Luxury Hotel Employees Are Sharing Things That Management Would Never Want People to Know About, & Some of These Are Disturbing

These Secrets About Luxury Hotels Are Disturbing

We all like to think of hotels as a magical home away from home, where you never have to wash your own sheets or cook your own breakfast, but many hotels hide serious shenanigans from their customers. From bedbug-infested walls to maids stealing guests’ belongings, we’ve compiled a list of dirty little secrets about what goes on at upscale hotels, as told by their current and former employees.

Don’t Use the Electric Kettles

As much as we want to think that everything in hotels is well-cleaned and sanitary, the fact of the matter is that hotel staff can’t control the actions of guests. And some guests are just plain gross. Why would someone do this?

Don’t Use the Electric Kettles

Go to a laundromat, ask the hotel if they can wash them, or simply bring enough underwear for your trip! No one wants undie-flavored tea or coffee. Just the thought of it is enough to make even the most steel-stomached person gag.

Showers Aren’t for Number Twos

Certain things in life are a given. Always close the bread bag. Look both ways before crossing the street. And whenever you need to go number one or number two, you use a toilet.

Showers Aren’t for Number Twos

Well, those things should be a given, but apparently they aren’t. Is there a part of the world where doing a number two in the shower is a normal thing to do? Because if it is, remind us not to stay in any hotels there!

Wind Didn’t Destroy That Window

Have you ever heard those infamous stories about famous rock stars who rent really nice hotel rooms only to completely destroy them, causing lots of trouble for the poor hotel staff? Well, rock stars aren’t the only ones doing that sort of thing.

Wind Didn’t Destroy That Window

Imagine having so much money that you can destroy a window, which is not cheap to replace, and management actually makes excuses for you instead of holding you accountable! What kind of world is that?

A Serious Rat Problem

Rats are a very misunderstood animal. When they’re domesticated and properly cared for, as in pet rats, they can be very sweet and have big personalities — just like dogs and cats. The problem is with “wild” rats.

A Serious Rat Problem

Wild rats often carry diseases and can be pretty destructive, and no one wants those in their hotels, especially if it’s somewhere they’re paying thousands of dollars a night for! Those hotels can definitely afford exterminators.

Food Isn’t Always Fresh

If you go to a nice restaurant, you expect the food to be good. But, what if your food isn’t as fresh as you think it is?

Food Isn’t Always Fresh

On the one hand, freezing food is a way to make sure it’s safe for consumption. But on the other hand, if you’re paying that much money for a plate of food, you would expect it to be fresh — not something you could have bought at the store and cooked yourself.

Labor Violations Are Rampant

Labor laws exist to protect the rights of employees, make sure they’re being paid properly, and also make sure working conditions are safe — like that the staff have sufficient breaks when working long shifts.

Labor Violations Are Rampant

That doesn’t mean that businesses respect them, though, especially some luxury hotel restaurants. 10-hour shifts are horrible, especially at a restaurant because you’re on your feet all day and it’s often a fast-paced environment. So, the moral of the story is to always be nice to hotel staff (although you should be doing that anyway).

Security Isn’t Always the Best

If you stop and think about it, there are hundreds of people going in and out of hotels every day. This is particularly true in Las Vegas, where most of the luxury hotels are enormous and host big events on a frequent basis.

Security Isn’t Always the Best

Apparently, their security is very easy to get around if you just pretend you’re a member of a crew. Knowing this is pretty concerning, as anyone being able to walk in off the street doesn’t exactly make you feel safe and secure.

Bedbugs May Be Inevitable

Ask someone what they fear when staying in a hotel, hostel, or Airbnb — and one of their top answers will be bedbugs. These little demon critters live in mattresses and feed off of people while they sleep, leaving itchy bites.

Bedbugs May Be Inevitable

They’re nearly impossible to get rid of, and the fact that this hotel was willingly letting guests stay in rooms that they knew were infested is appalling. Hopefully, they received a ton of horrible online reviews, which they definitely deserved.

Rags Aren’t Kept Apart

Most businesses have to follow very strict rules about how to clean and keep things sanitary. In restaurants, that means special cutting boards for chicken. In housekeeping, it means different rags for different purposes.

Rags Aren’t Kept Apart

This is one of those things where a business likes the idea of doing something properly, but can’t be bothered to actually follow through with it. What’s the point of separate rags if they’re all touching each other?!

There’s Lots of Criminal Activity

Criminals often use hotels for some really horrible illegal activities, which means the hotel employees must receive training on how to spot these things and deal with them appropriately. But even then, this employee didn’t expect what they found in one room.

There’s Lots of Criminal Activity

Thank goodness this employee found that baby and was able to contact the proper authorities. Who knows where the poor thing may have ended up otherwise? The parents must have been so grateful.

