# Secrets Hotels Don’t Want You To Know

An episode of [Be Amazed](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1687637469), 1 Oct 2025, 28 min.

Audio: https://audio4.redcircle.com/episodes/ee0a4d7b-99f8-4076-9045-ef1892c372df/stream.mp3

When you go on vacation, all you want to do is check into a fancy hotel and let the bed, pool, and bellhops help you to forget about your life’s worries. However, hotels aren’t all about fresh linens and room service. Turns out, the hospitality industry is hiding some incredibly dark and straight-up bizarre secrets from their guests. So, today, we’re going to remove our ‘do not disturb’ signs and ruin all of our future vacations, as we check in and check out thieving cleaners, sickening stains and even an international secret society. Let’s unveil the secrets hotels don’t want you to know! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

## Transcript

[0:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: When you go on vacation, all you want to do is check into a fancy hotel and let the bed pool and bell hubs help you to forget about your life's worries.
[0:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: However hotels aren't all about fresh linens in room service.
[0:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Turns out the hospitality industry is hiding some incredibly dark and straight up bizarre secrets from their guests.
[0:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So today we're going to remove our do not disturb signs and ruin all of our future vacations as we check in and check out the even cleaners, sickening stains and even an international secret society.
[0:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Let's unveil the secrets hotels don't want you to know.
[0:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: With delayed flights, turbulence and airplane food, going on vacation can be a pretty stressful experience.
[0:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So when you finally arrive at your destination, there's no better feeling than checking into your hotel room and finally sliding into some clean bed sheets.
[1:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Unfortunately, these freshly clean linens might be hiding something sinister and much more common than most folks assume.
[1:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You could be unknowingly snuggling up to some unwanted bedmates.
[1:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Every year over eighty percent of hotels will deal with a bedbug in Festation as their rooms get taken over by a swarm of the blood sucking insects.
[1:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Whether you're staying in a Grammy Motel Room or a penthouse suite, the average hotel will face around seven in Festations every five years, so nobody is safe.
[1:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: These infestations can consist of up to five hundred insects, but unfortunately, they can be incredibly hard to find.
[1:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Bedbugs hide from the light in any available cracks and crevices surrounding the bed, headboard, or in the seams of mattresses, and typically only come out at night to feed.
[1:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Their main calling card is when a guest wakes up in the morning covered in painful itchy bites.
[2:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: If you're unlucky enough to stay in a bedbug infested room, the critters might end up ruining more than your vacation.
[2:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We're all guilty of stealing little bottles of shampoo with the end of our vacations, but if you stay in a room and fester with bed bugs, you might go home with a slightly scarier souvenir.
[2:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Bed bugs are notorious for climbing onto vacationers' clothes or suitcases and traveling all the way home with them, before infesting their houses.
[2:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So next time you enter a hotel room, you'd be best to carry out some throw checks for any telltale signs of bed bugs, or the dark red and black waste they leave behind.
[2:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Otherwise you could be going home with a souvenir that'll lead you having to a bug bomb your entire house.
[2:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The thought of sleeping in a room full of bed bugs is pretty disgusting, right?
[2:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I could certainly use a glass of water to calm my nerves.
[2:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But apparently I shouldn't use any of the glasses kept in my hotel room.
[2:58] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In twenty-twelf former hotel employee, Jacob Tomsky released a tell-out book on the hotel industry's dirty secrets, and which he explicitly told vacationers to avoid using hotels glasses as lots of housekeepers allegedly clean them with furniture polish.
[3:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In the book heads on beds, Jacob revealed that it was common insider secret that cleaners would regularly save time by using pledge to clean drinking glasses and sharing they were clean and sparkling without actually having to wash them up.
[3:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: While this was reportedly done due to tight high pressure time deadlines on cleaning staff, it doesn't make it any less disturbing.
[3:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Although the residual polish left in the cup shouldn't be enough to severely harm you, drinking even small amounts of polish can reportedly lead to disiness, stomach pain vomiting, and worse, truly putting the hospital in hospitality.
[3:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: A. On the bright side, your water will taste citrusy and your body's chemically burnt insides will be squeaky clean.
