Always wondered just how clean your hotel room is? How to bag the best table in the house? And what goes on behind the scenes at hotels? Here, with the help of two industry insiders, we reveal all. Charlie* is an ex-head housekeeper for a well-known budget hotel chain and Tanya* is an ex-restaurant reception manager for a high-end hotel. (*We've changed their names so they can really spill the beans.)

It’s not surprising that your room may not be sparkling, given that your room has probably been cleaned in 10 minutes or less. “For a single room we were given something like six minutes,” says Charlie. That includes changing the bed, vacuuming, dusting, taking cups out and changing the bins, as well as cleaning the bathroom. “So really it was four minutes and then two minutes on a bathroom,” she says.

If Charlie spent any longer than 11 minutes, she would be in trouble. “If someone really messy has stayed in a room and you have to make it clean for the next guest, that’s not a lot of time!” she says. “I got quite fast at it over time and then you could cut the right corners to make sure you had your rooms done." She was paid per hour and says it was demoralising knowing her pay sometimes worked out as less than a £1 ($1.26) a room. “You don't really care then," she says.

“Cups are never as clean as you’d want them to be,” warns Charlie. In most large hotels, if they look dirty, they're put in the dishwasher but there’s so much handling afterwards and they gather dust on trolleys. “In the smaller inns I just rinsed them in the sink as it wouldn’t be worth the time to take them to the kitchen… I knew I wasn’t washing them perfectly but just had to get it done,” she says. If they don’t appear to have been used, housekeepers won't clean them at all.

You can slumber safe in the knowledge that all housekeepers see sheet and towel changing as one of the basics. “Even if I was having a lazy day, it’s just something I always did. You’re taught a certain way to make a bed so you can tell even if someone has just sat on the corner of it after making it… You’d change [beds and towels] every time so they’re always pretty clean,” says Charlie.

While sheets and towels are generally pretty clean, those cushions and sofas really aren’t. “The sofas and chairs are never cleaned… They might be hoovered but that’s it. If you think about it, someone might have got out from the shower naked and sat down on the sofa so if you also get out the shower naked and sit down on it…” says Charlie. We certainly won’t be doing that again.

With young staff more cost-effective for hotels, you may not have the most house-proud housekeeper. Charlie admits she was often hungover when she first started out so “wouldn’t try that hard”. However, in smaller hotels and inns she says the head housekeeper checked rooms to make sure nothing had been missed. “But at [the chain] it wasn’t very thorough at all,” says Charlie. “The older women would be but a lot of the time it was younger staff and they’d come in hungover and wouldn't really bother."

Although housekeepers tend to work under huge time pressures, if they happen to get ahead with their room quotas they might take a well-earned breather in a guest room. “You’d maybe sit and watch TV, if you have the time,” says Charlie. “Sometimes I’d invite one of the girls in and we’d sit down, chat and have a cup of tea.” She's also been known to have "sprayed the odd perfume or two and then walked past the guest an hour later!"

What does Charlie always check when she stays at hotels as a paying guest now? “The toilet is the first thing I check. If the toilet is dirty then the room is dirty. If it’s clean, great, then I’ll check the bed. If someone hasn’t made a bed very well then I know they’re probably quite new or can’t be bothered so they’ve probably also missed other stuff. I’ll try not to touch anything then!” she says.

While bed bugs are a common problem at hotels, thankfully Charlie didn’t ever work in a place that had them, although they were always on high alert. However she does admit that mice and rats were very common. “At every hotel I’ve worked, there have been rats or at least rat traps down… I’ve seen mice caught in traps too,” she says.

Tidy people who are rarely in their room using things were the ultimate guests. “Friendly, nice, clean people – the ones who appreciate that you’re doing your job – they’re the best ones,” Charlie adds. She would make a little extra time to ensure their rooms were “really nice for them”. Tanya agrees: “Just being nice and friendly will get you good service… If you treat [staff] like human beings and have a rapport with them, then they’re going to go out of their way to look after you more.”

Guests that don’t know how to use a bin, have “smelly feet” and expect a daily tidy-up service are the worst to deal with, according to Charlie. She recalls a regular family who didn’t use the bin at all. “I couldn’t believe anyone would live like that and they would demand that we clean up after them every day. It was almost like they thought we were part of the price and their servants”. Her advice? “If you’re a dirty, smelly person, just stay at home.”

Charlie says it’s very common for guests to pretend they can’t see the staff, especially housekeepers. She recalls being stepped over in the hallway as she knelt down by a trolley once as if she was “invisible”. “I hadn’t seen them coming and instead of [the guest] saying 'excuse me', they literally stepped over me as if I wasn’t there,” she says.

Tanya found it was the VIP customers, the regulars and friends of the owner who were the worst. "I dreaded them coming in," she says. She recalls being screamed at if she dared to seat them in the wrong part of the restaurant or if other guests were still seated at their preferred table. “Because we had a lot of high-net-worth customers, they’d expect everything in a click of a finger,” she says.

