Guests who remember daily service as automatic now find a card asking them to request it. The shift is broad across US hotels and its causes are mostly operational.
Cleaning an occupied room is a scheduling problem
Housekeeping staff work a route through rooms during a limited window, and every occupied room they service reduces the time available for departures that must be ready for the next arrival.
Departure cleans are non-negotiable because a room cannot be sold until it is finished. Stayover cleans are the flexible part of the day.
Reducing stayover service therefore lets a property operate the same room count with fewer attendant hours, which is the core of the change.
Labor availability drove the timing
Housekeeping has been among the harder hotel roles to staff, and the difficulty has persisted well beyond the disruption that first prompted the reduction in service.
Opt-in service was introduced widely as a health measure and retained afterward because it addressed a staffing problem that had not gone away.
The practice varies considerably by brand, by segment and by market, and several jurisdictions have adopted rules requiring daily cleaning to be offered. Those rules differ and continue to change.
The work per room did not get easier
A room cleaned every few days takes longer than one cleaned daily, because soil accumulates and linens are heavier work when changed less often.
Room attendants are frequently assigned a quota of rooms, so a shift toward fewer but harder cleans is not automatically a lighter workload.
This is the point unions and labor regulators have raised most consistently in the debate, and it is why the policy is contested rather than settled.
Guests notice a different set of things
What people miss is rarely the vacuuming. It is towels, coffee supplies, water and trash removal, all of which are small, frequent items rather than a full clean.
Most properties will provide those on request, and asking specifically for what you want tends to produce a faster result than requesting service generally.
What to establish at check-in
The reliable move is to ask at check-in what the property's stayover policy is and how to request service, since the answer differs between hotels of the same brand.
Longer stays are where it matters most, and some properties schedule a full clean at a set interval automatically, which is worth knowing before assuming nothing will happen.