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Is Your City on This List of Cleanest Hotels?

These hotels cleaned up.

Imagine you’re dozing off comfortably in your hotel room the night before a big work meeting you traveled all the way across the country for. Suddenly, you feel something crawl across your face. Startled, you slap yourself, sit up, turn on the lights, and remove your pillow to discover a couple of bed begs that mistakenly assumed you were peacefully dreaming. Chances are, the city/state this hotel calls home didn’t make the cut for a new study from the American Automobile Association (AAA). The “Best Housekeeping” inspection, conducted by AAA, found both the cities and the states that have the cleanest hotel rooms. The research included searching the room(s) for dirt, dust, and pests (i.e. bed bugs).

The Breakdown

Of the cities that made the study’s top 10, New York City ranked first—the Big Apple has 161 properties that scored in the top 25% of the inspection results. Houston nabbed second place with 90 hotels passing the inspection, while Washington, D.C. ranked third with 78 hotels. Rounding out the pack is Anaheim, California with 50 hotels and San Antonio, Texas with 49. New York state placed fourth on the states list with a total 406 hotels that passed the housekeeping inspection. California nabbed first place with 982 properties, Florida scored second with 485, and Texas rounded out the top three with 468. In ninth place, Maryland had 238 hotels that passed the test, and Massachusetts claimed 10th with 215 hotels.

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The research included searching the room(s) for dirt, dust, and pests (i.e. bed bugs).

Notably absent from this list, however, are some of the most frequented cities in the U.S. According to a 2018 Euromonitor ranking of the 600 most visited cities in the world, some of the most frequented cities in the United States are San Francisco, Orlando, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Miami, and Las Vegas—none of which made an appearance in AAA’s findings.

Whether It Be a Hotel, Motel, or a Holiday Inn…

Should more U.S. properties take note of a laundry service based in the city of Wuhan in Central China that’s using technology to make sure hotel cleanliness is up to par? The services puts microchips into hotel sheets, towels, and blankets that collect data on when they were last washed—data that guests can then access by simply scanning the QR code on their bed linens.

However, the jury is out on whether or not this applied science can sense the occasional garden snake that’s crawled its way into your Hampton Inn Bed. Ultimately, to stay as clean as possible and make sure your hotel room is actually clean, first observe the space. Look under the sheets and mattress for bedbugs and make sure handles and showers were wiped down (an abundance of dirty fingerprints on surfaces all over your room is not in its ideal state).

Also, do not use the glassware. In 2018, an ABC investigation found that hotel drinking glasses at several Arizona hotels were so dirty they could have, if used, seriously posed a health issue to guests. Three of four hotels inspected failed tests; dirty glasses were not replaced, instead, they were just wiped off with a towel. While it’s impossible to ensure any space is completely germ-free, don’t be apprehensive about asking for housekeeping to do a second sweep if you think your room’s level of cleanliness is, well, not so clean.

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