Ewww!! I travel ALL the time and after seeing the one maid with the gloves on washing the glasses, I'm just sick!! Totally disgusting. I'm so totally sceebed out. It is bad enough that you have to strip the top cover off, not walk barefoot and I make them change the linens and the towels everyday. This just takes the cake.

I'm so sceebed right now!

A friend of mine has a daughter in hospitality marketing. Her DS took a black light with her on one of their family vacations and used it in the darkened room. Evidence of bodily fluids were found everywhere, the walls, the tables, chairs, the bedspreads, blankets. This was not a cheap hotel, by the way, they usually stay in 5-star properties. Just disgusting. Makes me want to never stay in a hotel again.

This shocked me as well, it never dawned on me that those glasses weren't being replaced with clean ones. As if rinsing them out wasn't bad enough, the maid dries the glasses with the guests used, dirty towel!

From now on, when I travel I'm cleaning the bathroom myself. I'll bring Lysol wipes because I no longer trust the maid to clean the toilet seat and counter properly.

I wonder if the plastic cups inside wrappers aren't clean either? Doesn't matter, I'm not taking any chances. I'll bring my own cups.

Another thing to be aware of when you fly...you know those ear plugs they give you for music, the ones that are wrapped in celophane? I thought the wrapping meant they were sterilized after each flight, cleaned before the next passanger stuck it into their ear...but they're not! They just put them into a new baggy without cleaning them, to fool the passenger into thinking they've been sterilized.

I hate plastic or paper cups and refuse to use them. I also refuse to be a freak about germs. I am sitting in a hotel now and drinking from a glass...mind you, I carry my own dish soap with me and do wash all of them first, just in case :)

But I'm barefoot, and not dead yet. At some point you have to just live and hope for the best. I guarantee if you stay at any hospital you'll end up exposed to more germs. That's one place I never go barefoot...and I carry disinfecting wipes to clean the room and floor before I let my little guy wander around on it. It's AMAZING how dirty they can be!

igloo...whenever I act grossed out over something I've seen my DH always says, "that's what your immune system is for". I'm clearly more germ-a-phobic than he is!

Like the anchor woman said, before you blame the airline for that cold you caught while traveling...maybe it wasn't the plane after all, it might have been the hotel.

Way too much overreaction on these things. Study after study shows that the human body is well-equipped to handle the 'germs' we encounter every day. Sure, there are horror stories about bed bugs, etc. But when you consider the millions of hotel rooms that are occupied every day, and the few times you ever hear of something problematic, it should tell people what a non-issue this is.

Well said, Les. If we allowed ourselves to get all worked up over every report that came out telling how much "gross stuff" we're coming into contact with on a daily basis, we'd never leave the house (ah, home -- where we can just swim around in our own filth! ;-)) I do what I can to stay reasonably clean, but am not going to worry about germs lurking in every corner. They are there (fact of life), but the more important issue is eating well, staying rested -- just generally taking good care of our bodies so that they can function as designed. Go immune system, GO! ;-D

Well, the example in the movie clip seems to be the norm according to my friends daughter.

I wish I could be more relaxed about fecal matter from the flushing toilet landing on glasses that are cleaned with glass cleaner and then dried with dirty towels the guest before me used to do God knows what, but I can't. If that makes me over reactive, then I guess I am. But I say good on you for not caring if there was sperm on that towel!

Thing is, Mareda ... how would you ever really know? Is it a clean towel? Are there traces of "fluids" on the bedspread? How can you truly know for sure, and if you don't know with certainty, would you allow these kinds of fears to prevent you from going and doing and otherwise living your life as you always have (presuming you're a person who enjoys traveling)? I wouldn't let it stop me -- not for a second. That's all I was trying to say.

You're right, Auntjen, we don't know. The stories I've heard from my friends DS were enough to make me hurl over the past three years, so the video wasn't shocking to me. It doesn't prevent me from doing anything - my initial comment about wanting to avoid staying in hotels wasn't serious. The truth is, my approach is to bring some of my own things if I'm traveling and it's not at all because I'm a germophobic, it's because I don't want to be covered up with something that has dried body secretions on it, nor do I want to drink out of something that has been exposed to fecal matter and dried with dirty towels. If that isn't acceptable in my home, why would I accept that in a place I'm paying to stay in?

I was replying to Les and Igloochic, you and I must have been posting at the same time and I didn't even see your post until after I was done.

Bottom line (as usual) is that everyone has their own level of tolerance for such things.

I didn't endorse the toilet cleaning, sperm flowing towel either. I said I do like to carry dishwashing fluid with me and I use it. Frankly, the disinfectant in the bleach laden chemicals they use to wash the counters, etc., with will probably kill anything that might hurt you...but I don't like drinking that stuff, so I wash my items with my own dish soap (which is easy to bring in a sample bottle size).

I only do that since traveling with DS because we are a bit more careful about things due to his illness. When he's losing weight he gets sick easily so I want to have a good soap to wash bottles out with, etc., but I still know that there are plenty of germ killers in that glass cleaner, so I don't go overboard.

The only reason I use disinfectent wipes in a hospital is because from experience I know that many aren't cleaned well. You would think they would be, but I've found blood on toilets, shower walls, and doors. When we're in hospital it's normally because DS is sick and in that case, I don't want him to get sicker. He also drops his binkies all over the floor and puts them back in his mouth before I can stop it...so I wash the floor in the room we're in so that they will land on a clean patch (ok I hope that is the case)

Mareda, you need to do what makes you feel secure. If you really think that every time you are in a hotel room you have fecal matter on the glasses that have been dried with towels with sperm on them, I would have to say you have a more interesting travel life than I do, for sure!

