Savvy travellers are being urged to remove one overlooked item from their hotel beds immediately upon arrival, with a YouTuber warning it could be harbouring dirt from previous guests
It has been suggested people should remove one item when entering a hotel room (stock)(Image: Klaus Vedfelt via Getty Images)
A YouTuber has suggested there is one reason why savvy travellers should remove the bed runner the moment they step into a hotel room. The bed runner is a strip of thick, coloured fabric that stretches across the foot of the bed and features in many hotel rooms.
In a video on his YouTube channel, sblga, who boasts 61,000 subscribers, shared his thoughts on why it’s there. The bed runner exists largely to make the room more visually appealing.
This can be achieved if it is a bright colour, contrasting sharply against the white bedding. However, sblga hinted there was a further reason behind it, too, reports the Express.
Sblga said: “Think what you do when you walk into a hotel room. You throw your bag on the bed, you sit down to relax a little bit, still have your shoes on, and all of that happens at the bottom end. The runner is still there.
“It takes dirt so the white colour doesn’t. Okay, now think about that. Sheets get changed for every guest. The runner usually doesn’t. A lot of hotels wash them now and then. That’s why people who travel a lot take it off the bed first thing.”
The suggestion, therefore, is that because the bed runner isn’t laundered as frequently as the sheets, it’s more prone to collecting grime and bacteria from previous guests’ luggage and personal items.
Yet sblga isn’t alone in advocating for the removal of bed runners, as a housekeeping manager has also urged guests to whip them off the moment they step into the room.
However, sblga is not the only blogger to have warned about hotel room hygiene, with inventor and entrepreneur Lori Greiner suggesting there are three things in a hotel room people should never use.
In a video posted on TikTok, the 56-year-old said: “Never, ever use these three things in a hotel room.”
The three items she recommended avoiding were the soap and shampoo, the hairdryer and the kettle. Explaining her concerns about the kettle in particular, she said it was because some people had used them to clean their clothes.
She claimed: “This one is rough. Did you know some people have used the kettle to wash socks and small undergarments? So if you need hot water, call the front desk and ask for some.”
Lori said the hairdryer was a no-no because some guests “touch it with unwashed hands” and it “rarely gets deep cleaned in between stays”.
Meanwhile, Lori’s dislike of the soap and shampoo dispensers stemmed from her belief that bacteria inside them could be unsafe for people’s skin. She alleged: “Most of the time, they are just refilled – not cleaned out – which means bacteria can build up inside.”
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