Maybe you have seen the news reports and undercover investigations where the investigator shines a black light around a supposedly clean hotel room and discovers germs, bacteria and sometimes even worse lingering inside it. This has happened even at some of the most upscale hotel chains. In order to avoid a hotel room nightmare – or at least a preventable illness – follow the steps below.
Table of Contents:
Inspect your room before unpacking.
Remember, no one should have to spend the night in a room that has obviously, whether intentionally or not, been overlooked by housekeeping services. If your room is found to be unsatisfactory, you are well within your right to ask for a new one. So, as soon as you enter your room, take about ten minutes to have a look around.
Check the floor, bedding and furniture for any stains, hairs, crumbs and debris. Take notice of any insects or any food or waste that could attract them. Then check the bathroom for the same thing, as well as for mold, mildew or leaking water. Check the toilet and bathtub or shower for cleanliness and make sure all toiletry items – soaps, shampoos, shower caps – are sealed and not left over from a previous guest.
Lastly, look at the air conditioner and heat vents as well as the access panel to the bathroom fan. Make sure there are no strange smells or dust and debris around the ducts that could aggravate any allergies or otherwise inhibit your breathing. This could make for a very uncomfortable stay.
If you asked for a nonsmoking room, check for any smoking paraphernalia, such as an ash tray.
Also note if there is a stale cigarette smell in the room. IT is possible that you have been given a smoking room by mistake or that the previous guest decided to smoke in the room anyway.
If you find anything that alarms you, alert the front desk to your concerns immediately and offer to point out the issues in person. Most likely the attendant will be more than willing to work with you to remedy the problem. If not, request to speak to a manager. If this still gets you nowhere, consider staying at a different hotel and writing a stern letter to the president of the company when you get home.
Sanitize and Sterilize!
Even if your hotel room passes the initial inspection, or perhaps your second room in your hotel does, you have no reason to believe that this hotel room is completely sterilized and spotless. Thus, you should still take the following advice into accord to protect your health.
Be wary of small but commonly used items.
Things such as the phone, television remote control, light switch, door and drawer handles and telephone are small enough that they can be missed by hotel cleaning staff, yet touched enough by guests that they can be teeming with germs. Best to bring along a travel-sized pack of antibacterial wipes and clean the surfaces of these items before you use them. Or, alternately, you can cover each device with a clean, resealable plastic bag that you bring from home. Well, with the possible exception of the light switch.
Ditch the bedspread:
Unlike the sheets, the bedspread in your hotel room may not be washed after every guest, mainly because it is a bulky and a pain for the staff members to carry in and out of the room and it takes up a lot of space in the washing machine. If your hotel bed has a comforter or bedspread on it, you may want to toss it aside and place it on the floor or in a chair. Then either cover up with the sheets alone or use your own blanket that you have brought from home.
*If the comforter has a removable cover on it, chances are that it is washed regularly. Removable covers are considerably less obtrusive and are fairly easy to throw in the washing machine.
Don’t use refillable water glasses
Many new reports have shown that these water glasses are not properly cleaned and sterilized in between guests. Sometimes they are just given a quick scrub in the bathroom sink and then placed back on the counter as if they were new. There is no way to tell if this is the case at your hotel, short of shadowing the housekeeping staff. Instead of taking your chances, bring your own glass that you know is clean or use a disposable plastic cup.
Keep your hands germ free
Whenever you touch a surface in your room that may be of questionable cleanliness either wash your hands with hot water and soap or use a bottle of hand sanitizer. Hand sanitizer is available in travel sizes at most grocery stores and drug stores so it is no big deal to throw a bottle or two in your handbag or suitcase.
Make sure your feet stay off the floor
Sure, you may want to make yourself at home, by never walk around your hotel room barefoot. It is doubtful that the cleaning staff shampoos and sterilizes the carpet between guests. Instead, wear socks or slippers at all times. And consider wearing flip flops or shower shoes in the bathroom for similar reasons.
Voice your opinion
Odds are that you are more likely to have cleanliness issues if you stay at a lower-class hotel than a higher class one. However, no matter where you are staying, you are entitled to a certain standard of health and sanitation. Don’t be afraid to speak up if there is a problem. Better to be known as a nagging guest than to later wind up sick or even hospitalized.
My husband and I carry a small can of Lysol disinfectant with us and spray EVERYTHING our hands will touch.
I witnessed a maid in a major 4 star hotel, clean the drinking glasses squeaky clean and highly shined. The problem was that she used a filthy grayed rag that she used for the bathroom counter top and the surfaces in the bedroom. The same rag she used in how many rooms before mine.
Calm down people! Articles like this encourage undue fear of germs. It may be shocking to some of you, but hotel rooms are not as sterile as operating rooms. Yes, you should look for things that are obviously not clean and complain about them… but much more than that is going overboard. If you had this attitude about everything in life, you wouldn’t be able to leave the house. No shopping for groceries, no going out to eat, don’t touch A SINGLE DOORKNOB, etc. A healthy human body can handle germs (it does so all the time, in fact) without much problem. It’s even beneficial to be exposed to germs on a regular basis, and there are even classic cases where you want to get an active infection sooner rather than later — for instance, a child that gets chicken pox will hopefully prevent getting the much more serious shingles later in life. Anyway, calm down and just live your life without freaking out about every little thing. Wash your hands after you use the bathroom and make sure you cook your food thoroughly, but chill out and just enjoy the air-conditioned hotel you’re staying at while on vacation.
Another way to deal with hotel rooms is to carry along an aqueous ozone system. I constantly get headaches from the chemicals used to clean hotel rooms. All I have to do is charge up 1 x 20oz spray bottle with my coffee maker sized machine, and poof! instant sanitizer. Then I spray everything from the counter-tops to behind the drapes to take care of odors, bacteria, and chemical residue. I guess it helps that I sell these systems to hotels for chemical free sanitation of rooms, but what the heck…
As a 31-year airline pilot, I spent all those years in motel rooms and never had a problem, but all these tips are excellent! I just couldn’t carry all this cleaning stuff with me as large portion of my time was staying in motel/hotel rooms. “SHEESH” has a good prospective/out-look on this: Just enjoy your time, and you’ll be fine!
……………………………Capt. SYR……………………………
All of this over-the-top fear-mongering is creating paranoia and chemical toxicity overkill. Makers of pesticides, solvents and disinfectants thrive on our ridiculous fear of bugs and germs. Don’t get me wrong, cleanliness and sterilization are a constant we must adhere to. However, is anyone stopping to think about the toxic assault of all of these chemicals and pesticides? In our fears of bedbugs, cockroaches and microbes we are poisoning ourselves. These chemicals are bad news, and are layered and persistent. We breathe the off-gassing and the dust of these chemicals in our hotel rooms for the 10 or more hours a day we spend in them. If you travel a lot you are wreaking havoc on your central nervous system, immune system, and liver. How many of us have maids come to our homes every day, brandishing an arsenal of chemicals to appease our pandered fear of bugs. Some sanity please! Chemical toxins are bad for us too.