Guestroom Glass Grossness

Being a little voice in the sea of internet voices my message didn't get much attention or play. But in the fall of 2007 an investigative team with Fox News Atlanta, who has a much bigger voice than I do, ran a report -- complete with video -- on their experiences with several Atlanta hotels. Many of you have probably seen these videos entitled Dirty Secrets (there are up to five report segments now).

The hotels they checked out ran the gamut of hotel price and luxury ranges and all of them were found to have housekeepers doing the same thing -- "washing" the glasses in the guestrooms right in the sink. And often the sink wasn't cleaned first. The glassware was cleaned by rinsing, spraying with cleaning solution, or spraying with glass sparkler -- not even soap and water. The housekeepers didn't wash their hands first either. The glasses were usually wiped with the dirty towels in the guestroom, and sometimes the housekeeper was seen wiping her own face with the towel before drying the glassware. The hotel managers refused on-camera interviews to talk about the findings, but later sent notes saying those were unusual cases.

The investigative team talked with various health department officials to learn that not only is this cleaning practice gross and against code, but also it's potentially dangerous because of the wide range of germs and bacteria that can be found on glasses cleaned that way. I'll also point out that often the chemicals used to make the glasses look clean aren't meant for consumption.

Three months later the investigative team inspected other Atlanta-area hotels to see if the hubbub caused by their original report caused hotels to change their cleaning practices. Again the gamut of hotel price nor luxury ranges were investigated -- neither seemed to matter in the results. The investigative team was surprised to learn none of the new hotels were subscribing to health department regulations for cleaning glassware, the problem reported on three months earlier. The team then checked into the original hotels, the hotels targeted in their fall investigation. A couple of the hotels had adopted one-use glasses wrapped in plastic. All of the others stayed with glassware, removed the glasses from the guestrooms, and replaced them with fresh glasses from the cleaning carts. But again, none of the managers were willing to be interviewed on-camera.

Ever since my experience in February 2005 I have refused to use hotel glasses without first washing them. I look on the housekeeping carts to see if there is glassware before being willing to use the glassware provided in my hotel room. I also travel with my own coffee mug and water glass so I always have something to drink out of, if I don't want to wash the glasses in my room. When in doubt, I uses my personal items.

Here are my pointers to you. If you are a hotel owner or operator, retrain your housekeepers to ensure they are following health department regulations by removing the glassware from the guestrooms and taking the dirty glasses to a glass sanitizing station. That may mean taking them all the way to the kitchen. It could mean taking them down the hall to a room designed just for cleaning guestroom glasses and mugs. If you can't provide properly sanitized glassware due to various operation and facility constraints, offer one-use glassware, and make them recyclable.

And let me urge you to have housekeeping run coffee pots and filter holders through such a cleaning cycle too so the coffee made in your guestrooms is the best it can possibly be. Travelers hate using their coffee pot for hot tea only to have the tea taste like coffee. And who wants their coffee pot treated like the glassware -- not washed, and not wiped with clean cloths. Gross!

If you are a traveler I see your options including:

• wash glasses in your guestroom before using them


• ask for fresh glasses and mugs to be brought to your room


• travel with your own glasses and don't bother with what the hotel provides


• look on housekeeping carts to see if they include fresh glassware, giving you an understanding of how safe yours are to use


• talk to management about your concerns with your findings, if you find substandard practices

Fox News Atlanta made a big splash with their investigations. I hope they continue doing spot checks and spearding the word. And I hope other people -- reporters or not -- keep the movement going to get really clean, not just clean looking, glassware in our guestrooms.

It's long past time this guestroom glass grossness ended. And the solution needs to have environmental awareness incorporated. Clean glassware is every traveler's right. This may not be an environmental issue in the same way other issues covered in ECOnomically Sound is, but it is a serious issue that needs to change.