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Hotel Inspectors Look For Ketchup Smudges and Dead Bolts

March 12, 2007 at 10:00 AM | 0 Comments

Every so often, Budget Travel comes out with a juicy confession piece from inside the hotel industry. This month they reveal the secrets behind being a hotel inspector for the AAA: the secretive men and women who wander the country deciding on how many diamonds each hotel will be rated.

The anonymous inspector explains his job: checking on factors like guest services, room décor and ambience, and weighing these against pre-existing criteria that can decide a hotel's diamond score. For example, without deadbolts or vending machines, a hotel has no chance of getting even one star, even though they might otherwise be perfectly nice; even with a deadbolt, a ketchup smudge in the wrong place can also spell diamond disaster.

Cleanliness is a really important factor, of course. The expert opinion is that no fancy technology is needed to check this out:

There has been a lot of media hype about poring over bedspreads with black lights, but you can spot all kinds of stains with the naked eye just by looking carefully. And I don't simply look, but sniff. Often the upholstery will smell like beer, or worse.

What "worse" means is something we'll leave up to your imagination.

We also like the idea that hotel inspectors get into a bit of private eye style, to make sure they remain anonymous. The confessor knows colleagues who regularly change their hair color or wear fake glasses, and he admits to checking in under countless names, using American Express cards he's applied for in any random name he thinks up. Maybe we should start using this method to pay our hotel bills, too.

Related Stories:
· Confessions of an AAA Hotel Inspector [Budget Travel]
· Confessions of a Concierge [HotelChatter]