[3:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: If you're not disturbed by this gasoline glassware and undercover journalist in China caught a housekeeper doing something even more sinister back in twenty eighteen.
[4:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The cleaner working out of five star hotel in Harbin, China was snapped using the same brush to clean the room's toilet and cups.
[4:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The hotel fired the cleaner after seeing the secret camera footage, but just because that gross housekeeper was caught doesn't mean there aren't others out there.
[4:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Next time I travel, I think I'll stick to the sealed bottles of water in the mini bar, even if they do cost about a thousand dollars each.
[4:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: including glasses with pledge and poop water is pretty disturbing, but hotel staff can do far worse things than serve you with dirty dishes.
[4:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They could wind up costing you thousands of dollars.
[4:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Luxury hotels aim to cater to your every need, and so lots of them offer valet services where a worker will park your vehicle for you when you arrive at the hotel before retrieving it when you want to leave.
[4:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The service is supposed to save you time and effort, but back in twenty fifteen I guess at a hotel in Miami Beach, Florida was left to pay a small fortune in repairs after asking a valetapark his two hundred thousand dollar Lamborghini event at all.
[5:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: For the valet driving a Lamborghini was a once in a lifetime opportunity.
[5:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So as he hopped into the car, he decided to channel his inner vent diesel by rubbing the engine and burning some rubber.
[5:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Unfortunately, as the valley started to rev the supercar, its engine overheated and burst into flames.
[5:26] \[SPEAKER_00\]: A heroic passerby managed to extinguish the fire, but the damage to the Lamborghini was extensive, and there's a good chance that the owner of the Lamborghini had to pay to fix it.
[5:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Why?
[5:37] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well back in twenty twenty financial information company De facto discovered that forty-nine percent of car insurance policies don't cover any damages sustained while your car is being driven by a valet.
[5:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And the companies that do offer coverage will only help with superficial damage like scratched pain.
[5:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In other words, if your valley crashes your car, you'll probably have to pay for the worst of the damage.
[6:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So the solution is obvious.
[6:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Always drive a clapped out piece of junk that no one in their right minds would ever want to take for a joy ride.
[6:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Most hotel rooms contain a small safe that allows you to securely leave your valuables in your room.
[6:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: However, these saves aren't as safe as they seem, and in most hotels, the staff know a universal code that allows them to access every safe in the building.
[6:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This system was created so that if you ever forget the code to your safe, the hotel staff can easily open it up and retrieve your trapped valuables.
[6:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: However, it also gives hotel staff access to your most treasured belongings whenever they want, allowing any bad apples who have access to the code to easily rob you.
[6:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We like to think we can trust the staff working in our hotels, but in twenty nineteen, an industry survey found that forty three percent of housekeepers anonymously admitted that they'd still in personal belongings or cash from their guest rooms.
[6:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It turns out those perfectly pressed uniforms could be concealing opportunistic criminals.
[6:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: With housekeepers somewhat regularly called on hand-in-camera's cleaning out their guess luggage for cash, you might want to avoid storing your valuables in a safe that they can access.
[7:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Let alone leaving them unprotected in your suitcase.
[7:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Luckily, there is a way to keep your valuables protected while on vacation.
[7:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Most hotels contain safety deposit boxes behind their front desk that any guests can ask to use.
[7:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The save is usually insured against that which room saves by contrast usually or not.
[7:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Viewer staff members will have access to a front desk safety deposit making it a far safer safe than the one in your room.
[7:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Moving on to another way that Hotel staff will attempt to earn some extra money at the expense of their guests now.
[7:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Hotel's Concierge is tasked with catering to their guests every need.
[7:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Welcoming them to the Hotel, booking them taxis and giving restaurant recommendations.
[7:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: These conchiers have to work long hours with a smile on their face, but despite the high demands of their job they don't typically earn that much money.
[8:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: As a result, the satisfied conchiers have developed ways to earn a little bit of extra cash on the side by striking up under the table deals with local restaurants to send tours their way in exchange for commission.
[8:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Consciers are supposed to offer genuine recommendations so those guilty of this shady practice will typically do this off the books using extreme tactics to make sure their guests go to the correct restaurants.
