits. On top of that, hotel owners are asked to tip the maids because they refuse to pay a living wage (and these tips make the lower wages affordable and propagate the system).
However, some hotels also charge additional fees, but you can have them removed if you wish. London hotels often charge an “optional” 5% service charge that you can have removed, but few know they don’t have to pay it.
Meanwhile, other hotels will add a charitable donation to the cause of their choosing. Marriott is partnering with UNICEF in the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific on a program that allows hotels to add donations to guest lists on an opt-out basis. Generally, $1 is automatically added per night, but you can ask the front desk to remove the fee.
Getting rid of autopilot is the opposite of considered philanthropy, so I sympathized with a reader who complained that they felt embarrassed by hotels that do it and that UNICEF was anti-Israel.
If a program is voluntary, that’s fine, but creating an opt-out that leads to an embarrassing situation when you have to specifically ask for the donation to be removed sure is cumbersome. Your donation is of little use, but you are forced to signal that you are cheap and don’t care about others. This is bad business and bad charity. And aren’t the most beautiful gifts anonymous anyway? (Cf. Maimonides’ eight degrees of charity).
What do you want to achieve from your philanthropy? I think it helps to be clear about the goal of giving. Often people don’t donate because they want to do as much good as possible on the sidelines, but to do so
- feel well
- Tell yourself you’re fine
- Receive recognition (from the charity or from peers)
- signal your approval of the cause you are donating to
And in none of these endeavors does it make sense to make small donations through a third-party company, especially since you don’t know if the total amount raised will actually be donated exactly to the charity, or if the company will donate the same amount to the charity as it would itself, regardless whether or not $1 will be added to your bill.
With a focused approach, you can do a lot more for the world, and $1 at a time makes little difference to individuals. If you list your tax deductions, your donations (generally) to a qualifying charitable organization are deductible, and you can give more out of pocket for the same net amount.
Most of us see a concern, send some money, feel good about it – and call it done. But what if we actually want to believe that the organization we help makes a difference and that our gift is particularly important? Here are some ideas.
Maybe… but these are all publicly available online anyway, e.g. B. at Guidestar. Deficits, transparency scores, and overhead percentages are used because they are easier than actually figuring out whether an organization is making a difference or not, and it’s difficult for small donors to invest enough to learn to do it themselves.
If you are very wealthy, some of these thoughts don’t apply. For example, you don’t have to concentrate your donations to make a difference, you can make multiple large donations and take a more portfolio approach (hoping there are enough successes to outweigh the failures).
Back at hotels, there’s no problem putting up QR codes and signs encouraging donations. If you’re really aggressive and want to do it on an opt-out basis, allow guests to remove the charges themselves through the chain’s mobile app. Taking money from people who let it because it’s a drip or who are too embarrassed to question it is a bad way to do charity.