Fox Atlanta set up secret cameras inside 5 different hotel chains from the Holiday Inn to the Ritz Carlton (shown above) and caught every single one of them failing to properly wash the room’s glasses.
At every single hotel, regardless of price, the glasses were simply rinsed out and left for the next guest. Some hotels used dirty bath towels to wipe the glasses. One hotel employee rinsed the glasses after cleaning the toilet—using the same gloves. Another one sprayed the glasses with blue cleaning fluid that was marked “Do not drink.”
Fox Atlanta has turned the results of the investigation over to the local health department. Experts interviewed in the video maintain that this isn’t just a case of “ew, gross” but a very serious health code violation. Dirty glasses spread disease.
Truly disgusting.
I-Team: Dirty Hotel Secrets, Pt. 2 [MyFoxAtlanta] (Thanks, Richard!)
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BY MGYQMB AT 12:16 AM
When are people going to realize that the hotel industry is the overpriced and under-regulated (rather, the regulations aren’t enforced)?
There is no excuse why a bed should cost any more than $20 a night. Period. Where does all that money go??
More than $20.00 per night keeps the riff-raff out. Almost anybody could afford $20.00 per night. As for where the money goes, well, it sure does not go to the clerks, or the housekeepers, or even the sales manager, or assistant manager, or even general manager. With all those excluded, I am sure you can figure out where the money goes. It isn’t very difficult.
The hotel business is a very destructive business to the environment. Think about all those single serving little bits of plastic that wind up in landfills. Think about all those HVACs running nearly 24/7. Think about all that water a hotel uses. The list could go on. Some hotels are trying to be compatible with the environment, but 100% of the hotels I worked at have no environment friendly programs. It is staggering how many resources are wasted to get Joe or Jane businessman from point A for a two day meeting with Joe or Jane buyer with company X.
Forgive my tangent, but I did not want to write the exact same post as TOURPRO AT 11/07/07 08:13 PM. That post fits my hotel experience to a ‘T.’
@frank26080115: I don’t think anyone was faulting the workers specifically in this report. They seemed to be focused on chains & hotels rather than the workers. With all 5 of the hotels sampled exhibiting the problem, this points towards upper management, not the hourly workers.
@oldnumberseven: It’s the hotelier’s own faults for not being wise with resources. Conserving resources makes good economic sense when done properly. Sure, there’s an up-front cost, but with payback on some of these items being less than a year, it’s worth it. Why should HVAC systems be allowed to run 24/7? Why should hotels still have 6.0 gallon toilets in them? I’m not saying they should be legislated out of existence, but no doubt that hoteliers who aren’t willing to reinvest into their properties will find their profit margins shrinking as the costs for supplies and energy increases.
@Hossofcourse: They’re probably afraid of being sued or fined by the FCC. Some of the Florida TV stations got fined for not running closed captioning during the emergency broadcasts during the hurricanes of 2004-2005. Sad, but true, these broadcasters would have been better off just shutting off their transmitters and telling everyone to go home. Instead, they were trying (under dangerous conditions) to keep the public informed and the FCC fined ‘em for it.
@FLCONSUMER AT 04:38 AM
but no doubt that hoteliers who aren’t willing to reinvest into their properties will find their profit margins shrinking as the costs for supplies and energy increases.
Actually, the hoteliers probably will not. Many hotels are owned by one company, managed by another, and franchised from a third. When it is no longer profitable the owning company will either renovate, or sell the property off. It has been my experience that they sell. They would rather build a new building with some energy saving built in, than upgrade an old building. They sell off the old building to another hotel ownership group, who may re-brand the property, or take the property independent. Rarely have I seen the building torn down. As far as I recall the only hotels I have seen come down are in Las Vegas, though I am sure it does happen elsewhere.
“BOREDDUSTY Wrote @ 11/07/07 02:33 PM
So what exactly are we paying hundreds of dollars a night for?”
You are paying hundreds to make the owners rich, and to reward their cost-cutting business with your dollars. Your dollars are like votes in the economy. When you buy something, anything, you vote for it.