[8:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There have been cases of guests asking their Consciers for directions to a specific restaurant only to be aggressively pitched another place to eat.
[8:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Similarly, concierge will actively criticize rival restaurants to make sure guests go to the ones that they've struck a deal with.
[8:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Almost every hotel denies that this happens, claiming that their concierge offers unbiased help.
[8:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: However, according to the New York Times, it's an open secret that some of these underpaid workers rely on under the table deals to subsidize their income, putting the con in concierge as they manipulate their guests to line their own pockets.
[9:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Although some hotel employees may be out to con you, most concierges genuinely want to help you.
[9:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And if you want to avoid dealing with dishonest hotel staff, you should keep an eye out for concierges with a special symbol that looks like two crossed golden keys pinned to their lapel.
[9:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That is the logo of Lay Clay Door, translating to the Golden Keys in English, which is an elite fraternity comprised of the world's best concierge.
[9:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Since being founded as a small secretive group in France in nineteen twenty nine and expanding into an international group in nineteen fifty two.
[9:37] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The Golden Keys now have over four thousand members working in luxury hotels all over the world.
[9:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The group's motto is, we are your key to everything.
[9:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And it's their job to cater to their guests every need.
[9:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And unsurprisingly, guests of the world's most expensive hotels often have some pretty unique requests.
[9:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Memorable examples of liquid-dors incredible customer service include shipping breast milk across the Atlantic, kept fresh using a liquid nitrogen cooled container for a new mother whose business trip had to be extended while her baby was back home in Boston.
[10:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Or the time staff were tasked with running an elephant and transporting it to a hotel in London for a Bollywood themed wedding.
[10:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Unsurprisingly, the Golden Keys group is incredibly selective in its membership and a joy you need to be recommended by two active members, have at least two years of experience as a concierge, and take a final ten page exam that can take anywhere from five to twenty hours to complete.
[10:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The process is so demanding that if you spot a concierge wearing the Golden Keys, you're pretty much guaranteed to receive incredible customer service.
[10:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: As a result, hotels who don't have a Golden Keys concierge would very likely prefer for the group's existence to be kept under wraps, so people don't overlook their hotels due to their concierge service being perceived as inferior.
[11:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Of course, there are only four thousand look-layed door members in the world, so the chances of your hotel boasting one is actually incredibly low.
[11:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Let's tell if you're ever lucky enough to stay in a luxury hotel, you should check if their head conscientious as a member, as those golden keys can be the key to an incredible vacation.
[11:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: hotels want their customer service to feel as friendly and familiar as possible, so they've always kept logs on their regular gas, tracking information about their previous stays and complaints, to tailor their next visit to their personal likes and dislikes.
[11:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Today, the rise of technology has allowed hotels to take this to another level by using your social media to build an insanely detailed profile on your interest hobbies and personality traits before you even make it to the hotel.
[11:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In a twenty thirteen interview, a rep at the Beverly Hills Hotel nonchalantly revealed a time where she ran a background check on a guest before their arrival in order to gather information to tailor their experience.
[12:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Looking up the person online, they discovered that they owned a small dog called Bo.
[12:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: When the guests arrived, the rep had placed a dog he gift back in their room along with a handwritten note saying, Bo misses you.
[12:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Is it just me or is that creepy as heck?
[12:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Similarly, restaurant tier Danny Mayer has described a time when he was forced to travel for work on Father's Day, staying at the little Nell in Aspen, Colorado.
[12:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: When a homesick Danny arrived in his room, he found that the hotel staff had printed a photo of his wife and children off of social media before placing it in a frame on his bedside table.
[12:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The experience was somewhere between a heartwarming tale and an unnerving violation of personal privacy.
[12:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This level of customer service is starting to become more common though, and when you're next go on vacation, there's a chance that your hotel will have already scoured through your social media before you arrive.
[12:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This attention to detail is pretty impressive, but is this taking customer service too far?
[13:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Hotels can use social media to gather a lot of information about their gets private lives, including their marital status.
[13:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: As a result, when a guest checks in with a romantic partner who isn't their spouse, the hotel staff are likely to realize what's going on.
[13:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Still, even if a hotel does discover that a guest is cheating on their partner, they typically won't expose their affair.
