You might think that your fancy (not to mention expensive) hotel room that you booked for your family is nice and clean, however things might not be as they seem according to a recent study. Here’s a list of things you should never touch in your hotel room – they’re filthy!
1. Light switches are very filthy
According to a study done in 2015, the main light switch is one of the most contaminated places inside a hotel room. If you can’t avoid touching the light switch, make sure to wash your hands immediately afterwards, or use your elbow to turn on the lights.
2. TV remotes
You better think twice about using that TV remote, or at least you can disinfect it first. According to Charles Gerba, professor of microbiology at the University of Arizona, hotel room remote controls have a lot of bacteria, and, this gets pretty gross, 20% were contaminated with semen.
If you don’t have any way of disinfecting the remote, you can instead place a plastic bag over the remote control so that you don’t have to touch it directly.
3. Sinks, bathroom counters, and the bathroom floor
You’d think that hotel bathrooms are pretty clean since hotel maids usually clean them, but in fact, they can be contaminated by the sponges, mops, and cleaning cloths used to clean the bathrooms. If possible, bring your own cleaning wipes so that you can disinfect the hotel bathroom.
4. The couch in your room
Here’s another really dirty thing inside your hotel room, the couch. Couches are notoriously hard to clean, so more often than not, hotel staff don’t clean those pretty well. If you’re planning to sit on that couch, make sure to place a blanket or a towel over it. You don’t know what germs are lurking there!
5. The comforter
Comforters are another thing that’s hard to clean in a hotel room. Don’t be surprised to find bedbugs in your comforter as most of the time, hotel staff tend to skip over cleaning comforters as cleaning them takes a lot of time.
If you’re worried about bedbugs, you can just take off the comforter and place it on the floor, or better yet, bring your own comforter!
Sources: yahoo.com, traveller.com.au, huffingtonpost.co