Hotel Wage & Hour exists because hospitality pay law stopped fitting in a general employment-law practice guide. Tip credits, banquet service charges, housekeeper workload premiums, hotel-specific minimum wages, occupation-coded tax deductions — the industry now has a wage-and-hour law of its own. This site treats it that way.

Who this is for#

Hotel owners and operators, general managers, HR and payroll leaders, finance teams, asset managers, and the lawyers and consultants who advise them. The orientation is compliance: what the rules are, where they diverge, what they cost, and how to operationalize them. Workers and their advocates will find the same rules stated the same way — accuracy doesn't take sides.

Editorial methodology#

  • Primary sources first. Statutes, regulations, agency bulletins, and court opinions are the basis for every substantive statement; secondary sources (law-firm alerts, trade press) corroborate and contextualize.
  • Everything is dated. Every page carries a visible last-reviewed date; every data record (state rates, ordinance schedules) carries its own. If a date looks old relative to a fast-moving issue, treat the content accordingly.
  • Volatile items get re-verified. Rates that adjust annually, pending litigation, and active rulemakings are checked against current sources before each review cycle — and we say so when something is genuinely unsettled (no, we won't tell you how Camp v. Home Depot ended, because it hasn't).
  • Numbers are sourced. The 50-state tables and the hotel-ordinance dataset cite the agency page or document each figure came from, with access dates.
  • Simplification is flagged. Briefs compress; where the compression loses nuance that matters (tiered tipped wages, CBA carve-outs, local layering), the page says so and points to the source.

What this site is not#

Not legal advice, not a substitute for counsel, not a payroll system, and not affiliated with any government agency, union, or trade association. Reading it creates no attorney-client relationship with anyone. The disclaimer is short and worth reading.

Corrections#

A resource like this earns trust by being correctable. If a rate, date, holding, or citation is wrong, we want to know — corrections are reviewed against primary sources and applied with the page's review date updated. Errata that change compliance posture are also noted on the developments page.

How the site is built#

The entire site is generated from a versioned dataset — state rules, ordinances, cases, and developments live in structured data files, and every table, map, calendar entry, and calculator parameter derives from them. One verified correction propagates everywhere the fact appears. The site is static, dependency-free, loads no third-party code, and sets no tracking cookies; calculator inputs never leave your browser.