[13:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: A brand coordinator at the Wen hotel in Las Vegas has stated that hotel employees are told to never reveal any info about guests, not about any people accompanying them, to anyone who calls up the hotel, even if it's the guest spouse.
[13:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They won't even verify whether or not a guest is actually staying there whatsoever.
[13:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Similarly, in twenty seventeen in XNkeeper called Tammy Long revealed on Quora that at her historic end in Vermont, if a guest left the night of behind in their room after checking out, the end would never call them to return it.
[14:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Tammy explained that she introduced the rule after calling a male guest about a lost item and getting through to his wife.
[14:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The guest's wife was shocked telling Tammy that she thought her husband was at a convention in Toledo, Ohio, and she had no idea he was staying at a hotel with a woman.
[14:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Tammy realized that she'd accidentally exposed her guest infidelity, so from that point on, she told her staff to never call guests to return an idol.
[14:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Although telling somebody that there has been his cheating on them is the morally correct thing to do, these are ultimately places of business and ruining a guest's marriage isn't going to get you any good reviews.
[14:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: As a result, if you think you've left the night and behind in your hotel room, you might have to call them to get it back.
[14:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Otherwise, they'll just assume you're a dirty cheat.
[14:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Unfortunately, when you use an ablake Airbnb to stay at someone's private residence, there's quite a bit more risk than staying at an established hotel.
[15:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Since being founded in two thousand seven Airbnb has become one of the largest hospitality companies in the world, with over one point four billion guests and four million hosts using the app.
[15:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Most of these hosts have good intentions, but there are several cases of people listing their property on the app with sinister motives like spying on their guests.
[15:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Since Airbnb's inception, there have been hundreds of cases of people discovering cameras hidden inside their room's light fixtures, fire alarms, power adapters, and Wi-Fi routers.
[15:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: These cameras are clearly intended to spy on unsuspecting guests, and they're often positioned to face the Airbnb's bed or shower.
[15:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Gross.
[15:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Airbnb responded to these countless discoveries by banning the offending host and increasing their background checks on new host joining the app.
[15:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This is reassuring, but Airbnb can only deal with these offenders after they've been caught, and if you want to guarantee your Airbnb is camera-free, you might have to take matters into your own hands.
[16:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: If you turn off the lights and shine a flashlight on the electronic appliances in your Airbnb, a hidden camera lens will reflect the light back at you.
[16:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: As a result, if you shine the light on an appliance and you see a bluish reflection or even a visible lens, you should pack your bags and leave, or at the very least, tape over those spots, because there's a chance your host is using a camera to watch a good change shower, or in my case, eat everything in the mini-born crap myself to sleep!
[16:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Terrifying stuff!
[16:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Whether they're stalking your Facebook profile or watching you through secret cameras, some shady hospitality workers seem to know a lot about their guest's private lives and dirty secrets.
[16:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So I think it's about time we expose some of theirs.
[16:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In twenty fourteen, I made working at a five star hotel in Orlando, gave an anonymous interview explaining what housekeepers get up to when their managers aren't looking.
[16:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The Housekeeper explained that if they're tasked with cleaning a large suite, they'll be given a little bit of extra time to make sure it's spotless.
[17:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Instead of spending this extra time cleaning, the interviewies, colleagues would often just nap in the room's bed.
[17:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You can't sleep on an empty stomach and in twenty sixteen another housekeeper anonymously admitted that they never buy lunch, choosing instead to eat portions of their guest room service orders and route to their rooms.
[17:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Once the housekeepers have filled up on their guests dinner, they'll regularly use the toilet in the hotel room that they're supposed to be cleaning, trapping a doose while the guests are away.
[17:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I guess all that still in food is to go somewhere.
[17:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: These interviewed housekeepers also revealed that sometimes they'll seek revenge against Router irritating guests.
[17:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The cleaner from Orlando recounted that in one instance one of her colleagues was so angry at a rude customer that she decided to clean the bathroom floor with their bath towel before hanging it back up for the guests to use.
[17:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This seems pretty harsh, but they made it clear that staff usually only mess with their most impolite visitors.
[18:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Seems reasonable to me.