You vote for how it was produced, who produced it, and by what method. Every dollar spent encourages the process.
Hotels exist to turn as much profit as possible for the owners. To this end, they hire often English-illiterate immigrants to clean rooms, because they will work for slave wages, don’t complain, and maximize profit for the owners.
These housecleaners work very hard, and see very little return for their work. They probably even hate you (the guest). You are paying what for them may be a week’s wages to stay just 1 night in a place. They know they will probably work all their lives and have no chance at the life they see others living all around them everyday.
How much do you expect these people care about your delicate health sensibilities?
Are they at all rewarded if they do care? So what is their motivation? Do as little as possible; because they are being paid as little as possible.
You get what you pay for, and you are paying for a system that rewards doing the least possible; where the people who provide the service are not really paid or rewarded for it.
Your hundreds of dollars don’t go to the people who actually provide you with service. They go to people who will NEVER provide service to anyone, ever. This is why your service providers are all lousy, they have no motivation, and are not rewarded for a job well done.
This is not just in hotels. You see it in Best Buy Geek Squad horror stories, as one other example (your service provider on Geek Squad sucks because he is getting paid $9 an hour to do service for which you are charged $75 an hour). Poor people at the bottom of the service chain aren’t that dumb. They know they are getting screwed. They know where all the money is going, and it isn’t to them. Thus, they do the minimum to get by, because they are rewarded at the minimum.
The question is, given this system, why should they care about you? Answer: They don’t. Why should they? They will receive no reward for doing so, and may actually be punished instead (taking too long to clean a room, for example).
Consumers reward bad behavior with dollar votes. It won’t stop until we find ways to stop having to reward such bad behavior. No easy task.
Some organizations have found a way, like Costco. They pay their people well, give benefits, and are rewarded with one of the lowest turnover rates in retail. A quick search of the Cosumerist reveals only one Costco horror story I saw, the dirty-underwear punching bag, which they fixed ASAP after they found out about it.
Costco actually has pretty good service and products, especially relative to the rest of the retail industry.
See? This is what happens when you reward the people who actually provide the service!
It is our job as consumers to reward the businesses who do this, and punish those who don’t! Don’t just shop for the lowest price. Vote with your dollars! Think about the stuff you buy, and whether you want to encourage more of it!
@FLConsumer: Fewer microbes, sure. But what KINDS were where? If we’re talking higher incidences of E. Coli in the ice machine than the toilets, yes we have a problem. But the simple presence of microbes, in and of itself, is not a big deal.
The other option is to stay at a slightly more “independent” hotel / b&b – I stayed at the Hotel St Francis in santa fe, and it was *wonderful* – the rooms were cleaned thoroughly, guest service was thoughtful, and yes, it was REALLY FREAKING EXPENSIVE ($250/night) by a student’s standard, it was more than worth it.
@headon: you normally use glasses?
I worked in the Courtyard by marriott for over a tear in the kitchen, of course we had our share of people who did some practices that I feel where not they way for things to be done, But We did have a large stack of glasses come down every day to be run though the dish washer. We also had a blue liquid that we used as a sanitizer. We used it to clean the stainless steal counters after they were washed off and it would be left on to air dry. So it might be safe once it has dried but I don’t know.
Weird, the hotels I’ve stayed at had individually wrapped plastic cups. You open one, use it and throw it away. Next day the plastic cup fairy comes and brings you more.
@FLConsumer: Before making a blanket statement about toilet water being cleaner than the ice machine, you should first consider the type of chemicals put into said toilet water to keep it clean, chemicals that not only kill microbes but quite possibly could kill you. It’s a moot point.
@oldnumberseven: oh, they tear down quite a few motels in Florida. We usually see the progressively-declining hotel flags on the building (Holiday Inn -> Ramada -> no flag -> boarded up) and then the property sits idle for several years and trashed by vandals before being torn down. We also have had the “forced upgrades” caused by hurricanes at some of the coastal hotels, which was quite a plus.
