Marriott to use disinfectant sprays in guest rooms

Many people are already a little bit suspect about hotel rooms.

But now that we have been dealing with a full blown pandemic for a couple of months now, the worry of catching a contagious virus in a hotel room is something that will be in the minds of many.

So we are starting to see some hotel brands take serious efforts to curb the transmission of the disease and to help hotel guests feel more comfortable about staying at their properties.

One of those brands is Marriott and they are taking several different types of steps to mitigate the spread of the virus.

One of the first things they are doing is rearranging furniture to encourage social distancing. In many places like lobbies and lounges, you often find sofas and chairs arranged to facilitate conversations.

But going forward, you might notice that some of these furniture items are more spread apart.

Most importantly, Marriott said it will be using electrostatic sprayers with hospital grade disinfectant to sanitize their hotels. Electrostatic sprayers apply electric charges to liquids in order to get them to fully cover a surface allowing them to sanitize in a more efficient way.

These sprayers will be used in guest rooms, lobbies, gyms, lounges and other public areas and the cleaning agents used will be those recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.

Rooms will be sprayed after every guest visit although I’m not sure how often they will be spraying down the common areas in places like the gym. (If it is every morning then this would be all the more reason to get an early start in the hotel gym.)

Marriott is also going to be using ultraviolet light technology to sanitize room keys and will be adding hand sanitizer stations in the lobby along with reminders to maintain social distancing.

You may see hotel workers wearing masks and you might even encounter plastic partitions at the front check-in desk going forward.

There will also be an emphasis on using cell phones to do certain things like check in, on locker room doors, and to make special requests for things like room service. So keep an eye out on new features and updates that might be coming to the hotel apps that you use.

I like that Marriott is being proactive in making changes to further sanitize their hotels. I don’t really think that hotels have a choice at this point because customers will gravitate toward those hotel chains doing more on the sanitization side.

I still believe that it is best practice to take a sanitation efforts into your own hands to a large extent. You can do this by wiping down items and areas of your room that you will be touching and if you have the extra space, you can always bring some of your own linens.

H/T: USA Today