The best & worst hotels for the covid cautious

Or, how to *not* book a hotel room that fills up with pot smoke and whatever else the next room exhaled.

For paid subscribers only, I’m posting a major pro-tip for how to find fantastic covid-cautious hotels, particularly when you have long layovers, a late night flight, or experience a travel delay. It’s also a method for majorly upgrading your vacation experience on a budget!

It was a big work week, traveling from Seattle to Washington, DC. My client was reimbursing me for travel and I got to pick my hotel. This, I thought, was going to make a long, exhausting week so much better—I could find a safer hotel in terms of indoor air and avoiding covid. I’d stayed at The Maderna once before, the old school hotel was one of the few DC hotels with operable windows (They opened about an inch on each side and some rooms have full terraces!!). But my relief at booking the Maderna was an incoming nightmare. I checked in late at night, found the room had 800 ppm of CO2, and couldn’t figure out why. I opened the terrace door wide open, the CO2 dropped, my bedside HEPA filter was on, and I went to sleep. I woke up to a room filled with pot and other chemical-smelling smoke. The neighboring room housed someone who was smoking a lot of drugs. And the hotel management wouldn’t do a single thing about it. The bathroom vent (coupled with air pressure) was passively pushing the next room’s air into my room. It was a bad situation, full of covid (and other) risks. Since the Moderna wouldn’t kick out my next door neighbors, I moved hotels. To avoid this issue, I now double check if a hotel is listed as a pot-friendly hotel (to avoid it, as smokers want operable windows for reasons that make covid-safe, cleaner air travel more difficult) and use tip number three on this week’s list.

Here’s my priorities for hotels which serve my covid-cautious needs:

1. Whenever possible, the hotel room has exterior-facing doors. Think mid-century motor lodges. Why? Because a CDC study found that covid traveled down hotel corridors when guests briefly opened and closed their hotel room doors, meaning that even many feet away from an infected person’s room, the virus could waft down the hall and through your opened door. But, finding a great motor lodge isn’t always possible. They’re older, and notably, seem to have been designed in an era when senior architects might have survived the Spanish Flu—or been trained by schools that carried on lessons from the Spanish Flu, namely, that ventilation and reducing indoor air exchange reduced the risk of viral transmission. We saw hotels seal themselves up in the 1980’s and 1990’s, but these older, safer-design hotels, with individual heaters (or even in-ceiling radiant heat and AC), still exist. If you’re lucky, you’ll find updated “retro” hotels like the Ace Hotel and Swim Club in Palm Springs, the Jupiter Hotel in Portland, Oregon, and the historic Captain Whidbey Inn on Whidbey Island, Washington.
   
   These mid-century gems are (unbeknownst to their hipster hotel staff), perfect for reducing covid risk. Simply check in, air out your room by opening the doors and windows, and place your HEPA filter in the bathroom. In about 15 minutes, the CO2 levels of your room will drop dramatically, exiting any air the previous guest or hotel team member left in the room a few hours ago. (In case you didn’t know, covid can circulate live, indoors, for 16 hours!) Ask hotel management to place a “no service” notice for housekeeping and the teams that check minibars every day, then place a do-not-disturb sign on the door knob. Be sure to leave your HEPA on high in case staff do come in. I generally air out the room if I’ve been gone much of the day. There’s just too much likelihood that staff have come in when you’re away, even if you’ve specifically asked them to not do so.

2. Failing a mid-century motor lodge, find a hotel with operable windows, meaning windows that open. Or, better yet, a terrace, which will allow more air exchange. It’s not always safe for your security (or those of small children) to leave windows and terraces open, particularly on first floors due to crime risk. So, you’ll want to air out a room when you’re present, or when you deem other safety concerns low risk, or have tools like the window only opens a few inches. From my travels to Barbados, I’ve learned the important lesson about theft by “fishing,” when theives use fishing hooks and wire to cast towards a purse or valuable, reeling it towards the gap in a window. So if you’re away from a propped/secured open window, avoid leaving valuables nearby windows accessible from first floor or otherwise theif-accessible windows.

