Inside the Secret World of Hotel Operations

It's on the grounds right there, and the guests can take classes there with you know, you work with all kinds of birds when you do this, but Dingle is of course the star. To be clear, there are other birds there, but Dingle is the star. I'm just gonna keep saying Dingle in. This is partially because he has a specialty. So if you're looking to get the proposal package there, they set you up with this nice cozy dinner by candle light, and at the end of the dinner,

Dingle will swoop in and deliver your ring. How cool is this? I feel like that's the most Harry Potter proposal I've ever It's so awesome. But you know, this also made us wonder about hotels and all of the secrets around hotels, the little gimmicks hotels used to get guests in the door, and the tricks and codes that hotel employees use, and of course this mysterious society that so many top concierge is belonged to. So let's dig in.

Hey there, podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as always I'm joined by my good friend man Guesh Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass showing off his vast collection of ill gotten hotel amenities. This is one of his stranger collections.

That's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. And you know, this is one of those times I do wish our listeners could see this, because every single inch of Tristan's desk, and I mean every single inch is just tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner and lotions. And I actually don't think I've ever seen so many slightly different shades of beige and light green in my life. It's kind of like the world's most boring rainbow if you look at it.

So I don't even want to Nobody has planned for all of this but you know one thing you won't find interest in collection, and that's toothpaste. And that's because hotels in the US aren't typically provide complimentary toothpaste like they do for soap, shampoo, and all those other bathroom staples. You know. I've noticed that there have been a couple of times where I've forgotten toothpaste and gone downstairs and they've given me the world like this should do the trick,

or the world's smallest of toothpaste. Have you ever had this happen smaller than like the tip of your finger. It's so strange. But I've actually heard that hotels choose which amenities to offer based on market research. And you would think and hope that there would be a strong market for dental hygiene, but apparently most people aren't asking for toothpaste in their rooms, so hotels just don't bother

stocking it. Yeah, So, I'd always figured that it was just because most people brought their own, but it turns out there's actually a more practical reason that hotels don't

do this as well. Apparently toothpaste is more strictly regulated in the US and things like shampoo or soap, and in fact toothpaste is actually classified as a cosmetic and a drug since it usually contains fluoride, and the stricter regulations put on drug manufacturing means that toothpaste can cost I don't know, like or even more than other hygiene essentials. So you know, that's probably another reason why most hotels

don't provide it. Okay, I actually never knew that, But that's exactly why we're doing this episode because you know, although the vast majority of us have stayed in a hotel at one time or another, the two of us within the past week, actually most of us, you know, we know very little about how a hotel actually runs.

And that's probably because our culture has long since embraced the thinking of one of the hotel industry's pioneers, and that was Caesar Ritz now the Swiss hotel a famously claimed that quote people like to be served but invisibly, and so for the last hundred and fifty years, society is pretty much stuck to that maxim and that's, you know,

for better or worse. But today we're we're going to peek behind the front desk and kind of pull back that disposable shower curtain to reveal some of the best kept secrets of hotels and their employees. Well, of course, uncover the dues and don'ts of things like room service, as well as some of the weirdest requests ever fielded by a hotel concierge. Plus, we'll get a better sense of the burdens of a hotel housekeeper and why you probably shouldn't use the glass cups in your hotel room.

So where do you want to start, Mango? So I think before we get into the secrets, we should lay out a few basic facts about just how massive the hotel workforce truly is. So for starters, they're about fifty five thousand hotel properties in the US, which amounts to more than five million guest rooms in total, and over one billion people stay in a hotel for at least one night each year, which is about fifteen percent of

the world's population. And to service all of these guests and the rooms they occupy, hotels employee about four point five million people in the US alone. So this includes things like desk clerks, hotel managers, housekeepers, bell boys. It takes a staggering amount of man or to keep even

like a single hotel running smoothly. And according to the American Hotel and Lodging Association, which is where all these stats actually come from, a typical hotel with a hundred occupied rooms per night supports over two hundred fifty local jobs every year. Al Right, well, since hotels are such big employers, I think maybe the way we want to approach this is just kind of do a role by role dirt dishing on you know, each one of these if if that makes sense to you, yeah, I like

that idea. So why don't we start with the front desk and this practice of walking a guest And this is when a hotel turns away a guest with a standing reservation because the hotel is mistakenly overbooked themselves. But the truth is that overbooking is rarely done by mistake.