[18:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Let's move from housekeepers with bad habits to guests as we look at a group of disgusting vacationers and air out their dirty laundry.
[18:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Literally.
[18:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Back in twenty seventeen a tweet from Guy Bloomberg went viral as he asked his followers whether any of them use the kettle in their hotel rooms to wash their dirty underwear.
[18:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: typically a kettle is used to boil water and make hot drinks like tea.
[18:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But according to guy he'd cut wind that folk out there are regularly using the appliances to boil their briefs instead.
[18:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: As the story went viral, some Twitter users started expressing their disgust, while others admitted that they had indeed used ghettles to clean their dirty underpants.
[18:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Before long, molecular biologist Dr. Heather Hendrickson weighed in on the issue explaining that the practice isn't just gross, it's also a genuine health hazard.
[18:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: While boiling your underwear should kill most of the bacteria present in your tiny whiteies, used underwear fabric can still commonly be riddled with heat-resistant microorganisms and spores, they can survive temperatures of up to two hundred and forty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, continuing to swim around in the kettle, after being boiled.
[19:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Some of these like clostidium-bachelinum spores can produce a deadly toxin if consumed, so if another guest comes along and uses the contaminated kettle,
[19:26] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They could put a dark spin on their next Tea Party.
[19:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Hendrickson urged the offending hotel guests to stop putting other people in harm's way, but something tells me the people who decide to boil their underwear in a hotel kettle aren't particularly concerned about other people, so they're unlikely to stop the practice.
[19:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So unless you take your tea with milk, sugar, and yesterday's sweet corn, you should probably consider sticking to bottle drinks the next time you stay in a hotel.
[19:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Next time I check into a hotel room I'll definitely stay away from the kettle, but at least the rest of my room is clean right?
[20:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well back in twenty fourteen, journalist Jeff Rosen investigated five of the top hotel chains in America to see just how clean their rooms are at check-in.
[20:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: After conducting a series of tests, the Rosson reports team discovered that all of the hotel rooms were filthy, with dangerous amounts of bacteria on the walls, furnishings and beds.
[20:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In every hotel the TV remote was by far the dirtiest item tested, and in one room they found colonies of E. coli on the remote, a bacteria passed through human poop.
[20:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: If that wasn't bad enough, they found traces of Merso on the remote in another hotel, a highly contagious antibiotic resistant bacteria that can cause painful skin infections fever and even fatal senses.
[20:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The investigators noted that none of this dangerous bacteria is visible to the naked eye, and they were present in rooms that looked spotless.
[20:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Because of the near invisibility of most hotel room filth, lots of cleaning companies use UV lights to show people just how dirty their hotel rooms are.
[21:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: When UV light is shown on a surface, it causes certain substances like urine and saliva to emit different colored light and turn identifying their presence.
[21:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This fluorescence is an effect that can turn seemingly clean rooms into a Jackson Pollock painting of peace bed and God knows what else.
[21:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: These images are pretty horrifying, but they're also a little misleading as UV light also causes cleaning products like laundry detergent to fluorescent.
[21:37] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So it can't always be used to reliably determine whether your hotel room is dirty or clean.
[21:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But while both UV light and your own eyes may be a little unreliable when assessing the cleanliness of a hotel room, you can be pretty certain that at least some felt is lurking in there.
[21:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So think about packing sunscreen and hand sanitizer on your next vacation.
[21:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: One of the best caps secrets in the hospitality industry is that people die in hotels all the time.
[22:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And there's an incredibly high chance that you've stayed in a hotel room that once held a deceased guest.
[22:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: While roadside motels are hotbeds for crime-related explorations, it's also not uncommon for terminally ill people to finish up their lives in expensive hotels opting to meet their makers surrounded by luxury.
[22:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Hotels will go to great lengths to cover up these in-house passings and as soon as the police and emergency workers gather all the info they need, the hotel will rush to clean up the mess.
[22:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: No call-in specialized deep cleaning crews before moving any left overs through staff hallways that are closed off to guests.
[22:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Once the room is clean and empty, the hotel will try and get it booked again as quickly as possible, meaning that if the room is fully sanitized, they'll ideally want to reopen it to guests just twenty-four hours after finding the permanently checked out occupant.
