No one really knows who was in their hotel room before them. Or what kind of mess they made. Maybe it was a bachelor party and the boys got drunk and threw up. Maybe it was used for prostitution and all the sexually transmitted diseases it brings. Yes it happens, especially in the best hotels. Or maybe someone got a really bad virus infection. Worse somebody died in the room. Hotel germs are a fact of life. With so many people using these rooms, hotel germs will tend to be higher than in your house.

The important question is did the cleaning staff really clean everything properly? The TV remote control, the bed light lamp switch, the toilet seat and handle. Cleaning staff are under enormous pressure to clean fast. On average, housekeepers clean 13 to 15 rooms a day, but it can be as high as 30 at some hotels. And there is no universal standard for cleaning hotel rooms.

Like our hospitals, hotels are becoming places where anti biotic resistant bacteria are beginning to thrive. Why? Because of the constant use of commercial cleaning agents combined with heavy use of antibiotics in our meat production systems have created these super bugs. Hotel rooms are places where a huge number of people from all over the country and World bring their own strains of bacteria. And if they bring that strain of disinfectant/antibiotic resistant bacteria you are screwed. As the video below shows, staff are also using sponges and toilet brushes to clean other surfaces which adds to the problem. Fecal contamination from toilet brushes can be deadly, especially if they are used to scrub surfaces other than the toilet.

Just because your room looks spic-n-span doesn’t necessarily make it so. Our friends at Oyster.com dish the dirt on hotel cleaning practices and offer tips on how to freshen up after checking in.

First of all, let’s just start out by saying that not every hotel room is secretly swarming with skin cells of past guests, E. coli, and/or unidentified bodily fluids. Every hotel has different protocol, schedules, and cleaning staff that determine just how clean your temporary home is going to be. We aren’t dumb (and neither are you); we know that not all maids are spending hours scrubbing, buffing, and spraying down every surface and crevice of our hotel rooms. But after digging, we uncovered some pretty dirty secrets of hotel “cleaning” practices, hiding in the sheets, on your pillows, across the bathroom counter, in the glasses you drink from — pretty much everywhere. Think you’re better off not knowing about how dirty the bedsheets are or what infectious bacteria is colonizing on that remote control? Trust us, it’s better to know — and know how to deal with it. And we’re here to help.

Glasses  and  Mugs. Tv remotes  and  telephones. Bedding and more!

READ ABOUT IT AT  JETSETTER.