So the average no show rate for a hotel reservation is around ten percent each day, and hotels tried to book themselves to a hundred ten percent capacity whenever possible to account for these expected cancelations, and the hope is that the numbers will balance out and that every head will have a bed for the night. It's what hoteliers call a perfect cell. But the trouble is that sometimes too many people actually show up for the rooms they booked,

and this is when someone gets walked. So this is somewhat similar to like when the airline's over book flights and they're looking for volunteers and all that. But you said, when somebody gets walked? So what what what does that mean exactly? Well, you know, the practice varies by hotel, but typically the desk agent will book the guest one night stay at a nearby hotel, usually on the company's dime. But again it depends on the hotel. Alright, so how do hotels choose who to walk Like? Is it based

on how long you're staying or something else or what? Yeah, I mean there are a few different considerations. So length of stay is one. So for example, like you're more likely to get walked if you're staying for just one night. Another consideration is whether or not you've stayed in the hotel before and how likely you seem to come back.

And obviously if you're route to the staff or maybe even short tempered with a loved one in front of the staff, you probably up to your chances of getting walked. But honestly, the biggest determining factor of who gets bumped is how much they're paying for their room, So hotel prices fluctuate a lot by on demand. But the rooms that make hotels the least profit are all the ones booked on discount sites like Expedia or price Line, and these sites all take commission for helping to fill at

hotels rooms typically anywhere from ten. So obviously I would tell would prioritize a customer who booked with them directly, since that person is paying the full rate. So if you booked on a discount site and the hotel is full when you get there, you might want to prepare to take a walk. Yeah. I've actually read how hotels usually set aside their worst rooms for those discount sites too, which is a little bit scary because I tend to

use those sites at the same time. But like, I'm one of those gold star members because I do it enough, so I guess that means I get the top of the line, dirtiest nazist room. But apparently the thinking is that those customers are in it more for the value than they are the experience, so why not keep the best rooms for those who choose the hotel at full

price right. I mean, it definitely makes sense from a business standpoint, but it is kind of ironic that sites like price line have become such a thorn in the hotel industry side, because, if you remember, hotels actually helped create those discounts sites way back in their early two thousand's. At the time, the hotel industry was in a serious decline.

This was post September eleven, so you know, owners decided to roll the dice on a different way to sell more rooms, and all kinds of hotels started giving their inventory to these discount sites, and little by little the

industry sort of picked itself up again. And now the hotels are doing so well they probably wish they could dish the discount sites entirely, but of course customers wouldn't stand for that, and with things like Airbnb and other rental platforms rising, you know, hotels are even less likely to shake things up. Yeah, you're probably right in but since we're talking about hotel financials, Actually, here was the

fact that I stumble across. Did you know that the average operational cost for a hotel room is only between thirty and forty dollars a day. Now, that includes everything from the water being used, electricity, laundry, cleaning supplies, even the hourly wages of housekeepers and other employees who helped keep the room operating. So deduct about thirty dollars from whatever you're paying for the hotel room, and you can see why the industry became profitable again so quickly. That's

really interesting, you know. To get us back to the front desk, though, I do want to warn you about another secret way that hotel desk clerks can get even with inconsiderate guests. And thankfully this one has some hotel slang associated with it as well. Have you ever heard of a key bomb? I can't say that I have. It sounds a little bit scary. So so what is it? So?

