It’s so funny. I know a friend who will take her own blankets to a hotel but when I said “Do you take your own silverware to a restaurant?” she balked.
I mean REALLY. It’s nice to think a coat of Purell sanitizer will take care of everything but when it comes down to it we’re all bonking each other on the same cheap polyester bedsheet.
That’s too bad. I believe (and I feel ashamed that I only learned this relatively recently) that the rules of courtesy dictate that you should tip about $1 or $2.
Anyway, when travelling I try to play it safe regarding hotels. For large cities, I book ahead on-line using Priceline or Hotwire to find the cheapest 3-star or better hotel. So far, I’ve had pretty good luck. For smaller towns, I stick to chains like Best Western, Quality, Comfort, La Quinta, or Red Lion. I realize I may be slighting the mom-and-pop operator by doing this but at least I’m less likely to have any unpleasant surprises.
One of the reasons my favorite hotel is my favorite hotel is that it doesn’t have carpeting. In Spain, carpeting is something you find in movie theaters and hotels and that’s about it. Most people will look at you like your head just flew away if you talk about carpeting your house: “carpeting? But that’s impossible to clean!”
Yes. It is. To keep a carpet as clean as when it was laid down, you’d have to shampoo it as often as you shampoo your head: ain’t gonna happen. I’ve been in 4-star hotels (best hotel in that town, in Spain each town gets a maximum number of hotels of each category and that town is too small to get a 5-star) where the carpet had enough foodstains to keep the cast of every CSI series busy for at least three episodes, a real CSI crew for several months.
The cleaning ladies do their best, but sometimes there’s only so much you can do. The bathroom is easy to clean, generally… no carpet, among other things!
That’s why I stay away from hotel jacuzzis no matter where I’m lodging.