10+ Weird Things Hotel Guests Do That Leave Staff Speechless

Hotel guests can often bring unexpected diversity to the hotel staff’s daily routine. From different preferences to weird needs, each guest adds a unique flavor to the hospitality experience. This diversity can challenge the hotel staff to be adaptable and flexible, ensuring they provide top-notch service to a wide range of individuals.

“Oh, I must have made a mistake when booking.”

“I work at a hotel, and a guest made a request — a framed photo of shirtless Mark Wahlberg.”

Many guests book multiple rooms in a hotel and a couple of days before the trip, they decide which one they are going to take. Of course, they often forget to cancel their other reservations.

Other travelers book the cheapest option, even if the room they actually want is only $4 more expensive. So, they end up complaining and asking the staff to change their room. And it’s really hard to do this if the hotel is fully booked.

• Once, I saw a reservation for several rooms from one person. I decided to call the guest to find out how close to each other they wanted their rooms to be. And it turned out that they only needed one room, but they couldn’t decide which one they liked best. Fortunately, we found out in advance and were able to cancel the other ones.
• At our hotel, the cheapest rooms have 2 single beds and are on the second floor, right above the bar. And a very steep staircase led up to this area. We described it all on the website. But it was useless — people kept missing this information. Several times, I was able to move the guests to better rooms. But during one high season, the hotel was full and a young couple with a child booked this room. Of course, they wanted a different one, but I wasn’t able to offer them anything — all the other rooms were occupied.

“We’ll just sleep here.”

“We left this on the bed of our hotel room when we checked out, and left a note on the other side saying “Happy Halloween”.

In most hotels, there is an exact check-in time — usually, it’s 2 p.m. Of course, airlines and railways don’t adjust their schedules accordingly, and you can’t always put the guests in their rooms before 2 p.m. The check-out time is usually 11 a.m. and guests are supposed to leave the rooms before this time or the cleaners won’t have enough time.

• Guests arrived several hours before the check-in time. The room wasn’t ready and I asked them to wait on the couches. They didn’t mind, they took out blankets from their luggage, lied down, and fell asleep. Other visitors were looking at them awkwardly and were trying to talk quietly.
• A guest wanted to stay for one more day. He didn’t have enough money in his bank account, but he said he would figure something out. For a couple of hours, we waited for his daughter but she never showed up. The man left the hotel but his stuff was still in the room. So, the cleaning ladies had to pack his stuff for him! He returned after an hour, he still had no money, and asked us to pay for his cab. © CanaGeekGurl / Reddit

“I’ve paid for everything.”

“The room I had to clean today.”

In most hotels, there are accessories for guests — free items and things that are not free. The former are shampoo, soap, coffee, and tea. And the latter are the towels and the robes. Even though people pay for their stay at the hotel, this doesn’t mean that they are buying everything that’s in it.

When a guest leaves their room and takes everything they can pack, there is a chance that the hotel will contact the local police. If you really like a robe, you can ask about its price and buy it as a souvenir.

• A guest walked through the lobby and out the door to the garage with a huge, ugly lamp partially covered in a hotel towel. When I stopped him in the garage, he also had a bunch of cheese he had taken off the cheese table in a banquet room and the Gideon bible from his room. I let him keep the bible. I figured he needed it. © Bill McCaslan / Quora
• 2 charming ladies stayed at our hotel for an entire month. Every day, they politely asked us to bring them more shampoo bottles and soap. Because these things were included in the cost of the room, we gave them this stuff. On the last day, I went into their room with small souvenirs because they had stayed at our place for such a long time. And I was so surprised when I saw 40 bottles of our shower gel and shampoo packed in their suitcase.

“Oh, there are 6 of us, not 2. But we’ll manage.”

“Guest in the hotel I work in has only been here three days.”

When there end up being 4 guests instead of the 2 that were expected, the clerk gets scared. This means there’s going to be a long conversation. The guests will keep saying that they don’t need any additional beds, that there’s enough room, and that they will fit in the room perfectly.

• 4 guests came in instead of 2. I happily offered them a second room, but they said they didn’t need it. The girls said, “We’re slender, we’ll fit in.” Even though I tried to explain to them that they couldn’t all stay together, they forced me to give them the room. After they left, the room looked as if a hurricane had hit it.
• There was a couple that was renting a suite, which was our biggest room. Sure, it was easily the most expensive room that was in our hotel. What was strange is that our employee noticed that different people went into that same room that night. We thought that they were having a meeting or something, and kinda let it go. But the next morning, we found out that there were 20 people in this room for 2. They slept in sleeping bags on the floor. © Rudy / Quora
• One couple checked in without telling the hotel’s front desk that one of their carry-on bags contained their pet snake. The front desk found out after the woman called from her room and explained that the snake escaped as they were feeding it and that they couldn’t find it in the room and needed help. After about 15 minutes, the 3-foot-long snake was located, wrapped around the underside of the bed frame. Everyone’s worst nightmare was that the snake had made it through the central air vent. Thankfully that was not the case. © Noel Raphael / Quora

“I thought it was just a cloth.”

