How clean hotel rooms are in New York

Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the gourmands at online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat it and what to cook. This time our cheffies serve you: How clean hotel rooms are in New York.

Romantic weekend away? Or a nice long vacation, because hooray, we can go again? A video from Inside Edition has turned us into real homebodies. Because what turns out: the beds in expensive hotels are not always changed. That would already be dirty pre-corona, but now it is also a health risk. Yuck!

The researchers from Inside Edition go armed with invisible spray and gel to three fancy hotels in New York: the Hyatt Hotel, the Hampton Inn, and Trump International Hotel. The conclusion: the bed sheets are not changed, the pillowcases are not swapped, and there is also no thorough cleaning. A sense of disgust creeps over you while watching the video...

Invisible spray
With the invisible spray, a logo is sprayed on pillowcases and sheets. The towels also receive this treatment. Then, a gel is used to mark the remote control, air conditioning, and coffee corner. The spray and gel are not visible to the naked eye, but they are with a UV lamp. After that, the researchers leave the room behind, while it looks like it has been used: the bed is messy, towels on the floor, well, you know the drill.

The next day, they book the same room, but under a different name. With the lamp, they check if there are different sheets on the bed, if a cloth has been placed over the remote control, and if the pillowcases have been replaced. And what do you think? In all three hotels: nothing. The towels have been changed, and in one hotel, a clean bottom sheet has been placed on the bed, but that's it. When asked for a response, the hotel management is unresponsive. Keep in mind: one hotel room costs 600 dollars per night, so they are not cheap hostels.

Never walk on that carpet with your bare feet
No news for travel journalist Harrison Jacobs. He spends about three hundred nights a year in hotel rooms and Airbnbs and writes about it for Business Insider. He has a handy tip to determine whether your room has been cleaned well or with a half-hearted effort: check the kettle. ‘A kettle and coffee maker are constantly full of water and condensation. A paradise for bacteria, mold, and rust. If they are not regularly cleaned with vinegar, they quickly become dirty.’ They are usually not cleaned because there is no time for that. If Jacobs sees rust or mold in the kettle, he checks out immediately if he is only staying one night. In any case, he advises: never walk barefoot through the room, avoid the decorative cushions like the plague, wipe the remote control immediately with a cloth, and pull the bedspread off the bed: those spots are really never thoroughly cleaned.

Lift the mattress
Cleaning expert Jaap Niezen revealed to Nu.nl how he checks if his hotel room has been cleaned well. ‘If there is a box spring, lift the mattress. If you're lucky, there's a wallet, if you're unlucky, a used condom.’ He also checks for cobwebs along the ceiling, dust under the beds, and along the skirting boards. He cleans the toilet lock himself extra when he stays somewhere, because according to him, that is the dirtiest spot in a hotel room. And he doesn't let a nice fresh scent distract him: ‘I can make the dirtiest space smell like pine. The stronger the smell, the more suspicious you should be.’