Ever since COVID started, every hotel company under the sun started spitting out multiple press releases about all the new and improved ways they were focusing on keeping everything clean. Here are a few:
- Best Western introduced their We Care Clean program
- Choice Hotels announced a Commitment To Clean initiative
- Hilton advertises CleanStay, a new industry-leading standard of cleanliness and disinfection to their properties
- Hyatt touts a Global Care & Cleanliness Commitment that includes a Hygiene and Wellbeing Leader at every property
- IHG offers a “fresh take on clean”
- Marriott launched a Global Cleanliness Council to promote even higher (EVEN HIGHER?! Wow!) standards of cleanliness
- Wyndham launched a new “Count On Us” cleaning initiative to build confidence among guests
Promises run the gamut from deep cleaning with hospital-grade disinfectants to sanitize surfaces, to ultraviolet light technology for sanitizing keys and shared devices, and germ-zapping robots designed to kill bacteria, fungi and viruses. They all sounded lovely and clean and very safe.
And frankly, much too good to be true.
As far back as April 2020, I had questioned how well hotels were going to be able to keep these promises of cleanliness. Not long after that, Joe had his own say about how much to expect all that cleaning to happen.
It certainly didn’t ally anyone’s concerns when Inside Edition conducted an experiment to see how well hotel rooms were being cleaned in the age of coronavirus. Color me not surprised that bed linens still weren’t being replaced, remote controls still weren’t being cleaned and thermostats still weren’t being wiped down.
I’ve always known some housekeepers are lax in doing their job. I’ve encountered hotel rooms with sheets that were way too wrinkly to be brand new, and there was that one hotel shower that had a bar of soap with a curly hair stuck to it. And I’ve Purelled the remote control for years, just in case. However I’m generally not a germophobe, I have a decent immune system and pretty much just “grinned and beared it.”
But during a coronavirus pandemic? When my face could be on the same pillowcase that someone else’s face was on? That they were breathing into? For hours? No. Just…no. I can clean the remote, light switches, knobs, handle, etc. myself. But the whole bed thing? No.
So from now on, I’m seriously considering following the lead from this post that I wrote a while back, and actually putting in “special requests” when we make our reservations. It could be stuff like:
- Send us a picture of our room with the bed stripped, with a date and time stamp
- Include a video of housekeeping making the bed and cleaning all the touchpoints in our room. Make sure to use our name in the video (if Joe’s car dealership can send him a text with a video that shows the broken part that they’re going to work on, a hotel can text us a video of housekeeping cleaning our room)
- Please schedule housekeeping to not put fresh sheets on our bed until we’ve arrived and are in our room
At least that way we’ll know (or at least hope) the sheets have been changed.
Of course, I’m really only half-serious about any of these. I fully realize that if I asked for things like that, I’ll be viewed as demanding and heaven knows what could potentially get done to my toothbrush as payback.
Instead, Joe and I are seriously thinking of using B&Bs and other privately-run places for a time. We’re hoping that if someone has just a couple of rooms to take care of, and it’s their own place that they take pride in, they’ll pay more attention to small details like, you know, changing the sheets.
But meanwhile, if you think about it, how crappy is it that we still have to worry about things like this??? #SMH
*** Feature photo: USAF/Airman Isaac Johnson
#stayhealthy #staysafe #washyourhands #changethedamnsheets
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
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