Get ready for a shocker — behind the polished façade of hotels lies a world of secrets that the staff and management don’t want you to know. These nasty truths have been kept under wraps, from bed bugs and unclean linens to questionable food practices. But now, it’s time to expose the truth and reveal the hidden things lurking in your hotel room.
Never put trust in hotel room glasses. Cleaners are so stretched thin on time that they will clean the glasses with the same rags they clean the bathroom with. After all, their goal is to make the room look clean.
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The cleaning staff sometimes sleeps in the guest rooms even though they are not supposed to.
“If we are really tired and have the time. For example, if we are doing a large suite and are given longer to clean it, we will have a nap in the beds.”
Bedbugs. Every single hotel, from run-down motels to 5-star resorts, has dealt with bedbugs.
A study from 2018 shows that bed bugs are becoming more common in the United States than in the past 15 years. Hotels and motels are among the top 3 places where these pests can be found.
Most maids only look at the clothes guests bring, but some have also admitted to trying them on in the rooms. Maids have been caught several times before doing this. “Many of you have really nice clothes, and if we think we’re the same size, we will try on your fancy evening gowns, jewelry, and shoes.”
Also, if the cleaning staff has to go to the bathroom, they’ll use the one in the room they are cleaning instead of the staff bathroom they are supposed to use. “Something else we do sometimes is that we use the toilets in the guest’s bathroom, but only if we are super busy and don’t have enough time to go to the staff toilets. It is something we are not supposed to do, but many do it anyway.”
I used to work events at hotels, and one time, we had a guest break a glass inside a water refill barrel. I left work for 2 weeks to go on vacation, and when I returned, all the glass was still piled inside the water refill barrel. People must have been drinking out of it because there were events booked while I was gone.
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“When you leave your luggage intentionally or unknowingly, we keep it at the bell desk, in a small room, not visible from the outside. There, your luggage is manhandled in the worst way possible. If it’s big enough, we sit on it. If it’s small enough, we play football with it.”
If you only eat vegetarian food, look away now. Hotel kitchens often do not care about accurately focusing on vegetarian requirements. “Veg food isn’t really veg if you have a look at how it’s prepared. Dough for the flatbreads have eggs in it, the sauces are prepared using chicken or veal stock, the same utensils are used for everything, and we really do not know if a piece of minced meat went into your dish.”
Hotel owners and the management staff are not proud of it, which is why you won’t hear these things from them. Still, luckily, some of the staff members got candid and talked about some of their experiences, such as marinating a whole pig in the bathtub. Yeah! Believe us, the rooms you book have seen it all.
While state regulations require hotels to sanitize commonly touched areas, such as bathrooms and glasses, the same level of attention is not given to less noticeable items, like hair dryers. Consequently, these items may not be regularly cleaned by housekeeping and could go for extended periods without proper disinfection, causing bacteria to build up.
Why is it a surprise that cleaning staff has slept in beds or used restrooms or whatever? Is anything in the rooms supposed to be never touched by a human before?
Otherwise I would much more prefer things being last touched by cleaning staff than another traveller.
