Why You Should Never Use the Kettle in Your Hotel Room, According to Travelers

If you’re the kind of person who wakes up and immediately turns on the coffee pot or tea kettle at home, we totally get it. There’s nothing better than a fresh cup first thing in the morning. However, you may want to think twice before doing the same in your hotel room on your next vacation.

While most hotels do clean their kettles, it’s not always a guarantee. In many cases, these appliances might only get a quick rinse between guests … if that. We already know that high-touch items like phones, remotes, and decorative pillows are often overlooked during cleanings, but kettles might be a different kind of dirty. Why? Because guests often use them for everything except making tea or coffee.

Every few years, hotel kettle horror stories make the rounds online, including in 2020, when a Reddit user took to the Life Pro Tips subreddit to warn people about them. 

“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 purposes other than making tea,” they wrote. “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 behavior) and don’t ‘deep’ clean the kettles. For your own personal hygiene, avoid using the kettles in hotel rooms.”

Others chimed in to confirm this unsettling trend.

“I travel for work, and the company always puts us in 2-star rooms. Well, the first trip I took, I made some coffee and met up with my travel partner. They said they were going to get some coffee, and I was like, ‘I’m good, made a pot in my room,'” one user commented. “The look on his face was not one to forget. That’s when he told me about the underwear trick that some of my coworkers use. The thing is, we travel a lot and it’s to the same places, so we use the same hotel and they reserve the same rooms for us. Never again.” 

Another user claimed to have worked maintenance at a “fancy” hotel, alongside their partner in housekeeping. “She told me some pretty crazy stories about the kettles, too. The nastiest one was a pair of boxers with feces left in the boiled water,” they wrote. One more noted, “Generally expect anything in a hotel room has been used for things you can’t, and possibly don’t want to imagine.”

While all of this can certainly send a shiver down the spine of travelers everywhere, some in the comments section did offer a few handy solutions. One suggested bringing along a bit of dishwashing liquid or some dishwasher powder.” Dishwashing liquid is mostly about binding fat to water, whereas dishwasher powder has active ingredients,” they wrote. “Just gotta be careful not to get it on your hands too much, and rinse off immediately if you do,” to clean out your kettle before you use it. 

Another user shared a workaround for travelers really needing to wash their underwear: “Boil clean water in the kettle, close the sink drainer thing, put your underwear in it, pour boiled water over, clean undies, clean kettle, everybody happy. 

Of course, the safest option might be to skip the kettle altogether and use the hotel laundry service instead. It might cost a few extra bucks, but it ensures both your clothes and your morning coffee stay truly clean.