When travelling to China and staying in budget hotels in Hangzhou, tourists are safer bringing their own towels. Video footage aired on Hangzhou TV showed that employees used guest bath towels to also clean the sink, toilet and floor.

Shanghaiist identifies the hotel where it is the practice as the Home Inn. The unsanitary practice was recorded at the hotel's branch near West Lake, while at its Southern Song Imperial Street branch, the cleaning woman used the same brush to scrub the sink, floor and toilet.

Like Us on Facebook

It is the same case at Pod Inn, although the front desk employee insisted the hotel uses different colored and sanitized cloths to wipe the floor, sink and toilet. At 7Days, an all-around cloth is used for cleaning.

The expose caused a huge public protest, but 7Days was mum. Home Inn and Pod Inn said sorry through microblogging site Weibo. The management of the two budget hotels vowed to investigate the problem. Home Inn also said it would further improve on quality control.

It is not the first time that Home Inn, which has more than 2,000 branches in 300 cities in China, has been exposed for similar unsanitary methods of cleaning guest rooms. In 2012, a reporter went to its branch in Qingdao in Shandong province and discovered the cleaning staff cleaned its toilets and drinking glasses with the same towel.

The reporter pretended to apply for a job in Home Inn. One of the cleaners tipped him that "The hotel is very dirty. I'd never want to stay here."

News of unsanitary practices would drive customers away, worsening the already weak revenue stream of domestic hotels. Skift.com reports that stocks of Home Inn and China Lodging dropped 16 percent since January. In contrast, U.S.-traded Chinese stocks increased in value by 15 percent while the Shanghai Composite Index jumped 25 percent.

Both hotel chains logged reduction by 4.4 percent and 3.5 percent fourth-quarter occupancy rates, respectively.

Commenting on these developments, Rosenblatt Securities head of China Research, warned, "The hotel business model is affected by the current economic situation; if the economy slows down, it makes hotel expansion more expensive, and that weighs on the bottom line."

Tagsbudget hotel