The Grossest Thing in Your Hotel Room Is Actually Hiding in Plain Sight

Whenever you check into a hotel, you probably expect the cleanliness of certain things in the room or suite to be a little questionable—the TV remote, the bedspread, maybe even the bathroom floor or toilet. But the unassuming ice bucket? Turns out, it might be the dirtiest item in the whole room.

1. Why the Ice Bucket?
2. The Right Way To Use a Hotel Ice Bucket

Why the Ice Bucket?

According to Lifehacker, the problem isn’t just inconsistent cleaning, it’s because of what previous guests have most likely put in that ice bucket.

Former hotel staffers have claimed that ice buckets are often used for anything but ice—think pet waste, dirty diapers, and raw meat. It might even have been used as a makeshift vomit container. A now-viral TikTok video from former hotel manager Melissa Hanks drives the point home, showing just how often guests repurpose ice buckets for, as she puts it, “things you don’t even want to think about.” She also went on to reveal that she had cleaned puke from them before.

Brian Labus, an associate professor and infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, underscores that concern even more, telling Travel + Leisure that ice buckets without a liner are hands-down the grossest thing lurking inside your room.

“We had a hotel norovirus outbreak some years ago where one of the modes of spread was through the ice buckets,” Labus said. “People with diarrhea also were vomiting, so they grabbed the nearest thing: the ice bucket.”

As the buckets hadn’t been thoroughly sanitized or cleaned, those guests were exposed to lingering contamination, which is why if you plan on using a hotel ice bucket, Labus strongly recommends always using a liner.

The Right Way To Use a Hotel Ice Bucket

If the bucket doesn’t appear visibly dirty, housekeeping might give it a quick wipe and return it to the shelf—which, of course, isn’t enough to disinfect it properly. On top of that, even when hotels provide plastic liners, many guests forget to use them, reuse torn ones, or use the bucket for things liners weren’t designed to protect against.

That means E. coli or norovirus can stick around—and if you’re scooping ice or placing an open bottle in the bucket, there’s a real chance it could end up in your drink. In fact, the ice you collect from hotel ice machines could be the source of the contamination.

This specific issue has become severe enough that the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) now includes ice-bucket sanitation in its Safe Stay training guidelines—but compliance varies, especially at lower-tier or high-turnover properties.

So what’s a germ-conscious traveler to do? If you must use the bucket, make sure it has a fresh, intact liner—or better yet, request a new one from housekeeping.

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