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I Cleaned Resort Rooms In Punta Cana For 11 Years. The Detectors The Hotels Show Inspectors Are Not The Detectors In Your Room. I Need American Tourists To Know What's Actually Behind The Walls.
"If you're traveling to a Caribbean resort or Airbnb this year — please read every word."
Maribel C.,
Former Resort Housekeeping Supervisor
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What I Learned Working For The Resorts
I worked as a housekeeping supervisor at all-inclusive resorts in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, for 11 years.
I cleaned the rooms American families slept in.
I am writing this from the United States now. I left the resort industry three years ago after I could not keep doing the job knowing what I knew.
I want every American family planning a Caribbean vacation to read this before they pack their bags.
There are tourists dying in the rooms I used to clean. The resorts know. The Dominican government knows. The American tour operators know.
Nobody is telling you.
I am telling you.
The Two Detectors
Here is the first thing every American tourist needs to understand.
Most Caribbean and Mexican resorts have two sets of CO detectors.
The first set is what the property displays during inspections. These are the detectors mounted prominently in hallways, lobbies, and public spaces. They are tested when inspectors visit. They have batteries. They function.
The second set is what is actually in your room — if anything is in your room at all.
In my 11 years cleaning rooms at three different Punta Cana resorts, the rooms I cleaned had CO detectors approximately 30 percent of the time. The other 70 percent had nothing.
When a detector was present, it was usually a basic residential unit. Battery often dead. Sometimes the test button didn't work. Sometimes the unit had been mounted but never connected.
I once found a CO detector that had been spray-painted to match the wall. It was decorative. It contained no functioning components.
The hotel showed inspectors the hallway detectors.
The hotel charged American families $400 per night for rooms with no functional CO detection.
This was not at a low-end property. This was at a resort frequently named in "best of" travel publications.
The Family I Could Not Save
I want to tell you about a family I cleaned around in 2017.
An American family of four checked into the resort on a Saturday. Father, mother, two daughters in their early teens.
The room I cleaned for them was on the ground floor. It had a small bathroom with a wall-mounted gas water heater for showers.
I had been working that resort for six years at that point. I knew which rooms had the problem water heaters. The ground floor rooms on the south side had been installed by a contractor that did poor work.
I knew the room I was preparing for this family had a water heater that probably leaked CO.
I told my supervisor.
My supervisor told me to do my job.
The family checked in that afternoon.
By Wednesday morning, the mother was complaining of constant headaches. The 13-year-old daughter had been throwing up. The 15-year-old daughter was confused.
The hotel manager attributed it to the change in food and water. He recommended bottled water and a less spicy diet.
Friday morning the housekeeper sent to clean the room found the entire family unconscious.
The mother and the 13-year-old daughter died at the local hospital that afternoon.
The father and the 15-year-old daughter survived after extensive hospitalization.
The Dominican coroner ruled the deaths "respiratory complications.
The resort issued a statement expressing condolences.
The water heater in that room was replaced quietly the following week.
No CO detector was added.
The room was rented to another family that weekend.
I am writing this in part because I knew that water heater was dangerous and I cleaned the room anyway.
I cannot undo that.
But I can tell you what I know.
The Three Things The Resort Industry Does Not Want You To Know
In 11 years of cleaning resort rooms, I learned three things that the industry actively conceals from American tourists.
One: Gas water heaters in bathrooms are common and frequently malfunctioning.
Many Caribbean and Mexican resorts use point-of-use gas water heaters mounted directly in or beside bathrooms. They are inexpensive. They allow each room to have hot water without a central system.
They are also dangerous when not properly installed and maintained.
When the venting fails — which it does regularly in tropical climates due to corrosion — CO accumulates in the bathroom while a guest showers.
I have personally found water heaters with rusted-through vents at all three resorts where I worked. In each case, my supervisor instructed me to keep working and not report the unit to maintenance.
The maintenance budget is determined by what guests complain about. CO is invisible. Guests do not complain about it. Maintenance does not service it.
Two: Generator exhaust is a major hazard during outages.
The generators at the resorts where I worked were placed in locations chosen for cost, not for safety. Exhaust vented near restaurant patios. Near pool decks. Near ground-floor room windows.
During a 2018 outage at one resort where I worked, an American couple in a ground-floor room reported feeling sick. The generator had been running for 4 hours. Their room was 30 feet from the generator exhaust.
The hotel told them they had the flu. They were transferred to a different room. They never knew why they had felt sick.
That was a near-miss the property documented internally as "guest complaint about flu."
It was CO poisoning.
Two: Generator exhaust is a major hazard during outages.
Power outages happen multiple times per week at most Caribbean resorts. Backup generators run during these outages.
The generators at the resorts where I worked were placed in locations chosen for cost, not for safety. Exhaust vented near restaurant patios. Near pool decks. Near ground-floor room windows.
During a 2018 outage at one resort where I worked, an American couple in a ground-floor room reported feeling sick. The generator had been running for 4 hours. Their room was 30 feet from the generator exhaust.