You know the key cards that most hotels used for their rooms these days, right, Well, whenever a guest checks in, there given what's called an initial key, and this is the key that's been programmed to reset the door locked the first time it's inserted, so that no other previous

keys will work anymore. And most hotels will give you two or more room keys, but only one of them is often an initial key, at least that's how it's supposed to go, But if you cross a desk agent or act like a jerk to your family in front of one, it's possible that they'll slip you a key bomb is punishment, and this is basically a second initial key, So once it gets used, the first key gets deactivated and whoever stuck with it will be locked out the

next time they try to use it. And says most people will keep that is key for themselves and then give the other key to like a spouse or a child. The key bomb generally hits the person that's intended for. Ouch. You actually came across another good low key revenge plot, and this one is especially popular among desk clerks in New York City hotels. So you know how to one two is one of the oldest and maybe even the

most common area code in the New York City area. Well, if you ever find yourself staying in room one to one two or twelve twelve in a New York hotel, you might just be the victim of a passive aggressive hotel worker. And that's because hotel management knows that guests often forget to dial nine when they're trying to call outside of a hotel. So whoever ends up in room twelve. Twelve is doomed to get phone calls all night from confused guest dialing one to one too. It's pretty great.

That is pretty great. So let's switch on our gears for a second, because there's another secretive aspect of hotels that involves the front desk crew, and that's room service. So back in the nine thirties, the Waldorf Historian became the first hotel to deliver else directly to its rooms, and for decades afterwards this amenity was seen as almost a luxury and one that was only found in like five star hotels. But nowadays plenty of standard hotels are

getting in on the action as well. In fact, around of all hotels in the country now offer some type of room service. Really that many, alright, So so what should we keep in mind when placing an order? So for starters, you have to consider which floor you're on before you make that call. So earlier this year, Metal Flaw spoke with a hospitality specialist known simply as Matt. Matt. Yeah, well,

he's been in the industry for ten years. He's a veteran and worked at luxury hotels and according to him, the higher floor the saggaer food is going to be when it finally gets there. And this is actually because of those big metal lids that hotels used to cover your food order. So the lids are great for retaining heat and keeping out germs, but the longer they have

to travel, the more steam builds up inside them. So unless you like your toast really wet or your fries super soggy, it's probably best to skip the crispy stuff. If you're on a higher floor. Well, i mean, wet toast is probably one of my all time favorites, so I feel like I'm I'm okay here, but that's interesting. Yeah, So you know, the metal is can actually result in another problem because the lids trap that heat, they basically

continue cooking your food during the trip up to your room. So, according to Matt, if you order a steak medium, it'll probably be medium well by the time it gets to you, if not even more cooked. So his advice is to avoid steak and seafood altogether and just off for the things that are tough to mess up, like salads or

club sandwiches. Well, and you even seeing hotels where sometimes those are the only items offered after a certain hour, and apparently that's to avoid having to keep an overnight chef on staff, and so instead of the day crew just preps a bunch of salads and sandwiches that they'll sell, you know, until the next day comes, which makes sense, you know. And another thing that most people don't know is that a lot of hotels now outsourced their room

service to the local restaurants. So if you look closely at the menu, it might say that the food is proudly presented by the hotel, but it actually comes from a place down the street. And obviously this is another cost measure for the tell, but it's also one that most people don't mind or even notice in most cases. You know, I think I actually prefer knowing that the food I was eating was not prepared in the hotel kitchen, just from a place down the street, like a good

restaurant nearby. That sounds like a smart plan. Yeah, I mean, I can't blame you. And hotels don't have a great reputation for being especially clean. In fact, according to the NSF, the average hotel room is dirtier than a typical home and airplane and even a school, and that's despite having an army of housekeepers just working around the clock to keep things tidy. Yeah, it's interesting to talk about it

and kind of gross. But what do you say we take a closer look at hotel housekeeping and see what sorts of secrets we can turn up. Yeah, but first let's take a quick break. They're listening to part time Genius, So we're talking about the secret world of hotel operations, all right, mangoes. So before we talk housekeep I do want to quickly mention two room features that hotel designers pay extra careful attention to. That would be the headboard

and the bed sheets. Now it's actually something I never would have guessed, but according to industry experts, I don't know if it was Matt or who matter, there's a good chunk of a hotel's room budget that goes to

an impressive looking headboard for the beds. And if you think about it, that's because the headboard is really one of the first things that a guest sees when they walk into a room, and so the trick actually works especially well in budget hotels because if fancy headboard also has the effect of pulling attention away from the rest of the furniture in the room, which was probably way

