Commerical Catering Equipment

Shocking BBC Report Reveals Poor Hygiene In Top Hotels

A BBC report shown on Newsnight on Thursday 30 July at 10.30pm on BBC Two highlighted that rooms in top hotels are not being cleaned to a satisfactory standard.

Room attendants are being pressured to clean too quickly according to the employees spoken to for the show. Newsnight hired a standard room at the Park Plaza County Hall Hotel, costing £155 per night to conduct the experiment.

An expert from the British Institute of Cleaning Science, Delia Cannings, was asked to examine the rooms and to give an assessment of how long it should take to clean the room to an appropriate standard, and how well they had actually been cleaned.

The investigation used an electronic meter designed to test for the presence of organic matter left on surfaces even after cleaning. The equipment is commonly used in hospitals, hotels and catering establishments to check cleanliness.

The equipment works on the following cleanliness scale;

0-50 = very clean

50-100 = requires minor re-cleaning

100+ = significant amounts of dirt present

However, some problems could be seen without the need for specialist equipment. For example,  a visible mould growing on the seal around the edge of the bath in the bathroom. Apparently "The air vents were coated with thick dust, comprised mostly of millions of cells from body skin shed by previous guests."

The rooms apparently appeared clean, but according to Newsnight's findings the rooms had not been cleaned to a sufficient standard with some being horrifyingly unhygienic - with the shower (4,168), edge of the bath (3,578), and even the door knob (379) failing the test.

Secret filming revealed a lack of supplies in the stock cupboards. Old bathroom towels are recycled for use in cleaning, but sometimes neither towels nor cleaning cloths were available. Supervisors shockingly told room attendant to use the bathroom towels left by the guest for cleaning.

Ms Cannings said "How would you like to think you'd just made a cup of tea and drank out of a cup that had been cleaned and dried with a towel that's been up and down somebody's jacksy?" she quite rightly asked during the show.

The programme is due to send shockwaves throughout the hotel and cleaning industry - as this will undoubtedly put the pressure on hotels to spend more money to improve cleanliness, as customers will be after improved cleaning standards.

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