Whether on holiday or on a business trip, what is important to guests in a hotel is a clean room with – and that is essential – a hygienically clean bathroom. This is one of the findings of a recent survey commissioned by Kaldewei.
When asked about the most important feature of a hotel, almost two-thirds of people surveyed (62%) named a clean bathroom. The next important feature for hotel guests is a large, comfortable bed (26% of respondents) and then the other equipment (12% of respondents).
For travelers, there are many disturbing factors in hotels that diminish the joy of a hotel stay.
The bathroom is number 1 in the hotel room. If the hotel guests are satisfied with the bathroom, there is a very good chance that they will come back and recommend the hotel through social media platforms.
The fact that the most important criterion for guest satisfaction is the room, where the hotel guests spend on average only 6 to 30 minutes per day, may seem surprising. But the results of the survey make it clear: the bathroom is the basis of a hotel's success.
95% of the respondents said that if they had an unhygienic bathtub in their hotel room, they would not book the hotel again. In addition, 21% have already given a hotel a worse rating on the Internet due to deficiencies in the bathroom. More than a third (36%) have already decided against a hotel because of the lousy bathroom ratings on the net.
Whether there is hair in the drain, mold in the joints or the floor is dirty: an overwhelming majority of people described a poorly cleaned hotel bathroom as "very annoying" or "quite annoying" (99%). For 98%, mold stains on the surface of the shower, bathtub or washstand were an eyesore.
Other problems that the respondents named as very annoying were the mold stains on the shower floor and drain, insufficient water jet, and poor drainage in the shower. Many guests are also annoyed by discoloration and damage to bathroom equipment.
Although the bathroom is so important for the success of a hotel, every second respondent has already had bad experiences with defects: 51% have already been confronted with mold stains in the joints and 49% with insufficiently cleaned bathrooms during their stay.
Choosing the right bathroom solutions is an investment that pays off in the long term because, apart from hygiene (95%), bathroom equipment is a decisive factor in booking, according to more than half of those surveyed (56%). 62 percent, and thus the clear majority of the study participants, would even pay more money for a hotel if the bathrooms were modern and well equipped.
Hotel guests have also become more aware of the issue of sustainability: half of those surveyed would prefer not to use plastics in their furnishings and instead use natural, recyclable materials. According to the study, 62% would then be prepared to pay more money for their room.