cheaper than whatever they spent on that breathtaking headboard. I mean, I feel like that's like me as a kid, I'd always make my bed because it distracts from, like all the dirtiness. But what about the veget So what's the secret there? Well, unfortunately, there are probably all kinds of secrets lurking in these hotel bed sheets, but the one I'm talking about specifically in this case is the thread count, or the number of horizontal and vertical threads per square

inch of fabric. Because hotel guests typically judge their overall experience by how well they slept, and so some hotels hedge their bets by springing for higher thread count sheets just to make sure the bed is as comfortable as

it can be. And that's why even thrifty hotels might provide some fairly luxurious linen, say three or four hundred thread count, and then the price of your hotels often wrapped their guests and a scandalous six hundred thread count sheets or even higher, like you might find some as high as fifteen. I can't say I'm stayed in that hotel before. Yeah, I definitely haven't because I count when I'm in there. But since we're on the topic of bed Lynn's, do you know the housekeeper secret to casing

a pillow? You mean pulling a pillowcase on a pillow. I'm sure they do it the same way we all do, right, Like, you tuck it underneath your chin, just kind of weirdly, and you have to awkwardly pull the pillow case up like a soccer pair of pants. Right. Well, I mean that works fine for our pillows at home, but imagine trying that same move with pillows from like twenty different strangers each day. Oh yeah, that's a good point. I mean, I wouldn't want to put my face anywhere near that

many pillows in a day. But yeah, so what what what do they do? Basically, they karate chopped the middle of the pillow, they fold one side over the other, and then they just shove it into the case and smooth it out afterwards. That sounds so aggressive, but I kind of like it. I'm gonna try that out. Well, you know it's it also feels like that would be a time saver because they could do that so quickly, and that is something that's critical for housekeepers because they're

always pressed for time. Just looking at the stats on this, it's pretty wild. So most hotel maids have just half an hour to devote to cleaning each standard room. A suite might get an hour or so, but they're still having to move super quickly. And what that means is that on a given day, a hotel made must clean between ten and twenty rooms in order to meet their daily quota, and because management holds them to a tight schedule, they usually aren't able to clean the rooms as thoroughly

as they might like to. Yeah, I read that sometimes don't get taken care of nearly as often as they probably like, including things like vacuuming the room or scrubbing the bathtub, And that's just because there isn't enough time to do these more involved every single day, so they wind up being pushed back to you know, once a

week or whatever. Yeah, that's right. And you know, while we've all heard the horror stories of how bacteria laid in the hotel remote is or the light switch or the telephone, and it is worth noting that a lot of this contamination is the fallout from these hairy schedules that housekeepers have to keep rather than any kind of laziness or oversight on their part. In fact, I think we talked about this in one of our very first episodes in our invention that we still haven't marketed yet.

But it's the hotel remote condom right where you take you take the shower cap from a hotel I still do this. Do you do this in hotel rooms whenever I go into It's one of my tips, Mango, you should have followed this. But you go in, you find the shower cap and you put it over the remote. It's just the life saver, and then you walk around with it and flip every light switch with something's wrong

with me, But that's okay. But if you think about it, people who clean hotel rooms don't have time to test how clean a surfaces, and so instead they use the same system that we do at home, and that's just to look at it and see if it looks clean. And obviously this visual assessment leaves a ton of room

for air and that's why. And this set is a little bit troubling, but it's not uncommon for about eight of hotel room services to hold at least some amount of fecal Back to eight percent no matter how clean they might look to the naked eye. But the most important thing to remember is to never ever use the glass cups you find in a hotel room under any circumstances. So I feel like this is the second time you mentioned this, and I'm really curious what's going on. I mean,

it's just that, like the house cleaners don't clean them. Yes, the second time I've mentioned it since we started recording. I was telling Tristan just before we started. But it's the cleaning that's the problem. And so there was an author and a hotel worker named Jacob Tomsky that wrote a hospitality tell all a few years ago. It's called Heads and Beds. And in the book, Tomsky points out that hotel maids don't actually have dish soap and their

