Marriott Guest Finds Lewd Scribble On Bulk Toiletries—Front Desk Shrugs: ‘I Saw It’ - View from the Wing

by Gary Leff on March 20, 2025

A guest at Marriott’s Courtyard Battle Creek in Michigan discovered lewd scribble on the wall-mounted toiletries that was presumably left by a previous guest. At least that’s what I am going to pretend that it is.

Housekeeping either doesn’t clean and refill the bottles, or saw it and didn’t care enough to change them out when turning the room. Since the guest reports that showing a photo to the front desk elicited a shrug, either option seems equally likely.

Lookie what I was greeted with when I hopped into the shower at the courtyard Battle Creek Michigan today! I told the front desk— showed her the picture and I got zero reaction just a literal shrug and “I’ll tell housekeeping” I asked her, “is that all you have to say?“ And she said “‍♀️ I saw it what you want me to say”

Disgusting byu/Eastern_Amount4014 inmarriott

Many hotel chains have moved from single use plastic toiletries to bulk wall-mounted toiletries. They say it’s for the environment, but it isn’t. If they just cared about reducing plastic, they’d move to single use biodegradable packaging. Instead these refillable bottles are cheaper.

There are (3) basic problems with this for the guest.

Sheraton Berlin Grand Hotel Esplanade byu/_Simon_14 inmarriott

Here’s bottles from one of my Westin stays with unmatched bottles, that were not tamper proof, where the conditioner’s spout was dirty.

Anyone could have put something in those bottles that shouldn’t have been there. Housekeeping clearly didn’t clean them, either. And what in the world were they thinking using Marriott’s own 39 Degrees North branded shampoo and conditioner at a Westin? That’s the stuff used at Marriott’s lower-end Courtyard.

There’s no question that this is the direction the industry has gone, and it’s sad. It’s about owner costs, not hospitality, but the worst part is lying to guests telling us there’s a moral reason we should accept less. Like pretending ‘not washing your towels and sheets’ is about the environment (‘make a green choice’) we’re bad people if we push back against the cost cuts.

None of us use zero resources when we travel. Nor do hotels want us to! They want us to fly out to visit on planes. Among the areas where it makes sense to scale back, though, I’m not sure that hygiene makes the most sense.

23 Comments