@Sidecutter: I don’t remember the specific details, but I do believe the bacteria identified had pathogenic properties. The study was done by a rather well-respected microbiologist (Dr. Daniel Lim, University of South Florida).
@Eilonwynn: Don’t go to NYC then. Seriously. I’m sure there’s cheaper places to stay in NYC, but everywhere I’ve stayed thus far has been >$400/night.
@stubar: They just randomly grabbed water samples from the toilets, so there’s some good chance that the toilets were used several times since being cleaned. I believe their theory on the findings was that the frequent flushing of the toilet basically flushed the bacteria down the drain, never giving it a chance to colonize the bowl.
@Hyperion1144:
That’s the exact attitude that keeps people earning that kind of crap wage. Do as little as possible, because no one cares. I started out earning minimum wage answering phones at an answering service while in high school. I could have been surly and inefficient, losing messages like many of my coworkers and acting as if I were doing my callers and customers a favor by picking up when I felt like it. However, I didn’t and I acted like I cared, because I did. I actually felt that a job was worth doing right. So, I got a raise, then I got promotions, then within 3 year I was the office manager. However, I saw plenty of people come and go, and lots of people who were much older than I was that were still earning minimum wage because they just couldn’t put any more effort because they were only “earning minimum wage”.
@FLConsumer: “There’s slime in the ice machine!” We miss you, Marv! If you were still with us, I know you’d be on this disgusting story.
@AngrySicilian:
Okay, that’s an extreme. I can understand not drinking, maybe the towel thing but you might want to talk to your mom and ask her if she meant to make you a germophobe.
ALSO: I think that sanitizing EVERYTHING is dangerous. I don’t use antibacterial cleanser for anything except cleaning up after cooking. (Raw meats, especially.) I just think that we’re making superbugs and eventually it will come back to bite us…pun intended.
I recently stayed at a Cupertino Marriott family hotel and the coffee cup still had lipstick on it. Ick.
No freakin’ wonder I get sick every vacation! And here I thought it was just the stress of travel weakening my immune system. Oh God, I feel sick just thinking about all those sheets and glasses…
omg I just got back from a five-night stay in a pretty nice hotel and I was using the glasses to rinse out my throat that was all swollen from SOMETHING in the rooms…. One of my teammates had mold on his pillow cover too. dang man
This is news to everyone? Hidden camera investigations discovered this years ago and yet nothing changes. This hidden camera investigation could have taken place in any hotel anywhere in the world and you will find the same thing going on. It is not related to any one hotel chain or country. I have worked in the hotel industry for almost 20 yrs and I never use the hotel glassware for that very reason.
Years ago all the glassware was loaded onto a trolly and taken to the stewarding department for cleaning in the dish washers. It all boils down to cost savings for the hotel, there is a lot of labour and wear and tear transporting glassware all over the hotel for cleaning. Maids want to cut as many corners as possible as well when cleaning a room since most are paid by the number of rooms not time. If you are alotted 14 rooms in an 8 hr. shift and get them finished in 7 you can go home an hour early.
We had a maid in one hotel I worked at who was doing worse than your examples. She was actually using the toilet brush to clean the inside of the glasses! The same toilet brush she was scrubbing the toilet with.
If you’re in Atlanta, be sure to watch tonight (28 November, 2007) at 6 or 10 to see me interviewed about how I proved hotels are leaving the same coffee cups in the rooms without replacing them with properly washed ones. If you want to read about how I did this before tonight’s interview, you can see what the Fox News staff found by Googling “Atlanta dirty hotel coffee cups” or just go to the post I left on flickr back in March of 2006, here:
[www.flickr.com]
You can get sound with these links:
Link to Part 1 of the story on Fox 5 Atlanta.
Link to Part 2 of the story on Fox 5 Atlanta.
Link to Part 1 [www.myfoxatlanta.com]
Link to Part 2
[www.myfoxatlanta.com]
This is still a common occurrence and I last experienced it at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Garden Grove, CA. The hotel manager was unable/unwilling to correct the issue.
Can we resurrect this and I will submit the letter I wrote to the General Manager and the county health department.