housekeeping cards. So, as he explained to USA Today, quote, some housekeepers will wash the passes in the sink with hot water and shampoo, but many of them use furniture polished because it leaves the glasses spot free. How disgusting is that? I mean that seems gross but also maybe a little dangerous too. Yeah, it definitely is. I mean some housekeepers have even admitted to polishing the glasses with the same cloth that they use to dust the rest

of the room. And so while it probably goes without saying that is a really bad move mobs and sponges and dusters that you find in housekeeping cards, they have bacteria accounts that are even way worse than the dreaded hotel remote. No number of shower caps can solve this, which is pretty foul. You know, I don't want to come down too hard on hotel housekeepers because at the end of the day, they work so hard under really

difficult circumstances. Definite and uh, you know, I found the study from two thousand five where researchers looked at more than nine Las Vegas housekeepers, and what they found was

a mini neck and backpin epidemic. So of the workers studied suffered from some form the severe bodily pain, which really isn't surprising when you consider that those cards that they push up and down the hallway weighs a few hundred pounds when fully loaded with supplies, right, and you think about the task that they have to do and how repetitive they are, like lifting the mattress in every single room just to tuck in that bottom sheet, so you would think that that repeated stress has to take

its toll over some time, which is why it's such an injustice that hotel housekeepers are as underpaid as they are. I mean, the median annual salary for the profession is just unders and in many places that's at or below the poverty line for a family of three. Well, with that in mind, it actually seems like a good time to mention the secret to tipping your hotel housekeeper. And this comes from a few different anonymous maids on Reddit.

By the way, it was interesting to read this thread here, but they suggest leaving a dollar or two each day instead of a big tip at the end of your stay. And I'll admit that I'm guilty of this. I usually wait until the end of this day, so this was interesting. But this actually ensures that every maid who cleans your room gets a hip, and not just the last one

to do so before you check out. And also, if you have any unopened snacks or drinks that you want to leave behind for the housekeeping crew, those are apparently much appreciated as well. But you know, some hotels do have pretty strict policies about items left behind in guest room. So it is a good idea to leave a little note saying who the money or other goodies are actually

meant for, which is sound advice. And there's actually something else you can do if you really want to help your housekeeper out, and that's to stop turning down the housekeeping. And you are telling everything that I am guilty of sometimes. So do you mean never skip a day of housekeeping when you're at a hotel? Like, aren't you just making

more work for them by opting in for cleaning? So that's what I was thinking too, But I was reading this article from the Atlantic about how some hotel workers actually dislike their company's sustainability programs because the negative impact it has on their own workloads. So Star Wars Hotels, for instance, has this program where guests can help produce their carbon footprint by waving the housekeeping for up to three nights. But as it turns out, this was actually

a massive headache for the cleaning staff. So listen to this breakdown from the article quote. Devising a work schedule that had employees cleaning contiguous rooms became impossible with so many guests selecting the green option. This meant that a housekeeper who used to push her cart down a single hallway to clean fifteen adjacent rooms, now had to move the cumbersome apparatus from florida floor or even from building

to building in order to meet her daily quota of rooms. Moreover, housekeepers now had to clean sometimes filthy rooms that had not been maintained by housekeeping for several days. Most significantly, with fewer hours of work per week. They lost pay in the wake of so many guests electing to make a green choice. So in the end, the new initiative was such a burden that the hotel workers union in Hawaii actually got Star Wars to do away with the

program in the state. I mean, it does seem like maybe they could have just gotten some of the housekeepers together and come up with some sort of strategy, because it feels like there's got to be a middle ground that still benefits the environment without making life miserable for

these employees. Definitely, Like think about those little placards that most hotels leave in the bathroom now, like the ones that encourage you to reuse your dirty towels for as long as you can stand it, And that kind of program is great for the environment. And the hotel's water bill. But it doesn't increase or decrease the housekeeper's workload in a way that's going to cost them money or discomfort. I mean, that's true in theory, but how well do

