A former hotel manager-turned flight attendant warns about the two things not to use in a hotel room.
- That coffee maker does not get properly cleaned. It just accumulates bacteria.
- The refillable shampoo, conditioner and bath gel gets unscrewed by other guests – and stuff you don’t want to know about winds up in them.
@melly_creations Replying to @sodickstracted As a former hotel manager here are additional items I won't use. #hotels #hotelstay #dontuse #advice ♬ Cupid – Twin Ver. (FIFTY FIFTY) (Sped Up Version) – FIFTY FIFTY
I’ve been writing for ages about those refillable dispensers in showers. They’re a way for hotels to use fake products while claiming they’re high end. And people do put bodily fluids in them. Some hotels use tamper proof mounting on the walls. Many don’t. Or the mounting is left unlocked. The dispensers themselves don’t get cleaned, and housekeeping doesn’t always refill them.
Still, my tilting at windmills is pretty much a lost cause, because they save hotels money and the chains have convinced people it’s more ‘green’ this way (when they could be green with single use biodegradable packaging if that were truly the goal).
One hill I’ll still die on, though, is not to use the in-room coffee maker. It’s disgusting and the coffee is bad. I’ll even choose a hotel based on proximity to a nearby coffee shop that opens early, and prefer a hotel with early coffee over one that doesn’t have this.
Costa Coffee, Premier Inn, Abu Dhabi International Airport
The problem with hotel coffee shops or carts is that they frequently don’t open early enough. People are coming in from all time zones. If you’re on the East Coast you may have guests from Europe, perhaps just getting in the night before, there’s a good chance they’ll be up before 6 a.m. Similarly a hotel on the West Coast hosting guests from the East Coast.
Years ago I stayed at a W Hotel on the West Coast. I woke up at 5 a.m. and wanted coffee. There was nothing in the room to make it. I called the “Whatever Whenever” line. I wanted coffee (whatever) at 5 a.m. (whenever) but told it was not possible before 6.
And don’t get me started on hotel shops that say they open at 6, but you go downstairs to find that the employees who are supposed to run it haven’t shown up yet. At least the coffee is likely to be better than what you can make yourself in the room, and hopefully made from equipment that gets cleaned every now and then.
And this is why you check the hotel coffeemaker before you use it…. from r/trashy
If you’re going to use the in-room machine though here’s what you do.
- Fill the machine with just half the required amount of water. Make one cup.
- Then insert another pod into the machine with another half-quantity of water.
Double strength badcoffee won’t suddenly become good, but it’ll have some flavor and some caffeine. Bad coffee probably still needs to ahve the flavor cut with some sort of creamer, but the stuff hotels leave in their rooms that doesn’t need refrigeration is disgusting, too.
W Austin
That’s what I like room service for, first hoping that the coffee will be better than what I can make in the room, but mostly just to get fresh creamer for bad coffee. Although I was once accused of stealing coffee from room service at a Sheraton.
The Lyle Hotel in DC won my heart in the simplest way. Room service there didn’t start until 7 a.m. There’s a coffee maker in the room, but I wasn’t going to use that. And I’m not going to enjoy my coffee with shelf-stable creamer.
I like just the smallest drop of it, to cut the bitterness of many coffees, but it needs to be fresh. I asked about local coffee shops that might open earlier? And they offered to brew some early for me and send it up at whatever time I wanted, so I asked for 5 a.m.
It was there at exactly 5 a.m. – and actually delicious. That’s truly the way to my heart as a hotel guest. They didn’t even charge me for it.
(HT: Johnny Jet)
RE: Lyle Hotel
For the vast majority of non-Karen’s out there, creating a good impression doesn’t mean kissing our backsides; it’s simply the basic reality of treating us like a fellow human being. A 5am pot of coffee is (at most) a minor inconvenience for staff, but pays multiples in goodwill and good word-of-mouth. Yet in times of cost-cutting, it’s usually staff that interacts with customers that are first on the chopping block. Sad for all of us.
Since both in-room coffee makers and communal toiletries are suspect, why do hotels still provide them?
As far as toiletries go, hotels should offer them for sale at the front desk for those who didn’t bring their own.
don’t know about other hotels but Marriott uses non-refillable bottles that don’t open. When the bottle is empty it is tossed. At least at our hotel in Phuket. Not sure about other chains and hotels.
No problem about the coffee maker for me. I don’t like coffee so I don’t drink it. For those who like it, it seems that a safe brew could be made using a small zip lock plastic bag by putting the good water in the bag, closing it and using the contaminated boiling hot water to heat the outside of the plastic bag. Then use the heated water in the bag to make the instant coffee. Maybe it would take a couple rounds to get the coffee water hot enough. A bit time consuming but doable. I have considered that the same process could be used in arsenic laced boiling water in natural hot springs in an emergency situation or in minimalistic camping.
Agreed – the coffee makers and refillable dispensers are probably filthy most of the time.
“stuff you don’t want to know about”… Yuck.
I’m not nearly as paranoid about the communal bath products. If I spent my life worrying about anything someone could potentially do to me it would be all consuming (Gary do you worry about what is done to food you order? You should worry more about that than bath products in hotels).
Generally agree on coffee makers. Again not as paranoid on cleaning but the coffee is generally horrible. An exception is if staying in a 5 star hotel with an expresso machine – those I will use.
I bring my own soap, which I also use as shampoo. (Traveling is easier for men.)
What I hate are hotels that use so much water softener it feels like I’m showering in salad oil.
More social media nonsense intended to make people angry and afraid. Use the coffee maker. Use the hand soap. Neither of those things are going to kill you.