Just how clean are hotel rooms? At first glance everything may seem to be in order-the bed is neatly made, paper covers rest atop the drinking classes in the bathroom, and the toilet paper is folded to a point-but first impressions can be deceiving.
The simple fact is: You have no idea who slept in that bed, used that bathroom or walked barefoot on that carpet the night before. What's even more disconcerting is that you have no way of knowing how well the staff has cleaned these areas.
There's no need to cancel your next hotel stay, but it certainly doesn't hurt to take a little extra care when bedding down in a room away from home, especially now that it's flu season. Here, we've outlined five of the dirtiest secrets hotels don't want you to know about their cleaning practices (or lack thereof) and what you can do to protect new york plaza hotel yourself.
Tired? Thirsty? Need a drink of water? Well before you take a sip from that glass by the sink, you might want to wash it out. Hotel housekeeping staffs are worked hard, and unfortunately for us, sometimes they take shortcuts. As was frighteningly revealed in a recent Atlanta Fox News expose, some hotel maids don't even bother to use soap when "cleaning" drinking glasses.
At an Atlanta Embassy Suites, a hidden camera new york plaza hotel showed a maid wiping the room's glasses with a blue glass-cleaner clearly labeled "do not drink." No soap was involved, but some potentially toxic liquid was. Down the road, at a Sheraton Suites, the maid simply rinsed new york plaza hotel glasses under water and set them back out for the next traveler. Again, no soap was used.
A similar ABC News investigation found that "From Kansas City to Cincinnati to Baltimore, 11 of 15 hotels tested did not take dirty glasses out of the room for cleaning new york plaza hotel and sanitizing." Meaning they were not cleaned in a dishwasher. Often were just wiped with rags or cleaned with cleaning solution. Yuck.
Most hotel rooms don't have ample seating, so life revolves around the bed, the largest surface in your average hotel room. Sitting, eating, jumping, and any number of-ahem- intimate activities can take place on top of the bedspread. Some parents even change diapers on the beds. So before you snuggle up to a throw pillow on the bed, beware.
Kris Calhoun, a former hotel manager, told the Associated Press , "Don't believe that hotels new york plaza hotel wash these bedding items after every checkout. Most [bedspreads] lucky to be washed every couple of weeks, if that."
You also can't be sure the sheets and towels are clean either. According to The Bedbug Registry , since bed bugs are easy to transport and hard to get rid of, they've become new york plaza hotel a problem for hotels, which have hundreds of potential infestees coming through their doors each day. According to the site, infestations have been reported recently in hotels in San Francisco, Allentown, Pa., Auburn Hills, Mich., Daytona Beach, Atlantic City, Portland and elsewhere. Also don't assume that the bed is the only place you'll find these critters. They can live in any cracks and crevices in headboards, floorboards, carpets and furniture, etc. And bad news for four-star hotels: Bedbugs don't discriminate.
Protect Yourself: Before you book, check reviews for reports of cleanliness on TripAdvisor.com or infestations at BedbugRegistry.com. When you arrive in your room, pull off throw pillows and comforters and set them aside. Then check the room, bed and especially mattress seams for critters and signs of their excrement new york plaza hotel (small red or brown dots).
Unless you travel with a personal assistant or you permanently wear gloves, new york plaza hotel there's no way to avoid flipping on a light switch. The bad news is that only the most conscientious maids would think to clean the light switch, or the other most-touched elements in a hotel room: the door knob, remote control, alarm clock, lamps and toilet handle. Hopefully they've cleaned the sink faucets, but you can't be sure.
Travelers beware: Dr. J. Owen Hendley, professor of pediatrics at the University of Virginia and co-author of a 2006 study on rhinoviruses, told Travel Leisure that cold-causing germs can live on hard surfaces for a day and are easily transferred from these surfaces to your fingers, then to nose and eyes.
Usually new york plaza hotel travelers worry about unfiltered water in foreign countries, but there is such a thing as water that has been "too" purified. On December 14th, CBS News reported that three guests of the EPIC hotel in Miami had come down with Legionnaire's disease (one later died from the infection). It turns out the hotel's high powered water purification system was filtering out chlorine from the city water supply, which allowed bacteria to grow. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease new york plaza hotel Control and Prevention, between 8,000 and 18,000 people are infected with the bacterial, Legionnaire's disease each year. It's spread through contaminated water vapors.