those little placards even work? I see them, and I'm curious about that? So really well, actually, there was a study out of the University of Luxembourg a few years back that found that people tend to use fewer towels when they're told that previous guests in the same room had chosen to reuse their towels. So were they testing like different messages on placards in different rooms or what. Yeah,

so this study used three different messages. So one message just kind of praised the environmental benefits of towel reuse, and another claim that seventy of guests in this hotel usually use their towels more than once. But the last message, and the most effective by far, claimed that seventy of guests in this room usually use their towels more than once. Let me make sure I have this right. The environmental message had very little impact, which is not that big

of a surprise. But you're saying that people also didn't care what other guests, just generally in the hotel we're doing with their towels. But why do they care so much what previous guests in the same room had done with their tels? Like it just seems like a weird

form of peer pressure. It really is. But the researchers beyond the studies speculated that the third placard works so well because it made people feel like they shared something in common with the previous guests, and for some reason, this kinship made them more likely to conform to the social norm of reusing their towels. Like sharing the same hotel wasn't seen as a rare enough trait to trigger this kind of psychological response and guests, but for whatever reason,

sharing the same room was. It feels like they need to start some sort of like almost the equivalent of an alumni association for people that had stayed and that I'm gonna try it out the next time I stay at a hotel, see what see what kind of momentum I can get. But it is interesting to see where

people draw the line on this kind of thing. But all right, now that we've covered some of housekeeping secrets, I feel like we should shine the spotlight on an another member of the hotel staff that we ask way too much of, and that's the concierge. First, let's take a quick break. So you're listening to part time Genius and we're talking about the little known secrets of the

hotel concierge. So well, I don't know about you, but concierge service is probably my favorite of all the hotel amenities I never actually use, and most of the hotels I stay I don't even offer it. But I just love the idea of being assigned my own personal fixer, like someone to help find a replacement shirt for the one I've spilled spaghetti on. It's always spaghetti, I don't know why, or or to score that hard to get

dinner reservation at the last possible minute. I'm not sure concierge would appreciate being called your personal fixer, but I do agree that concierge services this pretty amazing thing. And it feels a little bit old fashioned, because you know, you think the days, a lot of people just use their smartphones to do the same kind of stuff. If you're looking for a restaurant, if you're just looking for

tips in the city, or something like that. But this idea of a dedicated concierge, it feels a little more quaint maybe now than it used to. But that's also kind of what I like about it. Yeah, so maybe a fixer wasn't a great word for it. How about an on site hotel genie? I mean, I feel like that makes less sense than the first. And what do you mean? So? Um, I don't know, think about it, like, concierge is like a mysterious, seldom seen service. Most people

don't understand it. They pull off these bizarre, almost impossible requests like magic, and they do where these cryptic symbols are on their next to signify the international secret society that they belonged to. But what was that last part that you said? Did you slip that in because you thought I was paying attention a secret society? No, it's a real thing. So the group is called the CLEFTI or and I guess that means the Golden Keys, And

it's essentially this international network of hotel concierge is. It dates back to the early twentieth century France, and the group's members are easy to spot because they all wear these golden cross keys on their lapels. Today, the group has roughly four thousand members brought across eighty different countries and over five travel destinations, and the group's official website touts the Golden Keys are in quote, literally every corner

of the world. I mean, I'll be honest, I thought this was going to get less creepy after the explanation, but that doesn't seem to be the case. But there there is something sort of endearing about their being this global brotherhood of concierges who all have each other's bags. I guess yeah. And a big part of the group's appeal is that all the members share their connections with one another. So if one member has an especially tough guest request, chances are that they can get in touch

with a fellow member for a hook up. And it's those connections that really allowed concierges to pull off some of the great requests that they get. So I was reading about this one concierge. He's worked in upscale hotels

all over the world. His name is buraka Pecky, and when he used to work in a hotel in New York, a guest wants asked him to track down the super specific barbecue sauce that was made in small batches down in Louisiana, and that probably would have been a tough enough request on its own, but sourcing the sauce was actually the easy part. So the guests simply didn't want the sauce ship to him in New York. Instaid he wanted it overnight it to his island home in the Caribbean,

nearly two thousand miles away. And he didn't just want to bottle like, he wanted enough barbecue sauce for an entire garden party which he was apparently going to host the next day or something. I mean, this sounds like your normal, run of the mill request to me, even if it has nothing to do with the city that he was in. That is so bizarre. I mean, seriously, that was a pecky able to pull this off. Yeah,