Frequent Occurrence

The last thing you would expect to happen at a hotel is for someone to be found deceased, but it apparently happens a lot. So much so, in fact, that hotels have a procedure to handle it.

Frequent Occurrence

How is this so common, you ask? Well, think of places like Las Vegas where people go and consume a lot of substances that they shouldn’t. It’s easy for things to go wrong in those kinds of situations.

The Phantom Pooper

When it comes to staff, hotels tend to have a lot of turnover. Long shifts, few breaks, and few days off can cause even the nicest person to become a bit disgruntled. Sometimes, they’re so disgruntled that they turn to doing horrible things.

The Phantom Pooper

It had to have been someone who worked in a position with the cameras, since they always knew the best spots to conduct their “business.” We feel bad for whatever poor employee always ended up cleaning up after them!

Never Talk About Partners

Anyone who has ever watched a TV show or movie knows that a rich person who wants to have an affair goes to a nice hotel. They can check-in, meet up with their secret partner, and then go home as if nothing ever happened.

Never Talk About Partners

There’s a reason that it always happens on TV — and that’s because it happens in real life, too. It must be really hard to work in a place where you have to keep silent on behalf of rich guests who probably treat you poorly.

Valets Go the Extra Mile

One problem with rich people is that because they can easily buy and replace things, they don’t take care to look after their belongings like other people do. That means leaving valuable items in their cars, often in plain sight!

Valets Go the Extra Mile

If anything, the customers should be grateful that the staff went to such lengths to protect their belongings from theft. Did the valets take photos so that they knew exactly where to put the belongings before returning the vehicle?

It’s Rarely the Maid’s Fault

All of us have misplaced a belonging at one point or another. For most of us, our first instinct is to try to remember where we last left the belonging, and also to search the most likely places it would be — like in our cars or bags.

It’s Rarely the Maid’s Fault

Not wealthy guests, though. They instead turn straight to blaming the “help” without bothering to actually try to locate the missing item first. We wonder how many maids have been unfairly fired because guests threw such a fit over something that was their own fault.

Guests Are Often Disgusting

Few people truly enjoy cleaning, and one of the benefits of staying in a hotel is that we can simply carry on with our lives without worrying about cleaning towels or taking out the trash. But, some people take it a bit too far.

Guests Are Often Disgusting

What would ever possess someone to go to the bathroom in a bed and use towels like toilet paper? Those people shouldn’t be traveling and staying in hotels — they should be getting some serious help.

Think Twice About a Hotel Wedding

Having your wedding in a hotel usually offers convenience, with all-in-one packages, luxurious accommodations for guests, great catering options, and beautiful event spaces. But, it’s not all glitz and glamor, especially when it comes to beverages.

Think Twice About a Hotel Wedding

Imagine being given a drink from the tap, only for that drink to secretly be infested with all the gunk from the dirty lines. Or to enjoy a glass of “adult grape juice” at a wedding, only for it to taste funny because it’s actually three different types mixed into the same bottle!

Be Careful With Your Attitude

Working reception at a hotel involves so much more than clicking buttons to check guests in and out. It means giving advice, helping guests with issues, and strategizing where exactly different people should go in the hotel.

Be Careful With Your Attitude

The way this hotel organizes its guests is actually great and makes perfect sense. It also makes sense for the staff to subtly punish naughty guests. It’s not that hard to be nice to service workers, folks!

Don’t Trust the Salad Dressing

Food waste is a pretty big problem at restaurants, even restaurants inside hotels. People order things and don’t eat all of it, or they don’t use all of the sauce the meal comes with. If only there were a solution…

Don’t Trust the Salad Dressing

This definitely isn’t it, though. Just because that dressing got left behind doesn’t mean the customer didn’t dip a finger or fork in it, or cough over it. This is a major health code violation!

Some People Shouldn’t Be Driving

Valets encounter lots of challenges, like tight parking spaces, demanding customers, and a need for great time management. Navigating different vehicles and ensuring their safety are also constant concerns in this fast-paced job.

Some People Shouldn’t Be Driving

But perhaps their most horrifying challenge is having to return a vehicle to someone who has clearly had way too many adult beverages with their fancy dinner, and not being able to do anything to stop them potentially causing an accident, or worse!

Rich Get Away With Everything

When you think of rich or famous hotel guests, you’d think that if anyone can afford to pay high hotel room rates, it would be them. Yet it turns out that more often than not, that’s not what actually happens.

Rich Get Away With Everything

Instead, they get given discounts and even gifts! It’s so silly, since they can easily buy themselves whatever they want and can definitely pay their fair share for a hotel room. The rich simply have privileges that the rest of us don’t.

