Hotels get mixed reviews on cleanliness, masks
Customers say some locations are falling short on COVID-19 practices
No one wants to find a dirty rag in their sink when checking into a hotel room. But during the coronavirus pandemic — when guests expect their rooms to be spotless and free of germs — finding a room that hasn’t been fully sanitized is even more concerning.
“No way was this room sanitized, much less ‘cleaned’ properly,” Danielle Bocage wrote in a Facebook post criticizing a September stay at a Hilton hotel in Georgia. “I am completely disappointed at the lack of attention my room had.”
“The guest brought concerns about her room to the property’s attention on the second day of her stay, and we understand received a personal apology, an offer to move rooms, and an offer to service the room,” Hilton spokesperson Nigel Glennie said. “The guest declined these offers but did accept a refund for one her three nights.”
Social media has featured a mix of complaints and praise for hospitality companies when it comes to COVID-19 cleanliness measures. The industry has committed to everything from mandatory masks to social distancing to intense levels of cleanliness.
“Hotels are cleaner than they’ve ever been before,” said Chip Rogers, president and CEO of the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA).
But it’s clear each individual hotel isn’t necessarily holding up its end of the bargain, and Rogers conceded not every room will look pristine.
“When you’re looking at millions and millions of hotel rooms, could one person find a room that they don’t think is clean enough? Sure, there’s no way to prevent that from happening. But the industry as a whole is cleaner than I’ve ever known it to be,” he said.
USA Today saw the cleanliness measures for ourselves recently when we stayed at a Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt in Washington, D.C., and hotel guests around the country corroborated our mixed findings.
‘I felt completely uncomfortable’
Bocage, 50, said there appeared tobe "no protocol in place" dur-ing her stay at the Home2 Suites by Hilton in Lawrence-ville, Ga.
Hilton's policy is that all guests and employees wear face cover-ings in indoor public areas of the hotel. And the brand's cleanliness measures include placing a sticker in between the door and wall of rooms as a seal to indicate the room has been sanitized to COVID -19 stan-dards. Its protocol calls for dis-infecting many surfaces, such as light switches, handles and knobs, major bathroom surfac-es and the remote control.
Despite a sign at the entrance reminding guests face masks are required, Bocage, a project manager from Richmond, Va, said more than a dozen people hung out in the lobby with no face covering, and some staff also did not wear masks.
"I felt completely uncomfort-able during my entire stay since no one was wearing a face cov-ering in the common areas," Bocage wrote on Hilton's Face-book page about her experi-ence. Bashing hotels on social media (and other) platforms isn't new, of course, though the pandemic means guests are paying closer attention to chains' announced policies.
Meanwhile, despite the "Clean Stay" label on her door, she found a dirty rag in the sink and an exploded beer bottle in the freezer, along with gunk on the freezer door handle.
She received some compensa-tion from the hotel after reach-ing out and the assurance that employees were being remind-ed of new protocols. A customer service representative told her they "understand how jarring it is to see someone not wearing
(a mask).”
Glennie said Bocage contacted the hotel prior to her arrival asking for extra linens for her room but “a mix-up allowed the online selection of a room that shouldn’t have been available.”
“From Hilton’s perspective, we believe that the actions taken on property were appropriate and demonstrate our hospitality,” Glennie said. “We add our apology to the property’s and hope that we can welcome the guest to this or another Hilton property in the future.”
Other guests, however, have enjoyed their stays at Hilton properties. “Since May I’ve stayed in a variety of hotels and had very good experiences with cleanliness. I’ve had multiple stays at Hyatts, Hiltons and the Walt Disney World resorts and all have been very clean,” said Damon Vinci, a 43-year-old cybersecurity analyst from Frisco, Texas.
‘Impeccably clean’
Stephanie Tom, 30, stayed in several hotels during the pan-demic in order to visit her ailing 101-year-old grandfather in Florida in late April. She drove from her home in Boston to Tampa, Fla, over three days and stayed at Residence Inn ho-tels in Richmond, Va, and Sa-vannah Ga., and then a Westin in Princeton, NJ., several weeks later. Her partner, Shane, and one-year-old pit bull, Asher, joined. Her sister works for a Marriott-branded hotel, which makes her hotel trips very af-fordable thanks to a discount.
"Those three hotels were nearly scarce of other guests, and the front desk associates were kind and helpful," she said. "Our rooms in each hotel were impeccably clean." She wishes they provided cleaning wipes in the rooms, but the brought her own, so it wasn't a deal-breaker.
She saw cleanliness measures tick up staying at the indepen-dent Ocean Edge Resort and Golf Club in Brewster, Mass., in July. "The room was impecca-bly clean, and the staff was keeping contact tracing records across the resort property and amenities," she said "This was the only hotel that I stayed at to have done so; possibly because restaurants, pools and fitness centres were open:'
Toro found her early Septem-ber stay at a Residence Inn in Yonkers, NI, to have "scored the least points on cleanliness and preparedness. That is not to say it wasn't clean, but was definitely managing more guest rooms than the other hotels I had visited," she said She also saw one person there without a mask on.
Lori Catalan, 62, stayed at the Springhill Suites Cincinnati Midtown, a Marriott property, with her husband in early Sep-tember. The retired teacher from Evanston, Ill, found em-ployees not adhering to the company's mask policy.
"Employees at the desk at best wore masks under their noses," Catalan said. "Several standing farther back had them under chin, as did women who pre-pared the grab-and-go break-fast?'
The general manager of the hotel reached out to her after she filled out a survey detailing her experience.
“Since March of this year, in addition to our weekly ‘Healthy at Work’ meetings and audits, we also follow all CDC and local guidelines and requirements including the temperature checks of each associate before they start their shift,” Teddy Roque, regional general manager at the hotel, wrote. “I would also like to assure you
that my team and I will continue to focus on doing our part in ensuring we live up to the expectations of our guests, each and every time and continue to be proactive in effort of preventing the spared of COVID-19.”
Marriott spokesperson John Wolf referred to the company’s cleanliness policies page, which
references required face coverings.
Face coverings are key to hotels’ mission to keep guests safe. “If people are wearing face coverings — which our industry has created a mandate across the board that people wear face coverings in public spaces — then everybody should be fine,” AHLA’s Rogers said.