“Guests keep throwing our towels out after using them. I just don’t get it.”

Some visitors don’t really care about the hotel property. Decorative pillows and blankets go straight onto the floor, some people clean their shoes with the face towels, and the beach towels go onto the floor right at the door. Some women even use these towels to remove their makeup.

It not only makes hotel owners spend more money on cleaning and buying new supplies, but it also leaves a very bad impression on guests.

• A girl came to our hotel and the next morning, she asked us to change the bedsheets because they were really dirty. And it was true — the pillowcase had some orange stains on it. We couldn’t figure out what it was and we were sure that everything was clean when the guest moved in. But then we noticed that the girl’s hair color had changed overnight. She had dark hair, but then it became ginger! It was the hair dye that left the stains. Of course, we had to throw away the pillowcases.
• A guy claimed his pit bulls were service animals, so we let him stay with the dogs. On the morning he checked out, one of the dogs defecated from one side of the room to the other. We entered the room and discovered that he had tried to clean up the mess with the bedding and towels. We made him pay a fine. © Bodhi Ench / Quora
• It’s unbelievable that many visitors use the towels and bedsheets in their room to clean their shoes. Generally, it is not possible to get rid of these stains from plain white linen. Another very irritating habit is taking the batteries out of the remotes. © Prachi / Quora

“I feel at home here.”

“I work in a hotel, we found this random collection of items outside a guest room today...”

Many people think of their hotel rooms as their second home. Actually, some hotel owners do everything to make their guests feel this way. But it’s nothing more than just an exaggeration. When visitors start moving the furniture and changing the decor in the room — it’s really irritating for all of the hotel workers.

• A nice couple was staying at our hotel and asked for a clothes hanger. I said I would bring some extra ones. They said it wasn’t a problem. The next morning, I hear a loud noise coming from their room. I went in to check and see if everything was okay. It turned out that the guy was hammering nails into the wall to hang clothes on them.
• Our guests raid the maid’s trolley for amenities. And they mistake the safe for a microwave. © Daniel Wilson / Quora
• I’m shocked by guests who think they can come into the restaurants or food service areas barefoot because they are staying at the hotel. And then they have the nerve to get deeply offended when they are told they have to put on shoes. © Ren Daniel / Quora

“This is just a snack.”

In many hotels, it is prohibited to take food into the room, and there is a reason for this. First, you might leave a stain on the floor or the bedsheets. And second, the food might attract ants and other insects that are hard to get rid of.

Some guests even try to cook in their rooms. Very often, kettles are the first to suffer during these experiments. They are not designed to cook spaghetti or shrimp in them. And the smell might irritate other visitors.

• An irritated guest comes to the front desk and tells me that the kettle in her room is broken. I promised her that we would replace it and asked her to give me the broken one. She gives me the kettle and I see shrimp floating in it. I ask the lady, “Why are there shrimp inside?” And she tells me that she wanted to make lunch. I told her that the kettle wasn’t meant to be used like this and then she asked me what the kettle was for.
• A fire alarm went off in the room. Everyone was panicking. I rushed into the room to check and see what happened, and I saw a nervous-looking family. I saw a portable stove on the floor with a frying pan full of meat on it. We had a very long conversation.

“But I’m going to the pool.”

“Somebody left their wet, dirty towels from the pool at our hotel in the elevator.”

Some visitors feel so comfortable in their hotels, that they will walk around wearing anything they like. This is especially true for the hotels that are near the sea. There, guests walk around wearing beach clothes or swimsuits, no matter where they are at the moment: near the pool or in the restaurant. This is uncomfortable not only for the other visitors, but also for the staff.

• We had a very good-looking gentleman stay with us. He was wearing an expensive jacket, and he had some really elegant shoes and a leather suitcase. But in the morning, he impressed us even more. He wore just his swim shorts when he came to breakfast. Nothing else. Other visitors even stopped eating when they saw him. We had to ask him to wear more clothes when he appeared in public from then on.

“I want something you don’t have.”

“Someone couldn’t be bothered to find the bottle opener in the hotel... they used the edge of the table instead.”

Some guests are hard to forget thanks to their unusual requests. It seems that they go on vacation just to do something they can’t do in their regular lives.