Some Guests Aren’t Guests

When staying in hotels, we all want the security of knowing that we’re safe and that the hotel staff is paying attention to who comes in and out of the hotel. And while the staff does do their best, sometimes things slip through the cracks.

Some Guests Aren’t Guests

Imagine being a staff member coming across this guy. You would just think that he was a guest someone else checked in. Who would assume a criminal was camping out on the rooftop? No one.

The Rooms Only Look Clean

If a hotel wants its staff to do a good job, they need to keep them stocked with the proper materials. For the maids, that means enough rags, sponges, and so on to clean the rooms thoroughly.

The Rooms Only Look Clean

Shockingly, some hotels don’t actually make that a priority! The image of a poor maid having to scrub a toilet with their gloves is enough to fill any face with shock and rage. If only they had named and shamed so everyone knew where not to stay!

Whatever Can Happen Will Happen

You think of theft as something that plagues shops and supermarkets, but hotels have problems with it, too. And despite what you may think, it’s not just pillows and bathrobes that disappear.

Whatever Can Happen Will Happen

Stealing the couches out of the lobby is pretty impressive, and so is pushing a vending machine over a balcony. Both of those things are really heavy. Someone must have really wanted some snacks but not had any coins on them.

Professionals Are Pretty Unprofessional

Hotels are more than simply a place for people who are traveling through the area to catch some shut-eye. They also host events, especially large hotels and luxury hotels, like weddings and professional conferences.

Professionals Are Pretty Unprofessional

We all think of professionals like lawyers and doctors as people who have their lives together, but that goes out the window at a hotel conference. That extra staff that had to come in the day after must have always dreaded it.

Why the Carpets Are Crazy

Have you ever been in a hotel and noticed how strange the carpets are? They’re usually dark colors, and they almost always have a really wild, headache-inducing pattern on them. Well, there’s a reason for that.

Why the Carpets Are Crazy

It’s because deep cleaning carpets takes time and money that most hotels don’t want to spend, including luxury ones. Instead, they have a really crazy pattern, so that it’s harder to notice little stains and they can get away with not cleaning them as often.

No Morning Room Service

When large sports teams — especially male ones — stay in a nice hotel, many of the players will get up to no good. They’ll invite women over to their rooms and do lots of the things you would expect, and the women will spend the night.

No Morning Room Service

Apparently, the sports teams leave for practice early in the morning, and the girls take the chance to get lots of delicious free room service before having to check out. It’s pretty clever, if you ask us.

Check Up on Your Refunds

Whenever big sporting events are on, cities are flooded with fans of both teams, which means hotels are flooded with guests. Some hotels will put strict cancellation policies in place during these times, but with some shady results.

Check Up on Your Refunds

So this hotel was keeping money that they legally had to return, and asked their accountant to turn a blind eye to it! This kind of thing probably goes on a lot more often than one would think, which is really sad.

Some Bottles Get Resold

When you order food from a restaurant, including in a hotel, you can’t control every little thing that comes with it. Sometimes, they send sides or drinks that you simply don’t want, so they end up going to waste.

Some Bottles Get Resold

If the bottle was never opened, this actually makes a lot of sense. Why would hotels get rid of perfectly good bottles that they know for sure haven’t been contaminated? Doing so would be very wasteful, and hotels don’t need any more waste.

Your A/C Might Not Work

If you’ve stayed in a few hotels, odds are you’ve come across a hotel room where the air conditioner or heater doesn’t work. It can be really frustrating and make the room stuffy and unbearable.

Your A/C Might Not Work

The thing about this is that it only works if it’s a type of climate that does cool down overnight. A lot of places stay really hot, and this sucks for the guests who are arriving late.

Cleaning Crews Cut Corners

Many jobs nowadays come with pressure to do things as quickly as possible. It affects delivery drivers, who are required to deliver so many packages in a day, and it definitely affects hotel maids.

Cleaning Crews Cut Corners

This forces them to cut corners, and there’s nothing grosser than the idea that the towel you’re using was used by some random stranger before you and not washed, or that your bed sheets were slept in by someone else without being changed.

Always Deadbolt the Door

In many hotels, the maids are given a sort of “master key” in order to get into all of the rooms and clean them. So obviously if they lose that key, it could be very problematic.

Always Deadbolt the Door

The deadbolt tip is great, because most people probably don’t think to do that when they stay at a hotel, especially a luxury one. But, it could be the line between a good night’s sleep and some random stranger cuddling up to you!

Turning a Blind Eye

When you think of Disney World and its resorts, you think of their slogan, “The happiest place on Earth.” But that isn’t always the case in the resorts, as a former worker revealed.

