What Hotel Workers Would Never Do In Their Own Hotel Rooms

It’s safe to say that no one’s a bigger expert on hotels than the people who work there. From housekeepers and front desk clerks to the people who own hotel properties, they’re the first to say there are certain do’s and don’ts when it comes to hotel room behavior.

To be clear, when you’re staying at a hotel, you’re on vacation — you should feel free to have a great time. Within reason, of course. Below, hotel workers share what they would personally never do in their hotel room.

Ordering room service is one of the best parts of staying at a hotel. But when you’re done, it’s best to let the hotel staff know.

“If we eat food in the room, I always make sure that I call room service to come remove it, or I make sure that we take the trash out of the room because it drives me bananas when people put the food out in the hall and don’t let anyone know, resulting in it sitting in the hallway for hours,” said Trisha Pérez Kennealy, owner of Inn at Hastings Park in Lexington, Massachusetts.

You’ve probably seen signs pop up in hotel room bathrooms in recent years about reusing towels for sustainability purposes. And indeed, people who work at hotels are all about hanging them up for future use.

“I am fully capable of reusing towels,” said Mary D’Argenis, founder and CEO of MDA Hospitality Solutions, a company that trains hotel staff. “And when I leave, I neatly pile my towels in the bathroom and ensure all my trash is organized by the can.”

Kennealy added that she never uses towels to take off her makeup. “If the hotel is taking the time to provide you with makeup wipes, or a washcloth that is specifically for makeup removal, please use it and not the regular bath towels,” she said. “It is really difficult to get makeup stains out of white towels and they are expensive to replace.”

Hotels are packing a lot of rooms into one building, and for that reason, walls can be thin — especially when there are adjoining rooms.

“I love listening to music and I usually travel with a Bluetooth speaker, but I am always mindful that the walls in a hotel are much thinner and everyone is in much closer proximity,” Kennealy said, noting that she keeps her Bluetooth speaker at a reasonable volume.