A laundry service in China is giving guests a new way to see how clean their sheets are, and it may just put an end to those sleepless nights.
Soon hotel guests in China will be able to scan their sheets to make sure they’re clean. Image by Guido Mieth/Getty Images
It sounds like the next best thing to pulling out a black light and giving the room the once-over. According to China’s state-run media outlet Xinhua, hotel guests in the city of Wuhan will soon be able to track their linens’ history simply by scanning a QR code. The Hubei province capital’s first green washing base is planning to embed towels, sheets, and quilts with a thin heat- and water-resistant chip, scannable via cell phone, allowing hotels to control for quality and guests to assuage their germiest fears.
Depending on the results, you might not want to do breakfast in bed. Image by Getty Images
Historically speaking, the squeamish may have legitimate cause for concern. Back in 2017, the tourism authority was forced to comment when an undercover video showed staff at several Beijing luxury hotels circumventing basic standards of cleanliness, failing to scrub toilets or replace bed sheets between guests. And the following year, an exposé revealed that workers across 14 big-name properties in Beijing, Shanghai, and several provinces were cleaning the bathrooms with the same towels and sponges they used on the drinking glasses.
The new technology—which Shanghai-based site Sixth Tone reports will roll out in October—should be a boon for the city’s 3,000-plus hotels, the majority of which use offsite laundry companies to handle the wash. According to the Global Times, nearly 73% of respondents in an online poll want the technology to go nationwide, so it could be implemented on a much larger scale if it’s successful in Wuhan.
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