Why you should never walk barefoot on a hotel carpet

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After 34 years of wiping dirty surfaces, a hotel inspector with AAA is not impressed with the results of her white glove test. A white stockings challenge, however, shocked her.

While crossing the floor of a hotel room, her pantyhose turned a disturbing shade of ick.

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“I kept getting on my knees to look under the bed and under things and at the end of the inspection I had brown circles on my white pantyhose,” said the Virginia-based inspector, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because her job requires her to remain incognito.

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TV remotes and light switches regularly appear on lists of the germiest spots in hotel rooms. Carpets, for some inexplicable reason, often clean away.

But the truth will make your plantar skin crawl: hotel carpets are a germ trap.

“Carpets and rugs can act as a reservoir for shoe dust, dirt, pollen, mold spores, pesticides and other materials that have originated from outside,” said Primrose Freestone, an associate professor in clinical microbiology at the University of Leicester in England.

Foreign particles have only half of it. Everyday activities – stretching, crawling, walking, dancing, vacuuming – can stir up the microorganisms embedded in the carpet and release them onto your bare feet or clothes or into the air.

The microbes may be harmless or a health hazard, but for the gross factor alone, guests may want to avoid skin-to-carpet contact.

“You don’t know 100 percent if it’s clean,” said the hotel inspector, who always swaps her street shoes for her “slippers” when she walks into a hotel room.

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For his research on hotels and hygiene, Charles P. Gerba, a professor of virology at the University of Arizona, discovered life in the carpet.

Gerba said hotel carpets are often stained with food debris, dead skin cells and dust that harbor mites, bacteria, mold, allergens and other microorganisms.

“Carpets are quite germy,” said Gerba, who never walks barefoot in hotel rooms or hallways.

The habits of guests in the room, such as eating takeout, washing their hair or scratching their itches, contribute to carpet dirt. Shoes also absorb a host of bad materials, including fecal matter picked up from places where dogs and humans do their business, such as sidewalks, parks and public bathrooms. The guests spread the excrement and other organic pieces on their journey from the lobby to the hallway to the room.

Although many such microbes are benign, a number of scientific studies, including one by Gerba, have discovered potentially dangerous pathogens that cling to shoe soles. For example, reports have identified methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA, a strain of staph bacteria that can cause skin bumps or boils; Escherichia coli, commonly known as E. coli, which can cause gastrointestinal problems such as stomach cramps and diarrhea; and Clostridioides difficile (C. diff), which can trigger inflammation of the colon.

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Sick guests can also contaminate carpets. Gerba cited a norovirus outbreak possibly spread through hotel carpets. An infected guest threw up on the carpet. Housekeeping vacuumed up bodily fluids, but instead of destroying the virus, the cleaners ended up spreading it.

“They re-vacuumed a few days later with the same vacuum, and it apparently caused another breakout,” Gerba said.

And if that doesn’t keep you up at night in your hotel room, this might: Bed bugs can use the carpet as a highway or rest stop to their final destination – you.

For healthy travelers, medical experts say the risk of getting sick from hotel carpets is low. But people with weaker immune systems or respiratory problems may be susceptible.

“The air particles from driving under cleaned carpets can trigger asthma exacerbations, and for asthmatics the American Lung Association recommends against staying in rooms with carpets in favor of easier to clean and less allergen or pollutant-trapping hard floors,” said Freestone.

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S. Wesley Long, medical director of diagnostic microbiology at Houston Methodist Hospital, said children can also be vulnerable because they often play on the floor and put their hands and feet in their mouths, transferring bacteria and pathogens into their systems. In addition, travelers who have been bitten by blisters or other scrapes should not expose their open wounds to hotel carpets.

“If you have a wound on your foot, you don’t want to be running around on carpet because your innate immunity is broken, and you have an increased risk of infection,” Long said.

For everyone else, hotel carpets rank low on the most common ways to contract a bug, well below exposure to a sick individual, poor hand hygiene and contaminated water. However, Long still advises against picnicking on the hotel carpet.

“As long as we keep things on the floor away from our mouths,” he said, “that goes a long way to preventing illness.”

The solution seems simple: wash your shoes before entering your hotel room and make sure housekeeping vacuums every day.

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That is not enough.

For starters, wiping your shoes on a mat will not remove the minute particles. Deeper cleaning is required. In Gerba’s study, his team found that washing your shoes (Rockports in this scenario) in a 12-minute cold cycle with Tide detergent and air drying for 24 hours reduced the number of bacteria on the outside of the shoe by 99 percent.

However, chasing down a laundry detergent isn’t a good use of vacation time, and taking your primary pair of travel shoes out of commission for a day isn’t realistic. A less strenuous option is to disinfect your shoes with an antibacterial wipe or not to wear your shoes in the room.

Standard vacuum cleaners, meanwhile, do not carry the detritus floor and carpet. To really get the gunk out, the hotel needs to steam clean.

“The challenge is that guests are hard on their rooms,” said Lori Mukoyama, a principal and global hospitality leader at Gensler, a global architecture, design and planning firm, “and there’s not enough time to do that deep cleaning.”

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Vacuum cleaners can also become repositories – and spreaders – of pathogens and germs. Gerba said that salmonella and E. coli can stick to brushes and bags. If the accessories are not disinfected or changed regularly, they can spray faecal matter and other particles throughout the hotel.

In a study published in the International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health, Gerba and his colleagues noted that “environmental surfaces can act as both reservoirs and sources of airborne pathogens due to new aerosolization during routine activities such as walking or vacuuming.”

Gerba’s advice: If the housekeeper is a vacuum cleaner, do not follow in their expectation.

Although carpets are undisputed germ sponges, the floor style is not the way of the lobby cigarette machine or pay phone. The textile still serves a purpose, such as muting guest noise.

“Carpet helps absorb sound, reduce footfall and create a quieter guest experience in high-traffic areas,” said Valentina Castellon, head and hospitality interior design leader at DLR Group, an international design firm. “While advances in underlays and acoustic assemblies have improved the performance of hard surface floors, carpet continues to play an important role where noise control is essential.”

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Since the pandemic, when hygiene awareness has been at an all-time high, hotel designers say the trend for hard materials has accelerated. Castellon said luxury vinyl tile, porcelain tile and engineered wood are easier to clean, more resistant to stains and less likely to retain odors. For a homely touch, hotels can sprinkle some rugs around the room, which are also germ traps but easier than rugs to clean and replace or, if you’re a guest, walk around or jump on.

Travelers against carpets can look for hotels that incorporate these less drab materials into decorative styles. Many high-end hotels, such as Four Seasons, have hardwood floors with accent rugs.

Meanwhile, for properties with carpet, Mukoyama said she will pull out her secret weapon: black socks.

“I don’t wear white because I honestly don’t want to know,” she said.

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