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Posh hotels undercover

Published: Monday, 7 April 2008, 11:11AM

A top luxury UK hotel chain has admitted that they were appalled and shocked by the results of a Tonight undercover investigation that showed their guests were sleeping on unchanged dirty bedcovers and pillows and drinking out of glasses cleaned with the same sponge used the wipe the bathroom.

Suites in the Radisson Edwardian chain can cost up to £3,500 a night yet ITV’s Tonight programme discovered a culture of money-pinching and a disregard for customer complaints within three of the chain’s top hotels, including the five-star May Fair where celebrities such as Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Girls Aloud singer Sarah Harding have been spotted coming out and the four-star Kenilworth and Marlborough hotels in London's West End.

The Radisson Edwardian, which now has 13 hotels, had a turnover of £105 million in the 2005/2006 financial year and boasts on its website of “having the highest profit margins” of any upscale UK brand.

But despite guests paying hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of pounds a night to stay in these hotels, the Tonight investigation reveals:

*Disgusting cleaning practices in all three hotels, including staff leaving blood-stained bed covers to be used by the next guest; using dirty guest towels and linens to clean the bathrooms and drinking glasses, wiping drinking glasses with a sponge that had been sitting on the toilet brush for days; and using the toilet brush to clean the wash basin in guest rooms.

*Cockroaches and mice scurrying in rooms and kitchens

*A chef at the Marlborough hotel saying that there are mice “everywhere”

* A member of the complaints department at the Marlborough hotel saying that a guest found a RAT in their bed

*Staff, including the heads of housekeeping at all three hotels, admitting there is a shortage of cleaning equipment and fresh linens because of budget constraints.  The staff, therefore, have to make do with using dirty linens and cloths.

On its website – Radisson Edwardian boldly pledges “100 per cent guest satisfaction” to its customers. But the programme Posh Hotels Undercover: Tonight, which airs on Monday at 8pm on ITV1, shows that its complaints system is being abused. Our undercover reporter working as a cleaner was advised by a staff member of the May Fair to RIP UP any guest cards with negative comments.

A whistleblower also told Tonight: “Most of the time managers ask us to try to fill them up with positive comments. “I was happy with the state of the room’ or any comment. The head of department reads them and they’re passed to their boss.  So we do it and when finally we find one done properly by the guest --- if you see bad comments we destroy.”

Before Tonight began its investigation, a number of employees had spoken to the programme and made a series of damning claims about the company.

One of the whistleblowers who agreed to speak to Tonight on condition we concealed their identity, tells the programme:   “I decided to speak out because Radisson Edwardian like to portray themselves as a company that cares for both its guest and its workers, but in my opinion the image is a sham. One of the main problems is the company is always looking to cut corners to save money. Guests pay top prices, sometimes thousands of pounds, to stay at the hotels and yet rooms are often not cleaned properly. Many of its staff are migrants on minimum wage and are poorly trained.”

In one filming sequence, our undercover reporter asks the head housekeeper at the May Fair what she is supposed to use to clean the bathrooms as she has no separate sponges.

The housekeeper replies: “Just use the old towels. The towels that are in the room that the guests have used. I know it’s disgusting but there’s no point to me lying to you. I’d be lying to you if I said “Oh yeah you get a cloth for that.” You’re supposed to. If somebody asks you, “Yeah of course”. But it don’t work like that. Just take like everything that’s in the room.”

In another filming sequence, an undercover reporter asks a member of the complaints department at the Marlborough what she should do if guests complain about the mice.

She replies: “Act surprised and think ‘Oh s**t. Not again.’”

One of Tonight’s undercover reporters, Julia Lyubova, says that part of the problem is that cleaning staff do not get paid overtime to finish their room quota and that unrealistic pressures lead them to cut corners.

She tells Tonight: “When I first arrived it was clear that there was real pressure to finish rooms on time and quickly so that the guests can be checked in or let back into the rooms as soon as possible. The management demanded the cleaners clean up to 16 rooms in a day and they can’t go home until they’re finished so inevitably some shortcuts will be taken.”

Tonight showed footage to Judith West, a former chair of the British Cleaning Council and who has been in the cleaning business for more than 30 years.

After viewing scenes featuring staff using the same sponges to clean the bathroom and the cups and for numerous rooms, she says:“You are transmitting whatever is in that room, in the toilet, on the basin, cups, everything. There’s no thought of hygiene and safety for the guests at all. That’s even more appalling if the management knows about it and are not supplying the right tools. Common sense tells you that you use different cloths. Common sense tells you, you don’t clean with the same cloth for x number of rooms. Because at the end of the day I certainly wouldn’t want to go and stay in that hotel.”

After viewing covert film of a trainer at the May Fair advising our undercover reporter to use a toilet brush to clean the sinks, Judith says: Well I’d have to tell you I’d sack her. I really would. And she’s a supervisor training other people. There’s no common sense in it. I mean I wouldn’t do it in my home. You wouldn’t do it in your home that is absolutely unbelievable.”  

Commenting in about the standards of hygiene and training at all three hotels shown in Tonight’s footage, she says: “I do have to say the standards at the Radisson Edwardian absolutely horrify me. The lack of equipment, the lack of training and the lack of hygienic standards in these hotels just beggars belief.”

After Tonight detailed the findings to them in a report, Radisson Edwardian told Tonight in a statement that:

They were “appalled” and “shocked” by our findings.

They said their guests were entitled to expect the “highest standards of cleanliness” and that in certain areas they’d “failed to apply them”.

The company blamed the poor hygiene and cleaning practices on a breakdown in training and supervision and individual employees “disregarding codes of practice.”

They accepted there’d been “particular problems” at the Marlborough Hotel due to disruption caused by the refurbishment programme.

And added they’d instituted a “comprehensive review” of their cleaning and hygiene practices to ensure that all their rooms are “prepared to the highest possible standard”.