starwood encourages you to "make a green choice" for starpoints

the starwood group of hotels has offered their "make a green choice" promo for at least a year now. this promo is worded as a way to encourage green behaviour. if you decline housekeeping and all that comes with it (changing bedsheets, changing towels, replenishing toiletries, cleaning bathrooms etc), and if you do so by hanging the sign on the door handle prior to 2am, you are rewarded a 5$ food voucher or various amounts of points. i saw that the four points by sheraton in calgary offers a 250 points, whereas the sheraton bellevue offers 500 points. i assume the higher the brand, the more points you get offered. the program is not offered for the day of departure -- they have to do housekeeping whether you want it or not.

 

so in that quest for more points, i went out and hung the sign on the door handle. well before 2am. i usually decline housekeeping anyway -- i'm too embarrassed to have people see the state of my room while i'm out.

there's a flyertalk thread out there that talks about the program in general. starting with post 35, there's a suggestion that there's an ethical dilemma. dhammer53 writes:

You do realize that by taking advantage of these offers, we're going to put some people out of work.

if enough people opt out of housekeeping ahead of time, like, say, 2am the night before, it is possible that the hotel could ring up some of their contracted housekeeping employees to cancel their work for the day. after all, you don't need an entire staff of housekeepers to clean half of the hotel's rooms. and so it suggests that this is the hotel's sneaky way of reducing costs. the 500 starpoints that they hand out probably only costs the hotel $5, but the cost of cleaning one room is probably higher than that.

so the thread continues by someone else suggesting that maybe this is a good thing -- maybe they still hire the same amount of staff but that the staff will be able to spend more time on the room and do a good job -- they can eliminate errors. itsaboutthejourney writes:

... or maybe it will allow the hotels to not rush their staff through the rooms it cleans, eliminating errors and allowing better maintenance of the rooms, public areas, etc. I'm guessing there is a huge turnover in housekeeping staff and any reduction in staff needs helps the hotel focus on training, etc.

and then Helena Handbaskets writes, tongue in cheek:

So how many points can I get if I park my own car and they can lay off the valet? 

the thread goes on and on -- the ethics of the program fades and it becomes more about the details ... for another 24 pages of posts at last count. 

i hang the sign on the door handle dutifully as soon as i step into the room, thinking less of the ethics and more on the points. would you do anything differently?