I mean, thanks to that network. And actually, in case you weren't already convinced about the power of golden keys, there's this other story I wanted to share, and this one comes from Sandra Newman, and she's the chief concierge at the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi and during her tenure there, she's helped with a ton of marriage proposals and weddings. But there's one wedding in particular that I'm

guessing she'll never forget even if she wants to. And that's because she was once approached by a couple who wanted her help planning a wedding for two of their teddy bears. Seriously, like this sounds less like the work of a genie and more just like enabling people asking for ridiculous things. So I agree, I'm not sure that teddy bear weddings are the kind of thing you want to encourage on hotel property and loose. But at any rate,

it did really happen. Um. While I doubt Newman had to call in any favors with the Golden Keys to make it happen, she did throw a pretty stellar wedding. Apparently, there were twenty five other teddy bears and attendance that day, each of which was seated with a placard. UH. They provided fresh slices of wedding pizza to enjoy during the reception to each of these teddy bears, and Newman actually described the scene in this interview with The National Um.

She says, quote, there was pizza laid out on a table for every teddy bear at the respective place, with the side play and slices of pizza for the celebration. This was a serious affair. I mean, it definitely sounds like some kind of affair. I'm not sure if serious is the word I'd use, but the het is a weird of a great story. Actually, in that same bizarre Vain, I found this great story about a hotel staff in Utah that started fielding these really odd requests from an

extremely board traveling businessman. This guy's name is Sean fitz Simmons, and for the better part of six years or so, he'd been traveling from Denver to Salt Lake City every other week. Now, somewhere in that cycle, Sean decided to make a decidedly weird request when he was booking his

room online. So here's what he asked. He asked the staff to, quote, draw a picture of what you think I look like and place it on my bed, and you thought that gold keys were This is weird, But in his defense, Sean seems to have known he did a pretty weird thing, so he later said, quote, when I checked in, the lady at the front desk looked at me so weird, and it got so awkward, and I was like, I can't ever come back here again.

But he did come back, and as it turned out, the amazing staff at this hotel decided to go along with his request, and after that the floodgates were open. Sean continued making these occasional odd ball requests during his frequent trips, and the hotel staff has been game to

try to pull these things off at every turn. So just listen to some of the things that Sean is requested to have put on his bed, and keep in mind that you can go online and actually see what the hotel came up with for each part of these.

So one affort built out of pillows, a picture of a dog dressed as a boat captain, a printed photo of Grandma Winslow from Family Matters, and then of course maybe my favorite pictures of Alfonso Ribeiro and Jeremy Jackson arranged so that they appear to be looking at each other. So that's Carlton from The Fresh Prince. And is that one of the dudes from day one? Yes? So I guess Sean is maybe a little bit stuck in the nineties, but it's still nice to see that the staff is

playing along with him, don't you think? I mean, I don't know if you knew this or not. It's kind of an open secret that hotel staff can be pretty accommodating. I think so. In fact, I think the Teddy Bear wedding and Abu Dhabi was pretty solid proof of that. But I know there are a ton of great hotel facts that we haven't gotten too yet. So what do you say we share a few more of our favorite

and today's fact off count me in. The management at Happy Guest hotel in the UK has a unique way to make their guests feel less lonely, and that's by providing them with a roommate during stays. And that roommate is a goldfish named Happy. So, according to the hotel's website, you can book Happy or a Happy stand in ahead of time so that he's waiting in your room upon arrival.