Turning a Blind Eye

This is really scary. Something horrible could be happening, and staff are just required to ignore it or to lose their jobs. It must be really difficult to work in an environment where you have to turn a blind eye to what’s going on.

Breakfast Buffets Aren’t Necessarily Fresh

Everyone loves a good hotel breakfast buffet. There’s nothing better than free food (ignoring the fact it’s not really free since you paid for the hotel). But, the food may not be as fresh as you think it is.

Breakfast Buffets Aren’t Necessarily Fresh

Reheating and giving them to staff makes sense, because it’s still fresh food and the staff deserve to eat. But serving food that sat out for hours the day before is definitely crossing the line into yucky territory.

Some Maids Use One Rag

For some reason, luxury hotels seem to be a hotbed of poor cleaning practices, and it’s often outside of the maid doing the cleaning control. They can’t control, for example, how many rags they’re given to wipe things down.

Some Maids Use One Rag

To be fair, this isn’t necessarily true for every hotel, but we have already seen that hotels that do use separate rags don’t actually keep them separate, so this isn’t all that hard to believe — and it’s pretty gross.

The Staff Knows All

Do you feel like your partner doesn’t know you very well? Are you frustrated because you feel like they don’t pay attention? Well, tell them to go have a chat with the staff at your go-to hotel.

The Staff Knows All

They know tons of things about you, and they could fill your partner in so that they’re not so lost. Sure, it’s a bit creepy that they’re paying this much attention to you, but attention to detail is important, right?

They’ll Nickel and Dime You

When you stay in lower-cost hotels, many things are included, like free parking and a breakfast buffet. Yet for some reason, luxury hotel chains try to charge you for everything, from laundry services to an ironing board to using the hotel gym.

They’ll Nickel and Dime You

Why do they do it? Because they can. Wealthy people often don’t care about these “minor” expenses when they’ve already spent tons of money on a room — so the hotels get away with it, even if it isn’t exactly legal.

You’re Not a VIP

If there’s one thing that any retail or service industry worker can tell you, it’s that every single customer thinks that they’re the most important person in the world. It’s like they completely forget that other customers exist.

You’re Not a VIP

It sounds like this staff member knows it all too well, and that some of their coworkers learned it the hard way. We wonder if the event planners’ bosses are as mean to them as they are to the hotel staff.

No Charges for Damages

One would assume that all of those people who decide to destroy their hotel rooms for whatever reason have to pay to repair the damage. But it turns out that in many luxury hotels, that isn’t the case at all.

No Charges for Damages

It sounds like those VIPs need to find healthier ways to express their anger and frustrations than by destroying their hotel rooms. It’s such a weird way to show the world that you’re mad about something.

There’s So Much Food Waste

Food waste is truly a modern epidemic. Restaurants, grocery stores, and even hotels are throwing perfectly good food away on a daily basis — food that could go to feeding the hungry who truly need it.

There’s So Much Food Waste

It’s especially bad in luxury hotels, where guests will order room service and not even eat it, as this employee describes. Let’s hope it’s not something that most guests are in the habit of doing, but it sounds like it’s fairly common.

Higher-Ups Ignore Staff Complaints

Few people truly like their boss. Often, those who don’t like their boss don’t like them because when they’ve come to them with a problem, their boss has simply looked the other way or told them to suck it up.

Higher-Ups Ignore Staff Complaints

We’ve got to say that this one isn’t particularly surprising. Bosses do this in so many different jobs. It’s never okay, but it’s so common that most people have stories about it happening to them.

Employees Are Stretched Really Thin

If you stop to think about it, being a housekeeper in a hotel is very physically demanding. They’re constantly pushing large, heavy carts, and bending up and down to clean and change sheets. It would wear even the healthiest person’s body out.

Employees Are Stretched Really Thin

It’s hard to imagine anyone working every single day for months at a time. How would those poor people be able to have a life outside of work? No one wants to spend all day every day at the “office.”

People Leave Strange Things Behind

Not everything that happens in hotels is as innocent as people staying the night while traveling. Sometimes, people check out hotels to get up to some “adult activities” with their partners, with others, or even with themselves.

People Leave Strange Things Behind

This is very surprising because those items aren’t exactly cheap, so it’s not something you would want to leave behind, nor something you would want some random person to find. But if we’ve learned anything from these stories, it’s that people are surprising.

Rooms Aren’t Used for Sleeping

Speaking of not-so-innocent things that happen in hotel rooms, how would you react if you were working at the front desk and watched a whole camera crew go up to a room together?

Rooms Aren’t Used for Sleeping

You’d probably shake your head and hope that they didn’t leave a mess behind, since they were clearly filming some “adult films” instead of just staying in the room. Hopefully, there’s no one in the rooms nearby to hear what’s going on.