Alamy
We've all been there: entering a hotel room for the first time and seeing the sparkling, shiny surfaces as reassurance that things are clean and purged of all remnants of any previous guests. Looks, however, can be deceiving—and new science from travel logistics website TravelMath confirms it.
After sending laboratory testing technicians to gather 36 swabs from nine different three-, four-, and five-star hotels in the southeast, northeast and south, TravelMath found that the germiest surface in a hotel room was the bathroom counter, which had an average of 1,288,817 colony-forming units (CFUs); or the number of viable bacteria cells within a sample. Remote control, desk, and phone took second, third, and fourth place, respectively. Overall, according to these surfaces tested, the study says this makes hotel rooms germier than an average home, airplane, and school.
More surprising still? The breakdown of germs per hotel ranking, which found that three-star hotels actually appear the least germ-ridden in all of the surfaces except for hotel phones. For example, the dirtiest surface in a three-star hotel room—the bathroom counter—had approximately eight times less germs than a four-star hotel room and three times less than a five-star hotel room. Three-star hotels also boasted cleaner desks, which may simply come down to hotel clientele: four- and five-star properties are more likely to have business travelers, who no doubt use the desk as a work station instead of just a place to stash their restaurant leftovers or discarded newspapers.Specifically, TravelMath's technicians tested for the presence of various types of bacteria, yeast, gram-positive and gram-negative rods, which can cause a host of problems including skin and and respiratory infections. But don't go canceling your hotel stay just yet: On one hand, the sample size of the study is small, which can serve as a comfort for travelers now worried about hidden hotel germs. On the other hand, however, all of the hotels sampled were chain hotels, which means that they most likely have uniform cleaning standards across their properties. Whatever the case, you can combat germs by washing your hands, using disinfectant and alcohol wipes on suspect surfaces, or even covering the remote in a plastic bag before use.