As well as getting a tip-off from the concierge about potentially awkward customers, Tanya says her hotel restaurant used a booking system that allowed staff to input permanent notes about guests' requests but also about their behaviour. “Every time they came back, these notes would pop up. If they had been difficult or rude or particular about a certain thing, then you would put a note down about it,” she says.

In high-end hotel restaurants, the customer is pretty much always right, says Tanya. If a guest was unhappy with anything about their meal, the chef cooked a new dish. Far from that annoying staff, they were delighted. “When things get sent back to the kitchen, the staff love it because they get to eat it…The amount of food that the staff eat because it's been sent back is unbelievable. It's great though, as they work such long hours,” she says.

While customer complaints were taken seriously, Tanya says the bigger the fuss a customer would make, the less seriously their complaint would be taken. “Most restaurants will replace a meal, refund it, or give you free drinks or desserts if you’re not happy or there’s been a hair in your food. But as soon as you start asking for things, then it can be a bit of a red flag. Simply make a polite complaint to the general manager and often they will offer you something as compensation,” she advises. 

“A cheeky way of getting extra care is by saying it’s your birthday or your wedding anniversary, even if it’s not, because then we would put in a card, flowers or some chocolates, or make their room a little bit nicer,” says Charlie. Otherwise, just ask for an upgrade if you want one. She advises, “If we’re having a quiet week and someone wants a room with a better view then we’d move them.”

If asking nicely doesn't work and you’re not happy with room, or simply want a better one, try pulling out the temperature card. Charlie says complaining that your bedroom is too hot or too cold was a fail-safe way to get moved at the chain she worked at. “Our most difficult customers, who always got moved to keep the peace, often complained that their rooms were too hot to too cold. There is so little that could be done about it that the only option was to move them,” she says.

In Charlie’s experience, “if it’s not nailed down it’ll be nicked”. From catching guests pilfering extra teabags and coffee sachets from her trolley to towels and pillows going missing, she’s seen it all. “Cups, teabags, soap… We even had a shower curtain stolen and they really weren’t pretty,” she says. However, she says big hotel chains don’t care about towels going missing. Although, she’d get annoyed when guests pinched things from her trolley. “They could have just asked and I would have given it to them," she says.

From spotting which guests are up to no good to sharing horror stories of hideous customers, the staff love to share intel. “In the morning we’d always have a cup of tea together and be told about any guests who’d kicked up a fuss the evening before,” says Charlie. "We might try a little bit harder because we knew they’d complain otherwise, but we’d also have a good laugh at them.”

Tanya can remember countless examples of guests coming in with their mistresses or sometimes several. While staff would maintain an air of discretion and non-judgement, they’d gossip about it off-duty.  But they’re all at it too. “Lots of things like that also go on with staff. [Affairs] are very prevalent in the hospitality industry – whether it’s customers or the staff,” says Tanya.

If you’re staying in a hotel with a destination restaurant, it always pays to pre-book a table. Contrary to what you might think, there isn’t always a quota of tables reserved for hotel guests. “We would always try to fit them in but because we were very busy and had a lot of regular customers, it was still first come first served,” says Tanya. If you didn’t book in advance, her advice would be to tip the concierge. “When they had big tips from guests, they would come down begging us to fit their guests in,” she says.

As manager of the restaurant reception, Tanya says she wouldn’t think twice about pushing a rude customer down the waiting list if they annoyed her. “If it’s a walk-in and they’re being impatient and rude and I’ve got other people waiting, they’d definitely go further down the list,” she says. Although if they happened to be mates with management, they’d go straight to the front of the queue.

“Money does talk and tipping definitely helps,” says Tanya, who was once given £100 ($125) by a customer for a table. “If the restaurant manager knew he was going to get £50 ($63) from a customer, then they would go over my head and sit them down even if that table was booked. It was very frustrating,” she says. Housekeeping definitely appreciate tips but leave it on the bed or in the room rather than giving it to reception, otherwise it'll "disappear", warns Charlie.

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Ever wondered why you never bag the prime table when you’re dining in a high-end hotel restaurant? Perhaps it’s time for a shopping spree. “When I first started as a regular receptionist, my manager would tell me if someone is dressed nicely to sit them in the best area. I didn’t agree with it but in certain places, if you’re dressed well then it will get you a better table,” says Tanya. 

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As with most workplaces, there is plenty of political power play going on behind the scenes. Charlie says housekeepers were very much seen as “the bottom rung” but sometimes receptionists had to muck in with the cleaning. “If a room needed to be ready for a certain guest at a certain time and the housekeepers were busy, then the receptionist would be expected to quickly go and do that room and check that guest in. They hated that and saw it as really beneath them.” 

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