And you might be wondering, like why a goldfish? According to list Verse, the hotel's owner believes quote that this little fish provides a sense of comfort, a sounding board, and unconditional love to the guest after a hard day. All right, well, here's one thing I was surprised by It's not uncommon for business travelers to be so lonely that they act the room service waiters to come in

and eat with them. According to our friends at Mental Flaws who talked with an industry ved at a high end hotel in San Francisco, it happens more often than you'd think. So Matt once sat down to eat with Oprah Winfrey, who was eating by her self despite her sweet being filled with her own employees. And at one time he had a bite with JFK Jr. Who wanted him to join as he watched Fast Times at Ridgemont

High Not a bad gig. So one of the world's smallest hotels is in Amberg, Germany, and it has this fascinating origin story. So according to Unique Hotels, the property was built in and this is when German couples who wanted to get married actually had to own property. So someone built a tiny house in this eight foot gap between two buildings and dubbed it the marriage house. Basically, you bought the keys from a friend, you owned the house till you were married, and then you sold it

to the next couple. And today it's more of a traditional hotel, so you don't have to get married to stay there. Interesting, all right, well, are you familiar with the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas. It's that you know that pyramid that kind of shoots down that beam of light into the into the air there. Now, apparently the lightbeam is so strong that it's generated its own ecosystem

on the Vegas Strip there. You think about the bugs and the moths that are attracted to that kind of light, and it's so tremendous that they make pilgrim images to it. And then bats and even hunting birds will swoop in and travel from as far as twenty miles away to

feast on this insect buffet that's there. And according to the San Francisco Gate, people who aren't paying too much attention, they actually think that the hotel is pumping glitter into the air because it's a lot of like shining light reflecting off of these insects, so they don't realize it's just a bunch of bugs getting eaten by bats. I love that the best buffet on the Vegas Strip is

an insect prefet. It's pretty great. So in two thousand eleven, Time magazine reported that hotels in Hawaii started using these high tech towels with microchips in them, and the system helped the hotel monitor their linen so they knew when to replace towels. But more importantly, it actually helped them

keep track of towel thieves. So according to one hotel, they saved over fifteen thousand dollars and stolen towels that year thanks to the chips, which I guess makes sense, especially at a hotel where people might take the towels to the beach. So, according to Colin Powell's biography, when mikhale Gorbachev came to negotiate with Reagan and a Russian delegation state at the Madison Hotel, the mini bar got

an extreme workout. The Russians were apparently enamored with this magically stocked fridge and spent about three thousand dollars a night adjusting for inflation, just at these mini bars, and so the bill was getting so high that the head of the mission had to ask hotel management to replace the alcohol with soda. I mean, it is many bar prices side. I don't know if that's like five thousand

paca nuts. But Atlas Obscura writes at the oldest hotel in the world, which is also centered on a spot, was started in seven oh five C by an emperor's aid at the time, and it's actually been run by the same family for over fifty two different generations of descendants. That is a really interesting stat All right, Well, here's a sweet one. A guy named Sean Siepler was a tech exact and he was doing a lot of traveling when he realized that he barely used the bar of

soap that his hotel had provided. So he called down and asked what happened to the soap, and of course it was just being thrown away. That the same time, he learned that one point four million kids die each year from pneumonia or cholera, and all the diseases that could be prevented with better access to hygiene. So he decided to combine these concepts and created Clean the World.

This is a nonprofit that collects soaps from hotels, sanitizes and melts them down, repackages them, and then sends them to struggling communities. And they do this on a pretty massive scale. So, for example, the nine thousand room Sands Hotel in macau is one of the hotels that participates in the program, and as a result, Clean the World collects over seven hundred metric tons of waste and converts it into twelve million bars of soap that get distributed

to kids in sixties seven different countries. And that's pretty amazing. Twelve million bars of soap. I mean, I just assumed you were talking about like little boutique hotels, But you know, that is amazing and I think he deserved the prize for that one. And also maybe that gives us a little more insight into what Tristan is doing over there with those tiny soaps and shampoos. Yeah, he probably has about as much as Clean the World. That's it's impressive.

But but thanks so much and thanks to you guys for listening. If you have any great facts you'd like to share, any fun stories you'd like to share about your stay and hotels, we of course love to hear those from you. You can email us part Time Genius at how stuff Works dot com or hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. But as always, thanks so much

for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the important things we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and does the MIXI mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the exact producer thing. Gay Bluesier is our lead researcher, with support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams

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