This is why we prefer our RV! If we do stay in a hotel I always travel with Lysol wipes and clean all of the handles, knobs, the TV remote, phone. toilet seat.....Call me over-reactive but I enjoy myself a whole lot more knowing that I have done my cleaning!

It's gross to think about it but honestly, who knows what goes on anywhere, a restaurant, a grocery store, etc......

Even if the hotel glasses came out of a dishwasher, they would be put in the cart by a human who would touch them; the carts stay in the hotel corridors for hours, usually unattended, a guest could sneeze as they walk by the cart.

Seeing videos like this are good reminders to be cautious; I will certainly run the glasses under hot water for a few minutes the next time I stay in a hotel.

Les, probably not a more interesting travel life than you. I'm only saying this based on what my friends DS has found in her ongoing weekly travels and inspections of rooms all over the country. The video is the norm, I'm afraid, and studies have been done with how far a flushing toilet sends the contents of the bowl spewing. Seriously, I couldn't make this stuff up if I wanted to.

I keep posting my friends DS, when it's actually her DD. I'm unable to multi-task (watching football and posting) anymore. Shoot!

I travel every week for work and am always staying in a hotel...usually a Hyatt, Sheraton or Ritz. I bring with me those antibacterial wipes and wipe down the remote, the door handles, faucet etc. Nothing OCD like, just the items most frequently to be touched. I always use Purell on my hands after getting on the plane before eating or drinking. I know people think I am weird, but in one year of travelling I have only been sick once and it was the time I forgot to Purell my hands before eating. It could be coincidence, but its enough for me. That said, I walk around barefoot, sleep on the sheets and use the towels in the hotel. I am more worried about the eating/drinking issues vs sheet and towel contact on my skin.

I do stop by the hotel bar and get a drink usually, and use that instead of the dirty cups in the room. I never thought to bring dish soap but that is a good idea!!

In the video they said that you can catch staff germs, flesh eating viruses (!) and herpes from a glass...now if that's true I don't see how you can take it so lightly. We're talking more than a cold virus here, these are some pretty nasty germs that could stay with you for life.

Mitch did bring up a good point, what happens to that sterilized glass as it's waiting on the cart to be placed in the room. The housekeeper handles the rim of the glass with her toilet gloves and sets it on the counter after she's sneezed on it. What good does the clean glass do you then?

I don't think I'll be leaving my toothbrush on the counter either. Who knows what touches it before you return to your room!

The herpes virus does not last on an inanimate surface more than a few seconds, so catching it from a glass that was used by someone hours earlier is not possible. Necrotising fasciitis (flesh-eating bacteria) is EXTREMELY rare - maybe 500 a year across the US, and only 20% of those are fatal, and they don't come from a drinking glass. Staph infections come in all sorts of forms, and do not do well on dry surfaces for very long. We all carry around those same staph bacteria in our bodies every day.

If these things were so commonly and easily transmitted, the percentages of people with diseases like herpes would be rampant.

Les honey...don't impart reality in the subject...let the people freak out about flesh eating monsters in their beds so they feel better....

(They're more likely to be on the handle of your grocery cart then on the glass in the hotel that was cleaned with windex...but we won't discuss that).

I'm not hung up on germs but that was gross.

ummm, if that video grosses you out, I suggest you refrain from ever eating in a restaurant or fast food place again! LOL Some of the videos I have have seen from restaurant kitchens make those hotel videos look tame!

Ack...I'm leaving for Key West on Thursday...it is a fantastically reviewed B&B/guesthouse so maybe they're better (wishful thinking :))?

I think I'll just bring some of my own supplies now that I think about it. We're driving down so no luggage concerns, and it has a kitchen so I'll have room to store it.

I plan on partaking of enough tropical beverages to sterilize anything that finds its way into me anywho, lol.

Just a little funny me and family observed this past weekend.

Years and years ago we had a sterilizer on the stove when a new babe was brought into the house.
If the paci would fall on the floor at the mall, I'd wrap it in a napkin, put it in my purse and it wouldn't go back into babe's mouth until it was sterilized.
That was with child number 1.

By babe number 5, wipe paci with napkin, stick it in my mouth to wipe it again and back into babe's mouth.

All babes are now adults, and healthy and did the exact same thing with their babes----
First babe, everything spotless and germ-free.
By second, third, fourth child, car keys were just perfect if it meant the baby was keeping quiet even for a few minutes.

Just me, musing.

Just returned from a hotel visit. I had already seen this video, so when i saw only glassed a ceramic coffee mugs, I was not happy. I needed to take some pills, so I went with the coffee mugs thinking they would probably be used more often, and therefore replaced more often. The first mug I picked up, looked like it was sticky and had dust sticking to the sides. the second mug looked a little better, so i just ran it under some hot water, and then wiped it with a hand towel. I still didn't feel great about drinking out of the mug.

To the poster that mentioned the black light and bodily fluids. The black light pick up other things beside just bodily fluids.

Black Light Uses
If you walked around all night with a portable black light, you would discover that there are phosphors all over the place. There are lots of natural phosphors, in your teeth and fingernails, among other things. There also a lot of phosphors in manmade material, including television screens and some paints, fabric and plastics. Most fluorescent colored things, such as highlighters, contain phosphors, and you'll find them in all glow-in-the-dark products.

The reporting was done by a Fox News station. 'Nuff said?

LOL Amity, even with a sick child you end up breaking the paci rules fairly quickly. Now we just dip it in our drink glass (wine will kill germs right?) and give it to him. He prefers white to red :oP As steralizer of course heh heh