“…a hotel is not an operating room, and bugs may lurk, despite tip-top cleaning efforts.” The amount of guests who check in at hotels 
from different parts of the world may increase the exposure of germs…Cleaning items used by housekeepers such as sponges and mops were also found to have high levels of bacteria which increases the risk of infection as they go from room to room using the same sanitizing equipment…”
On average, hotel housekeepers spend 30 minutes cleaning each room — about 14 to 16 rooms in an eight hour shift. In a study conducted at the University of Houston, researchers took 19 bacteria samples from items found in three hotel rooms in three states: Texas, Indiana and South Carolina. While high levels of bacteria were discovered in bathroom sinks and floors, the dirtiest areas were light switches and TV remotes, which contained 112.7 colony-forming unites of bacteria (CFUs) and 67.6 CFUs, respectively. Moreover, light switches had the highest levels of fecal matter bacteria with 111.1 CFUs.
“Guests should not assume that their hotel room, not to mention all common surfaces around the hotel such as doorknobs, front-desk pens … while (hopefully) clean, are not sterile,” Matilde Parente, MD, a California-based physician, biomedical safety consultant, and author board certified in pathology and integrative holistic medicine, told Medical Daily.