[22:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That being said, if your word your hotel room might have been recently occupied by the recently deceased, there are a few telltale signs to look out for.
[23:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: If the AC unit or light fixture smell unpleasant or have a notable presence of flies, it could be a sign of previous organic decay in the room that wasn't fully sanitized by a cleanup crew.
[23:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: As these are areas which are fairly commonly missed, noticing that a specific area of the room has been repainted or re-walled paper can also be a clue that some hasty cleanup was required for a nasty mess in that zone.
[23:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Worst of all, if you spot a slightly uneven bump on the wall about the size of a quarter, you could be looking at a hastily covered up bullet hole.
[23:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In which case, you may want to rethink your choice of hotel motel or holiday in.
[23:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Now what we just discussed is pretty nasty, but lots of hotels hold secrets that are arguably even more sinister.
[23:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Like the pricing of their mini bars.
[23:58] \[SPEAKER_00\]: If you've ever stayed in a hotel, you'll know that the minibar is a lawless place where a bottle of water costs a dollar and a payday costs, well, your entire payday.
[24:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Minibars were first introduced to hotel rooms in the nineteen sixties, and unsurprisingly, it wasn't long before some tight-fisted guests developed ways to avoid paying their ridiculous prices.
[24:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: One trick involves drinking freely from the mini bar before refilling the empty bottles with water and putting them back.
[24:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Some guests also choose to eat the mini bar snacks up until the end of their stay before heading to the store and restocking them any bar with the same snacks they ate, but at regular store prices.
[24:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: These tricks have worked for decades, but hotels have started to fight back against these snack size thieves by installing sensors into their mini bars.
[24:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: These sensors constantly scan all of the food in the fridge, so as soon as you remove an item from the bar, your credit card is automatically charged.
[24:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This charge is instant, so if you take a snack out to read the label, you'll have to pay for it, even if you didn't actually eat it.
[25:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: These shady practices are becoming increasingly common, so on your next vacation, I'd recommend asking the hotel to remove all the snacks from your room before you arrive.
[25:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The last thing you want is to accidentally bump into your fridge not over a bottle of water and end up doubling the price of your vacation.
[25:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Let's look at another piece of terrible technology that can completely ruin your vacation.
[25:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The day most hotels use electronic keycards instead of traditional metal keys as they're easier for both guests and staff to carry around and store in bulk.
[25:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Despite these perks the cards have serious drawbacks, and back in twenty eighteen a cyber security firm called F Secure made a terrifying discovery about the tech.
[25:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: After testing cards from several different hotels, they found that they could consistently take a single key card and use its data to create a master key that could open every door in the hotel.
[25:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: S. Secure noted that it didn't matter what door the key card was originally programmed to open, so if a hacker obtained any key card from a particular hotel, they could use the information contained within it to access locked rooms without anybody realizing.
[26:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: While FSecures approach used highly specialized software to generate a master key, replicating a single room's key is way simpler.
[26:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Requiring only a simple device that can identify and replicate the radio signature of the keycarts chip and copy it onto a blank duplicate card.
[26:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Cyber security firms like FSecure are working with keycard companies to improve the technology and make it less susceptible.
[26:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But even if your hotel isn't targeted by a hacker, keycarts can also malfunction.
[26:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Back in twenty sixteen two guests staying at the roadway in in Gallup, New Mexico discovered that their key cards could open every room in the motel.
[26:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: When they told the owners they were told that the error was caused by a key system malfunction that allowed every key guard to open every room.
[26:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The notion that key cards can malfunctioned this severely is pretty scary.
[26:58] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But it's also possible that the mistake was caused by the Motel using them incorrectly and forgetting to assign the guest cards to a specific room.
[27:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Not that that's particularly comforting, whether the issue was caused by a technological glitch or a user error, it meant that anyone could have freely walked into any room.
[27:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And considering the kinds of disgusting messes people seem to leave behind in hotel rooms, that surprise entrance could be just as horrifying for the intruder, as for the occupant of the room.
[27:26] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Thanks for listening to the podcast, we'll see you again next time you'll want to be amazed.

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