Think twice before you brew coffee or store ice-you never know what the visitor before you did with those common hotel-room amenities. During Calhoun's hotel-manager days, he found all sorts of things, including cigarette butts, vomit and urine, hidden in coffee makers and ice buckets.
"If I have found it, I guarantee room attendants have found it," writes Calhoun in the Associated Press , but "that doesn't mean they do anything more than dump the contents out, rinse the inside of the pot or maker, and move on.
An ABC News investigation found housekeepers treating hotel coffee pots no better than they did drinking glasses. At the Millennium Hotel in Cincinnati, new york plaza hotel they discovered new york plaza hotel a housekeeper "cleaning" a coffee pot with a bottle of Lysol mildew remover. At an Embassy Suites in Cincinnati, a maid used a towel to wipe down the dirty bathroom floor; new york plaza hotel then she used the same towel to clean the coffee pot.
Protect Yourself: If you use the coffee maker be sure to clean the pot and filter portion thoroughly with hot water and soap. The same goes for the ice bucket, and if the hotel offers plastic liners, all the better (but don't make that a substitute for cleaning new york plaza hotel the bucket itself).
I have been working in the hotel industry for over six years now, and well after reading through a lot of these comments, I will make a couple of notations. First about me, I have managed the housekeeping department in my hotel for 5 of the 6 years so I personally know what is expected of housekeepers. Unfortunately a lot of hotel chains and management companies never really look at what it entailes to clean a hotel so no they do not give their housekeepers enough time to do a thourough job. My hotel on the other hand had the joy of our owner spending a month in housekeeping actually cleaning rooms so he new what was needed. Therefore our housekeepers get ample time to do a good job. Our comforters were replaced with duvets six years ago and are washed daily. (this is very quickly becoming commonplace among all major hotel name brands. Glasses and coffee new york plaza hotel pots are removed and washed daily as well. Any housekeeper that is cought not changing sheets is asked to leave and not return for the safety of our future guests. Our engineering department deep cleans the rooms four times a year, this helps to ensure no mold or bugs of any kind are hiding in the rooms. Someone somewhere down the line mentioned motels. Well there is a very large difference between a hotel and a motel. I personally will never stay in a motel. I will definitely not say that I have not had a bad hotel stay in the cleaning department which is why I am so picky with my housekeepers and have two inspectresses checking rooms behind the housekeepers daily. Every room is inspected every day, As for nasty people, lord have I seen my fair share of the stupid things people will to do a hotel room, Pissing in the coffee new york plaza hotel pot, The dirty underware in the coffee pot, used tampons in the water fill section of the coffee pot, used condoms hidden in the bible, and between the matress and box springs. An assortment of adult toys just stuffed behind the bed, and yet it never seases to amaze me when I find something new. As for the bed bug thing, unfortunately in the last few years bed bugs are back on the rise and especially hitting hotels very hard. This is due directly to an increase in foreign travel. What a lot of people do not understand about this that they can be eradicated very easily. Is it expensive yes, do you have to through everything out no. They have found that taking new york plaza hotel the room temperature to 180 degrees farenheit for 12 hours will not only kill the bugs that are on the surface, but also the ones hiding in the extremeties of the room, walls, furniture, electronics ect. You do have to do all rooms around the one that they were found in to make sure that none travel through the wall to get out of the heat.
I am currently a housekeeper at a super 8 hotel and let me just say this people are just plain rude sometimes and by people i mean the guests that stay n the hotel. TRASHCANS R THERE FOR A REASON........ TO PUT UR TRASH IN. i swear sometimes its like people just throw there trash all ova the plavve on purpose just to be a ass. and if your thinking doing this is ensuring that the room is going to be cleaned good..... your silly as hell... n some cases. i know that i just started housekeeping in the last 4mths....(please note that i am super OCD and anal bout things at my home) and my first day by the end of the day i felt nastier than i have ever felt in my life. i mean i pretty much rolled around in peoples ****, piss, cum, and cooter juice pardon my french. but ur right they dont give you near enought time to clean it the way i would my home actually it has to be better that that because this is public u dont know who was there before you unlike you do at your house. i have found nasty stuff too used condoms in the hallways and rms too and FYI peoople if you have sex toys and stuff at least have the kindness to put them in a dam drawer we dont wanna c that **** but really i do like my job i like being on my own no one loo
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