Study: 3-star hotels are cleaner than 4- and 5- star properties (and you'll still never use that desk again)

The next time you're at a high-dollar hotel, you might think twice about eating the mint that was left on your pillow. Or even touching your pillow. Or touching anything in the room. It's no surprise that there are germs and bacteria sharing just about every hotel room with you, but according to a new study from Travelmath, those tiny microbes are even more prevalent at 4- and 5-star properties.

Travelmath's researchers went to nine different hotels and collected 36 samples from items in each room, carefully swabbing the bathroom counter, the remote control, the phone and the desk. After analyzing the results, they discovered that the average hotel room is dirtier than an airplane (yes, even dirtier than that tray table), your home and even your kids' school — and the sampled areas in 4- and 5- star hotels were somehow filthier than those in 3-star hotels.

The amount of bacteria was measured in colony forming units (CFUs), which show the number of viable bacteria within each sample. When all 36 of the samples were averaged, the dirtiest surface was the bathroom counter, with 1,288,817 CFU per square inch, followed by the remote control, desk and phone (which just proves that no one is using — or touching — those in-room phones anymore). But the nastiest surfaces among all of those that were tested were the bathroom counters in 4-star hotels, which had a stomach-churning 2,534,773 CFU (compared with 320,007 CFU/sq.in. in a 3-star hotel).

The remote controls and the desks were also dirtier in 4- and 5-star hotels than they were in 3-star locations. Although the remote controls were grubby everywhere, there was a massive discrepancy between the desks in 3-star hotels (4,687 CFU/sq. in.) and those in 4-star (1,800,003 CFU/sq. in.) and 5-star hotels (40,030 CFU/sq. in.) and yes, business travelers, it's probably all our fault. Emily Pierce, a project manager for Travelmath, told Yahoo Travel:

"The desks could remain virtually unused in a three-star hotels. But a lot of four-star hotels are host to business travelers and they may be eating, drinking and working at that desk. Maybe sleeping. I think there’s definitely some potential for more contamination in those style hotels."

With the number of travelers that come and go in hotels, you can't expect the rooms to be as germ-free as your own well-scrubbed home, but you can take efforts to protect yourself from those bacteria. Leave a package of disinfectant wipes in your suitcase, so you'll have them while you're on the road, and you can give the counters and the remote — especially the remote — a once-over. A bottle of hand sanitizer isn't a bad idea either, so you can wash up, say, after touching the light switches and door handle before you head out to dinner (because just imagine what could be on the surfaces that weren't tested). And, if you do decide to eat that mint, you probably don't want to put it down on the desk.