Hotels Are Actually Way Dirtier Than We Ever Thought

When we're staying at a hotel, we definitely expect the room to be as clean as possible. We don't want to walk in the door and see stains on the sheets or notice dust on the surfaces. Even if we found a good deal and are staying at a cheap place that isn't pretending to be a super fancy environment, we still expect a certain level of cleanliness. And yet the best thing that we can do is pretend that the hotel room is sanitary because otherwise, we would probably worry way too much.

As it turns out, hotel rooms have a lot more dirt than guests expect them to have. Keep reading to find out why hotels are actually dirtier than we ever thought.

The Couch Isn't Going To Be Very Clean

It can be so exciting to open the door to your hotel room and see that there's a couch or some kind of sitting room area. It makes you feel like you have a lot more space and it's nice to have a place to sit other than the bed. This is especially true if you've brought your laptop and want to watch some Netflix before going to sleep after a long day of sightseeing.

But that couch isn't going to be very clean, as it turns out, so this is definitely an area of the hotel room that is dirtier than you thought. According to Intoposts.com, "Before sitting on the sofa in your underwear, think of all the guests that have thrown their luggage and their outdoor clothes atop of it. Without being cleaned regularly, the sofas in hotel rooms accumulate grime and dirt."

Bathrooms Seem To Be Cleaned Every Three Weeks

Buzzfeed has an article about a chain of hotels that has a three-star rating that don't seem to clean the rooms the way that we would expect them to. Part of the schedule was cleaning the bathrooms every three weeks. This is pretty shocking to hear as we would expect bathrooms to be cleaned every few days. It seems like this would be the area of a hotel room that would be the dirtiest.

According to Time.com, there are a lot of germs in a bathroom sink. The publication also mentions a study from the American Journal of Infection Control which says that bathrooms can become very dirty from the simple act of toilet flushing. Time.com explains that when someone does this, "contaminants" are sent "onto the floor and the back of the toilet (more than 80% of the time), the wall behind the toilet (nearly 40% of the time), the flush handle (22% of the time) and the toilet paper dispenser (17% of the time)."

Carpets And Comforters Are Most Likely Super Dirty

Okay, let's take a deep breath before learning this: the carpets and comforters in hotel rooms are super dirty... and according to Business Insider, the comforter could be washed a total of twice each year. Yes. Twice a year. The website says that carpets are kept in hotel rooms for a long time. While hotel staff does use a vacuum on the carpet, people say this isn't actually going to make it super clean as it's just so dirty to start with.

Business Insider says that the cases on pillows and sheets will be changed before new guests stay in the room. As someone who works at a hotel posted in a Reddit thread, that's about all that is done: "But the blanket and comforter only get washed if visibly stained, and we get yelled at if we try to keep them fresh." This definitely makes us feel pretty weird about sleeping in a hotel room bed, but at the same time, what choice do we have?

Touching The Remote Control Can Be Sketchy

We take for granted that a hotel room is going to have a TV and, of course, a remote control. We might have never thought about how dirty this object actually is. According to someone who has worked at a hotel, these aren't cleaned. They posted on Reddit, "Can confirm. None of the hotel brands that I worked for included cleaning the remote as part of the room cleaning steps. It only had to be 'visually clean' to pass."

This is pretty crazy to hear since we would think that everything in a hotel room would need to be cleaned in an incredibly detailed manner.

After learning how dirty hotel rooms can actually be, we might think that we want to bring our own cleaning supplies the next time that we stay in one.

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