15 January 2024 , 14:52
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A flight attendant has urged travellers not to use one of the most common items when staying in a hotel.
Members of cabin crews, especially those who work on long haul flights, spend an awful lot of time staying in different hotels across the world. In doing so they learn many tricks of the trade as well as things that guests may want to avoid.
Most hotels have kettles for those guests who want to enjoy a nice cup of tea or coffee in the comfort of their room. Dutch flight attendant Demi shared a video on her TikTok channel @demibonita in which she urged people never to use the water warming device.
"Never use the kettle. You don't know what has been inside of it," she said. While one may expect that kettles are used for little more than boiling water, that would be a bad assumption, according to Demi.
The rise of extreme nutritional plans such as the all meat diet may be pushing some hotel guests to employ the room's kettle as a make-shift broiling device. Perhaps more alarming, rumours have long circulated of visitors using the kettle to give their underwear a boil wash.
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Dr Heather Hendrickson, from Massey University in Auckland, said of the rumours that, if true, they are "super super super super gross". She went on: "However, who knows how long that water, with nutrients that have been introduced and then sterilised, sits around in the kettle before someone else uses it? There are simply too many unknowns and hotel kettles are not industrial-strength cleaning facilities."
One traveller explained on Reddit: "Never use the kettle from your hotel room, you have no idea what it is used for. My brother works in a hotel in Amsterdam, and he comes home with the craziest stories.
"He told me that guests almost exclusively use the kettle for other purposes than making tea. The kettle is frequently used to cook rice, warm up small towels and clean/wash underwear. A lot of hotels don’t expect guests to do this (and aren’t aware of this behaviour) and don’t ‘deep’ clean the kettles. For your own personal hygiene, avoid using the kettles in hotel rooms."
If you need to use the kettle when staying in a hotel, Demi recommended rinsing it a few times first or cleaning it before making tea or coffee. The flight attendant went on to offer some more tips. "Always close the curtain. You don't want anybody across to have a look inside," Demi suggested.
She also urged travellers to never touch the remote control "without first cleaning it," and always remove the "decorative pillows and blanket from the bed". The reason why is that these can act as a first line of defence against muck introduced by tired, fully-clothed and shoed guests flinging themselves down onto the top of the bed.