ABSTRACT
The food service industry has had a long-standing awareness and use of food sanitation practices. The practice of food safety has a basis in scientific research and includes all aspects of food handling from the farm to the table. The hotel industry, on the other hand, has had a very different approach to guest room cleaning and sanitizing. Guest room cleaning practices range from the notion that a room that looks clean is clean, to one that resembles the procedures used by hospitals to clean and sanitize patient rooms. The need to prevent the spread of disease is a primary motivator for cleaning practices used in hospital patient rooms. In large part, prevention of foodborne illness is also a primary motivator in restaurants’ cleaning practices. In general however, the need for disease prevention has not been as clearly recognized for hotel rooms.
