When you check into your hotel stay, you are expecting to start your vacation ― but it could also be where you start spreading germs and diseases.
That’s because hotels are full of high-touch surface areas that many people will regularly touch with a number of different unclean hands.
The problem is that you cannot trust your fellow travelers to practice good hand hygiene. “People just simply aren’t washing their hands properly in the first place, and then they’re washing them even less properly when they’re on vacation,” said microbiologist Jason Tetro aka “The Germ Guy,” citing fecal bacteria and Staphylococcus bacteria as two easily spreadable germs to watch out for.
“If you come into contact with any bacteria or virus, you pretty much have about a four-hour risk of getting exposed to it, if you happen to touch your face or put your fingers in your mouth,” Tetro explained.
And out of all the high-touch surfaces in a hotel, germ experts warn that elevator buttons for the first floor can be the biggest overlooked culprit.
