Top 5+ things hotel workers warn you should avoid touching in your room

Staying in a hotel is a luxury that doesn’t come around very often. Okay, so there are those humble braggers with seemingly unlimited annual leave who constantly clog up your Instagram feed with their latest holiday snaps, those who travel for work and those who just have a lot of money. But we’re talking about us normals. It’s a treat. And so it’s entirely understandable that we fling open the door in excitement, jump on the bed and grab as many freebies as we can (Picture: Getty Images)

But hotel workers have been sharing their experiences behind-the-scenes to reveal the things you’ll find in every hotel room that they would never touch, and the pretty grim reasoning behind it. So before your next trip, heed these warnings and, possibly, never look at hotels with the same sense of joy again… (Picture: Getty Images)

1. Drinking glasses

No matter where you stay, from high-end luxury retreats to the bargain rooms you book for the 20th time in wedding season, a tray with tea, coffee and drinking glasses are likely to come as standard. Kicking back on the bed with a drink after a long journey is often the perfect start to a getaway and there’s nothing to fear here. Right? (Picture: Getty Images)

Wrong. A hotel worker who posts videos on TikTok, under the name QueenEvangeline25, issued a stark warning about using the drinking glasses left out. She said: 'I'm not talking about the styrofoam glasses or the paper cups, I'm talking about glasses that are sitting there for your use. I would never use them without washing them first.’ Newsweek reports that an investigation found 75 per cent of hotel room glasses had been simply wiped down with a towel or sponge used to clean other areas of the hotel instead of being properly sanitized. Yummy (Picture: Getty Images)

2. Bedding

Remember we mentioned kicking back on the bed? Yeah, you can take that off your list as well. The decorative, often colourful, throw that's neatly aid across the bottom of the bed to make everything look a bit more fancy is a prime culprit. Evangeline warned: ‘I would never sit on the bedspread. I would never make myself comfortable on the bedspread, sit on the bedspread, that thing comes off the first minute I walk into the hotel. Those things are not washed often.’ At least once that’s off the rest of the bedding is safe. Right!?(Picture: Getty Images)

This is where we begin to lose all hope. An investigation by Inside Edition in 2016 claims that three out of nine hotels secretly did not change bedsheets at all, and in 2014 Today Show said its own snooping found that many housekeepers simply fluffed up the pillows and put them back on the bed unchanged. Evangeline offered some comfort by reassuring us that good hotels will always wash sheets, but added: 'If it's not that, and it's an actual bedspread, those things get cleaned like maybe once a year. Don't sit on those' (Picture: Getty Images)

3. Coffee machines

Sigh. And now we’re back to that tray of complimentary refreshments. A housekeeper posted on social media to warn that a coffee machine is the ‘number one’ thing she would avoid in a hotel room, according to the Mirror. And why? It all comes down to hotel guests revealing their ‘clever’ little hack to wash underwear and socks… by washing them in boiling water… in the hotel room kettle. One wrote: ‘By "coffee makers" you really mean miniature underwear washing machines’. We knew that coffee tasted tangy (Picture: Getty Images)

4. Free toiletries

Freebies are one of the real perks of a hotel stay, and now we’re being told we can’t enjoy that either. When you stop to think about it, bottles of shampoo, conditioner and body wash with easy-to-remove lids for anyone who came before you to add their own ‘ingredients’ to suddenly don’t seem so appealing. Indy reports another hotel worker posted on social media to warn: ‘Here's your tip. Don't ever use these. Why? Because they're not secure. They can put hair colour, bleach, anything in these. Don't ever use these.’ Instead, she advised to bring your own or simply ask the front desk for a fresh set when you arrive (Picture: Getty Images)

5. TV remote control

And finally, with all those previously enjoyable things now struck off the list, let’s takedown one of the last remaining joys - the humble TV. The turnover between hundreds of guests can be pretty quick, so cleaning a TV remote is likely very low on the list. But considering the only choice to watch TV is usually on the bed, where plenty of other things happen, it might be worth a once-over. Evangeline warns she would never use it without a thorough clean beforehand, adding, ‘Your cleaning and my cleaning are different cleaning’ (Picture: Getty Images) This article was originally published in July 2024