• In our hotel, there was a main building and then several houses located right on the seashore. In the morning, one of the ladies who was staying in one of the houses, came to the desk looking really tired. She asked me to make the sea quieter. Like, she couldn’t sleep because of the waves. I told her that I could only offer a room further from the beach. With a discount and a free breakfast. But I couldn’t make the sea quieter.
• A guest ordered coffee. When I served her the coffee she asked for, she looked at it and said, “This is not real coffee”
  — Excuse me, mam?
  — I want coffee from a coffee maker.
  — It’s from a coffee maker.
  — You don’t have a coffee maker.
  — We do, it’s right there (behind my back).
  — No, it’s not. Make me a different cup or return my money.
  — Madame, I’ll happily return your money, but you first need to try this coffee and complain about the taste. Because there’s the coffee maker, there are coffee beans, and you got a cup of coffee made from the beans. It’s in your hands.
• This did not happen to me, but to my step-father. He owned a hotel, and one morning around 2:30 a.m. a guest called him and wanted help getting an engagement ring. My step-father explained to him that no stores were open at that time in the morning, and that he could not help him out. © Tom Kaiser / Quora
• A guest tells me: “Install air conditioning in the bathroom, and add ice in the pool.” I work in a hotel in Costa Rica, in a tropical climate. © John Oroszi / Quora
• A lady booked a room and she thought she was going to see the waterfall (near the hotel) from it. When I told her it wouldn’t be visible, she asked me to move the waterfall, so she could see it. © Traditional-Anarchy / Reddit
• Guests in one particular room ordered food delivery every hour from different food places in the area. Chinese, pizza, Italian, subs, more pizza, even quarts of ice-cream. This went on for about 7–8 hours before staff went to the room to see what was going on. It turned out that the two guests who checked in were sneaking people from their swim team into the room through the sliding window. Their room was on the second floor, but below was the rooftop of the hotel lounge, which could be easily climbed with a broken bar high top table that was out in back. © Noel Raphael / Quora

“I came here to rest.”

“A guest left this note for a housekeeper at the hotel I work for.”

People look forward to their vacations for months and they want it to be worth the wait. Unfortunately, sometimes these people are unforgettable. And that is not always something pleasant. In hotels, there is a rule that requires you to be quiet after 10 or 11 p.m.

• We had a “fun” group of guests. They slept in the room during the day and nobody ever saw them before nighttime. The fun started at night which made some other visitors complain. Anyway, on the day when they had to leave, the guys themselves were so tired that they couldn’t even pack their own bags and were running late for their plane. The entire hotel helped them pack and we were relieved when they finally got on the bus to the airport.

“Why don’t you serve this for breakfast?”

“My friend works in a hotel and found this in a coffee maker. The things in the middle are maggots. My friend is housekeeping aid and he said they think a person that stayed in the room did that. They don’t know why and thats the part of the maker where water goes in and not even the beans or anything.”

Breakfasts are always a lot of trouble. There are always guests who are not happy about what is being served. It could be bad food, they might want more variety, or the timing is just not right. There are people that want breakfast even after lunchtime.

• One couple ordered breakfast for several days and they asked if we had a special breakfast for vegetarians. I told them that we didn’t have that and just listed the dishes that were vegetarian that we could offer. I recommended another hotel nearby that had a bigger menu. But they decided not to cancel their reservation. Of course, they were disappointed with our breakfast. We didn’t have soy milk and we didn’t have enough vegetables. The guy wanted peppers and eggplant. We only had carrots, cucumbers, and tomatoes. They were furious and we were also suffering. They ended up writing a terrible review.
• Just last week I was looking at the breakfast area on camera at work. There were two grown men getting coffee. One of them was holding the sugar container and licking it! I went out there and confronted him, he claimed he spoke no english. I threw it away and glared at him. © Christi Love / Quora

“Have you seen my kid?”

Of course, parents want to get some rest when they’re on vacation. And this is really hard to do with a child in your hands. In cases like this, it’s better to choose a big hotel with a special group of babysitters and activities for kids. In smaller hotels, these services don’t exist. It’s definitely a bad idea to leave a child in a pool or on the playground unattended. And there’s no way the hotel staff can watch each and every child.

• In our hotel, there was a small playground for kids. It had a plastic house, nothing special. I was going by and I saw a 5-year-old kid sitting on the roof of the house, and a 7-year-old pounding on the walls trying to get the kid to fall off. Other kids were just watching. I went looking for the parents. They were off drinking coffee on the beach. I told them that their kids were breaking the playground and that someone could get hurt. The mother just told me that they decided to give their child more freedom. I told them that the cost of the playground would be included in their bill and that I hoped that the kids had medical insurance.
• Once, we had a mother with 2 children. During the first 2 days, the kids reprogrammed the safe and locked their mother’s wallet inside, hid her cell phone under the couch pillow in the restaurant, and lost a lot of her clothes. Our staff had never been this concentrated before.

Hotel guests, often unaware of the intricate work happening behind closed doors, benefit from the staff’s commitment to service excellence. Some hotel hacks are a testament to the staff’s ingenuity and dedication. From efficiently folding towels and arranging amenities to crafting personalized recommendations.