Hotels are doing a lot to help make the hotel experience safer and more comfortable for guests in the crazy times that we live in. We’ve seen announcements from major hotel chains on what they plan on doing to keep rooms and other public spaces sanitary.
But if you are more of a visual person, perhaps you’d like to see what some of these steps look like, such as an electrostatic sprayer.
Marriott just released a new update from their CEO which reiterates their commitments to better sanitization and provides a video of what some of their policies look like.
They also outlined the key steps that they are taking to keep their hotels clean which include the following:
- “Marriott Global Cleanliness Council: Consisting of in-house and outside experts in food and water safety, hygiene and infection prevention, and hotel operations, the council will work to develop a new generation of global hospitality cleanliness standards, norms and behaviors for our more than 7,300 properties around the globe.
- New Cleaning Technologies: While our council develops its work, we have initiated plans to roll out enhanced technologies at our properties over the next few months, including electrostatic sprayers and the highest classification of disinfectants recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization to sanitize surfaces throughout hotels.
- Cleaning Regimen Changes: When guests check into our hotels over the next few months, they will notice a number of additions to our cleaning regimen designed to set an even higher standard of cleanliness for the hotels as well as modifications to associate-guest protocols developed to be consistent with recommended social distancing guidelines.”
I am pretty confident that these new initiatives will be able to make a significant difference in terms of the risk factor of staying in a hotel. Until vaccines are widely available, these type of policies will be as good as it probably gets for preventing the spread of the virus.
However, a lot of the effectiveness of these will come down to the individuals responsible for performing these enhanced cleaning duties.
I am really hoping that hotels will be very transparent with how they are making sure their employees comply with the new changes coming into effect over the next few months.
Otherwise, I’m not sure how confident I will be about the effectiveness of these new measures, as I’ve experienced many poorly cleaned hotel rooms in the past (across many different brands of hotels).
In my opinion, steps need to be taken to give guests the ultimate assurance that what the hotel says is going to happen, actually happened.
Daniel Gillaspia is the Founder of UponArriving.com and the credit card app, WalletFlo. He is a former attorney turned travel expert covering destinations along with TSA, airline, and hotel policies. Since 2014, his content has been featured in publications such as National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, and CNBC. Read my bio.
