How clean are Japanese love hotels? Apparently not very

We all love going to a love hotel. You get to feel a bit naughty, stealing away for a tryst in the middle of the afternoon, or it’s just a fun way to end a date or have a one-night-stand.

With its amenities and fun facilities, especially in terms of the bed, lighting, and bathing, a love hotel is the kind of place where things seem to start and end at the door: everything you do inside can be kept hidden from the world or the rest of your life.

Little wonder, then, that they are the places of choice for sex workers to meet clients or for couples having an affair to meet.

But you may never want to use a love hotel ever again, if the behind-the-scenes secrets shared by a self-professed employee at a hotel are true.

TikTok user minamihata has made a series of short videos (in Japanese) answering questions and spilling the beans on what happens at a love hotel when the guests aren’t around.

Apparently, at love hotels (or at least some hotels), the cleaning staff will simply wipe the bath down with the used towels from the previous guests. Though those guests probably just used the towels once to dry themselves after a shower or bath, it’s hardly hygienic.

Even worse, and what minamihata says shocked him the most when he started working at a hotel, he claims they even use the towels to clean the cups!

As you can imagine, love hotels need to process a lot of guests to be profitable. That means people coming and going (with the emphasis on the “coming” part) for short stays of just two or three hours, before vacating the room for the next guests. Staff must work quickly and efficiently to clean the room, change the sheets, and get it ready for the next paying guests, who may be waiting in the lobby on a busy night (for example, Fridays and Saturdays). This encourages staff to cut corners, no doubt, not least because they guess many couples won’t know or check too carefully in their rush to get their clothes off and get down to business.

Minamihata, who says he has worked at about eight hotels, isn’t only about shocking people. He also provides useful tips, such as that you should always close both of the two doors at the entrance to a room in a love hotel. Otherwise, the noise of your love-making is surprisingly audible in the corridor outside!

And he also claims that mornings are the best time to use a love hotel if you are concerned about hygiene, because it’s when the real cleaning staff will do a thorough job on the room (especially the bath) after the overnight guests have checked out.