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Recently Reddit user Reasonable_Rush1196 asked the community, "What are some behind-the-scenes occurrences at luxury hotels that management might prefer to keep under wraps?"
Welp, people didn't hold anything back, and revealed some truly unbelievable things that happen behind-the-scenes at luxury hotels.
Like...I bet they'll leave you speechless, and question every vacation decision you'll ever make.
So, here are some deeply shocking luxury hotel secrets that management preferred to keep under wraps:
Note: Some submissions were pulled from this Reddit thread by user akumamatata8080.
Note: Some submissions include topics of suicide. Please proceed with caution.
1. "Having worked in the casino industry, one of my fellow slot managers used to be a hotel manager at the Rio in Las Vegas. He had a couple try to book a room but the hotel was completely sold out. Shortly after he got a call from housekeeping that an older couple was found unresponsive and most likely deceased in their room. They called the police, and the authorities removed the bodies. Not long after, housekeeping cleaned the room. Seeing that the earlier couple was nearby, the manager called them over and offered them the room. They were ecstatic and took it not knowing what had just occurred. The manager gave them a discount on the bill."
2. "A well-known luxury hotel and resort chain keeps a database of you. They get pictures from the internet and basically 'stalk you' to create a profile. They put what you ordered to eat, how many towels you needed, what drink you liked, your kids' names and birthdays, addresses, and phone numbers. Everyone working in the hotel has access to this database and can see your information. It's not all good stuff, either. We know 'you were an asshole to Jen' while you were staying in London. The one I was at had to remove cameras in the lobby because big wig guys would bring their mistresses and no evidence was allowed to be recorded."
3. "I had a friend who worked at a luxury hotel in a large city and he said that [suicides] are quite common. People would check in, load up the room service, take advantage of the amenities, and then 'check out.' It got to the point that the staff would have a system in place that would 'red flag' people based on the potential of this happening, and they would make a point of checking in on them very frequently. When a guy with a low-limit credit card maxes everything out on room service and amenities, that allegedly raises an alarm."
4. "I worked at golf resorts for a while and dealt with elite 1% asshats for many years. I’m not going to give anyone a playbook for stealing identities, but billionaires are notoriously careless with their bank information. In a hotel, there are times when you need a credit card authorization form faxed. It’s a major security risk to send it through any other electronic way, but these one-percenters see all that as an inconvenience. They will be like, 'Listen — I don’t give a shit. I don’t care about your policy. You’re going to take my info however I give it to you.'"
5. "One thing management definitely wouldn't want guests to know is sometimes housekeeping cuts corners if they are running behind. If you're staying just one night and your sheets look and smell clean enough, they might not actually get washed. That's right — management sometimes instructs housekeeping to skip the wash if it seems unnecessary. So, that 'fresh' bedding you're snuggling into? It might have been slept in by the previous guest — sweet dreams!"
6. "We know criminal enterprises have funded casinos in the past. I worked at Revel Casino (Ocean Casino Resort) in Atlantic City before and after its opening. One thing they kept mentioning in our onboarding was that the triads (a Chinese transnational organized crime syndicate) were funding the casino. I thought it was super strange that these execs were just openly telling this to brand-new hires."
7. "My cousin worked in Vegas at a few major resorts from 2008 to 2015. He said that for most of them, the staff was the best people to ask where to get drugs from as they were the ones around the most. He said not to ask directly, but if you have a bellboy bring up something, ask them or ask room service. They usually can sell directly or know who's holding in the hotel."
8. "We overbook rooms just like a flight overbooks seats. If your method of payment doesn't authorize enough money for what you have been spending, we'll have the valet give your keys to the front desk. We'll lock you out of the room until you get a new method of payment."
9. "I work as a housekeeper at a regular four-star hotel, and probably about 25% of people either bleed or leave shit stains on the beds. It's truly atrocious how disgusting people are, especially when they know someone else is cleaning it up (even the wealthier guests). And the best tippers are the cleanest people — if someone fully shit on the bed and used towels to wipe, left cum on the shower door, drank heavily and puked on the carpet in multiple places, and clogged the toilet, that person will not tip at all. But, the person who barely used the full bed and didn't use the shower at all and was super clean and polite...now that's a good tipper."
10. "I used to work at a high-end lodge that hosted holiday parties/fancy dinners for software giants, and one exec peed ALL OVER a room. It was $13,000 in damage. We regularly had rich guys pull up in their Lamborghinis with a sex-worker. My favorite was the couple we had to essentially evict from their room due to smell and noise complaints. When we got in, there were dozens of designer shoe boxes and coke residue everywhere. The woman left with her foot hanging out the window as they drove away — wealthy people are weird."
11. "During housekeeping, hotels use different-colored cloths to wipe your drinking glasses, cutlery, toilets, and sinks to avoid contamination. They just don't bother separating these cloths after wiping and moving to the next room."
12. "Larger hotels have better insurance to compensate for bedbugs. We won't say their name, but we will hand you over to human resources, who files a claim and starts a compensation package. When it happens, it can cost us between $2,500 to $5,000 to clear a room of them. We treat the rooms on each side of the infected."
13. "Convention attendees get so out of control that the hotel will only host the convention if they have a private security force. Since private security isn't law enforcement or licensed, they do pretty much whatever it takes to keep trouble out of the public eye. Mostly, it's locking people up in rooms or escorting them out of town, but they can get rough at times. But none of the convention attendees know they are there and the hotel staff pretends they don't see them. Even those who run afoul of them don't know exactly who it was who grabbed them."
14. "When I worked at a nice hotel, the 'affair [code of conduct]' was brought up in training. Never mention a person being a regular and don’t mention anything about their partner or the fact it’s a different partner. That became a rule after some valet basically kickstarted a very nasty divorce with a wealthy guest."
15. "A family member used to work at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville (yes, it's super fancy). For about a year, they had a phantom shitter (as in, random dumps left in random places). It was always in corners where security cameras didn't reach. They figured it was an employee and had some ideas, but never knew who it was until someone left and it stopped. This was about 20 years ago."
16. "I worked room service at a five-star/five-diamond resort in Vegas. At that time, if you bought a bottle of booze for your room and didn’t open it (including putting it out with your dishes), then it was re-sold. This happened frequently."
17. "We had valet service at our hotel, and due to huge amounts of theft and break-ins from people in our lots, we had to go through guests' cars and take everything of value out to hide stuff in our conference room. Then we put it all back in before we brought their car around. It was ridiculous — we had to keep it under wraps."
18. "When a housekeeper loses a key while cleaning someone's room, the key has to be canceled because we don't know if some random person picked up the key and now has access to all guest rooms. Honestly, if you're staying at a hotel, ALWAYS deadbolt the door and use a night latch for this reason (or else the front desk issues a key to the wrong room because both are a common issue)."
19. And finally, "People who work the front desk know all the female sex workers. We give them water on the way out and sometimes call them taxis. Management doesn’t like us doing it, but they tip well."
Have *you* ever worked at a luxury hotel before? If so, tell us the most unbelievable things that have happened behind the scenes in the comments below (or in this Google Form if you want to remain anonymous).
The best submissions will be featured in a BuzzFeed Community post.
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.