   

   
   ”Operable windows” is not a search term on hotel booking websites, coupled with a trend in non-operable windows amongst newer hotels, finding an operable window hotel room is the toughest part of travel planning. You’ll want to look at exterior photos of hotels, searching for terraces, interior photos showing windows with handles. Then, you’ll want to call the hotel front desk and ask if they have operable windows and how far the window opens (I’ve checked into rooms where the window and been re-engineered to only open a half inch.) Confirm terraces open. A recent hotel I booked showed terraces, with photos of the doors open. I arrived to find my terrace door had been welded shut. Certain US cities like Washington, DC and Los Vegas are particularly difficult to find operable windows, so calling the front desk and not the reservation line, is a must before booking.

3. I know this sounds weird, but, bring a plastic bag and a roll of painters tape. On a surf trip to Oahu in 2022, I was delighted to book a Hilton which had exterior doors, terraces, a great outdoor pool, and was a 1 block walk to the beach. After taking lunch on my room’s terrace, I came back inside to find my room filled with a strong smell of bleach. Talking with hotel management, we discovered that the cleaning staff had left a bucket of bleach in the neighboring bathroom. The ceiling vent in my bathroom directly connected with the next room—with no filter in between. Every scent coming from the next room was a sign of air exchange between the rooms. I sealed up the vent with plastic and painters tape, and called Oahu’s environmental health agency (they inspect the safety of human environments like pools, restaurants, and hotels). Which, I know, sounds a little over the top, but I was curious, was this normal? It turns out, yes, hotel designs are permitted to passively share indoor air, unfiltered, between bathrooms. So bring that wall-safe painters tape and a plastic bag to seal off the passive air vent in your bathroom. Before leaving home, test that the tape is truly wall safe.

   

4. Hotel HVACs (which are serving a building or part of a hotel) generally have an air system which pulls air from outdoors, on their roof, and then draws that air into individual rooms. The HVAC both pushes air that comes into your room and pulls air out of your room, also vented to the roof. This is why, for the most part, I do not alter the HVAC vents in my hotel rooms. However, if you’re concerned about recirculated air from a hotel HVAC system, it’s useful to bring an Aranet CO2 monitor with you. Outdoor air hovers somewhere between 400 and 475 PPM of CO2 (on the higher end when you’re near roadways). Under 600 is relatively low risk for viral transmission, and the CDC recommends indoor environments stay under 800 PPM of CO2. Why is this helpful? Well, if you check into your room and it’s at over 800 PPM, you’ve likely got other people’s air in your room. You need to air it out to drop CO2 and potential viral load that comes with that CO2. If you find the CO2 rises while you’re away from your room, you might have a room that has a lot of air exchange with other rooms. Below, a photo of a modern hotel I stayed at in Washington, DC, which is now my favorite because CO2 levels stayed consistently low in the room (even if I didn’t have the terrace door open) while I was in it. This meant the HVAC system was doing an exceedingly good job of pulling in outdoor air and exhausting my own CO2 that I was breathing out. This is both a sign of low covid risk and great for human cognition. You’re going get your best sleep and do your best work in a space like this.

   

5. Got a hotel room door that faces an interior hallway? Place a rolled up towel under your door. Some hotel rooms are designed to exchange AC-cooled air under their doors, to help cool the hallways. To limit air exchange, roll up a bathroom towel and place it firmly against the bottom of your door. (This is another tip I learned from Oahu’s environmental health engineer).

6. In a recommendation that will be no surprise to anyone in the covid-cautious community, wear a D-95, N-95, or other high filtration mask of your preference in indoor common areas of the hotel.

7. Book hotels with lots of outdoor amenities. You want to get your money’s worth out of a hotel. While outdoor amenities are seasonal, it’s relatively easy on hotel websites or with a call to a prospective hotel to find out what amenities are open during your stay. At a recent trip to the Washington Hilton, their famed outdoor pool was closed for the season—but the next hotel I stayed at, the Intercontinental Hotel in the Warf had an amazing view from their year round, rooftop pool! From April through late October, they have outdoor restaurant and bar seating, and the neighborhood is idyllic for outdoor activities and dining. The hotels are virtually the same price, but I got a lot more value out of the Intercontinental.

Thanks for reading this far! I hope my first post with travel tips for the covid-cautious has been informative! As always, take the precautions that are appropriate for you. This post and all my posts aren’t medical advice, and I’m not a public health practitioner. Covid, and all viruses, are sneaky. The best we can do is try to reduce our risk while leading the fullest lives we can—-and how one defines reduced risk and a full life varies widely.

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