The hotel told them they had the flu. They were transferred to a different room. They never knew why they had felt sick.
That was a near-miss the property documented internally as "guest complaint about flu."
It was CO poisoning.
Three: Vacation rentals are worse than hotels.
I now have friends who clean Airbnbs and private vacation rentals throughout the Dominican Republic. They tell me the situation in vacation rentals is dramatically worse than in major resorts.
Major resorts at least have inspectors who occasionally walk through. Vacation rentals have no oversight at all.
The host's CO detector — if any — is whatever they bought at the local hardware store. Often expired. Often the wrong type. Often was never connected to anything.
When you book a vacation rental abroad, you are trusting an unknown host with your family's lives.
The host has no incentive to spend money on safety equipment that cuts into profits.
You will not know the equipment failed until your family does not wake up.
Why Your Hotel Detector Will Not Save You
If your hotel room has a CO detector at all, it is almost certainly a basic residential unit designed to UL 2034 standards.
Under those standards, the detector is allowed to wait up to 240 minutes before alarming at 70 PPM. It is allowed to ignore concentrations below 30 PPM completely.
These specifications were written for residential applications in the United States. They were not written for resort rooms with gas water heaters two feet away from where you sleep.
In the family I described, CO levels in the bathroom reached estimated 200+ PPM during morning showers. The room CO levels accumulated over four days to lethal concentrations by Friday.
Under those standards, the detector is allowed to wait up to 240 minutes before alarming at 70 PPM. It is allowed to ignore concentrations below 30 PPM completely.
These specifications were written for residential applications in the United States. They were not written for resort rooms with gas water heaters two feet away from where you sleep.
In the family I described, CO levels in the bathroom reached estimated 200+ PPM during morning showers. The room CO levels accumulated over four days to lethal concentrations by Friday.
If a detector had been present in that room — which it was not — the standard residential model would have alarmed somewhere on Wednesday or Thursday. By then the family was already chronically poisoned.
You bought a hotel room. You did not buy CO protection.
The detector that would have actually saved that family is not the kind of detector that exists in resort hallways.
What I Do When I Travel Now
After I left the resort industry, I started traveling differently.
I bring my own CO detector with me. Always.
The unit I use is called Haven. It alarms at 10 PPM, not 70. It shows the actual concentration on a screen. It uses an electrochemical sensor that does not drift over time.
It is small enough to fit in carry-on luggage.
I check into the hotel room. I unpack. I set the Haven detector on the bathroom counter or the nightstand. I let it run for 30 minutes.
If the screen shows 0 PPM, the room is safe.
If it shows anything else, I leave the room.
In four years of travel since leaving the resort industry, I have left two hotel rooms because of elevated Haven readings. Both times, the hotel staff insisted the room was safe. Both times, I showed them the number on the screen.
Both times, they moved me.
I do not know whether either of those rooms would have killed me if I had stayed. I will never know. That is the point. I will never know because the Haven told me to leave.
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Two Futures
I am writing this in the hope that every American family planning a Caribbean vacation will read it.
Please understand: the resort you booked may have inadequate CO detection. The vacation rental you booked almost certainly does. The host country may not require detectors. The room itself may have nothing.
You cannot trust the property to protect your family.
You must protect your family yourself.
Future One: Trust the property. Hope the water heater in your bathroom is properly vented. Hope the generator exhaust is upwind. Hope the host bothered to install a working detector. Hope you are not the family the housekeeper finds on Friday morning.
Future Two: Order a portable Haven before your next trip. Pack it in your carry-on. Set it up the moment you check in. Run it for 30 minutes. If the screen stays at zero, you have actual confirmation. If it doesn't, you leave the room before anyone takes a shower.
The family I cleaned around in 2017 couldn't.
You still can
I am writing this in the hope that every American family planning a Caribbean vacation will read it.
Please understand: the resort you booked may have inadequate CO detection. The vacation rental you booked almost certainly does. The host country may not require detectors. The room itself may have nothing.
You cannot trust the property to protect your family.
You must protect your family yourself.
Future One: Trust the property. Hope the water heater in your bathroom is properly vented. Hope the generator exhaust is upwind. Hope the host bothered to install a working detector. Hope you are not the family the housekeeper finds on Friday morning.
Future Two: Order a portable Haven before your next trip. Pack it in your carry-on. Set it up the moment you check in. Run it for 30 minutes. If the screen stays at zero, you have actual confirmation. If it doesn't, you leave the room before anyone takes a shower.
The family I cleaned around in 2017 couldn't.
You still can
"Brought Haven on a Punta Cana trip last spring. Reading 9 PPM in the bathroom after the first shower. We changed rooms. The original room was 'closed for maintenance' the next day. I will never travel without it again."
— Vivian E., Massachusetts
"Mexico vacation rental in Tulum. Haven alarmed at 12 PPM in the master bedroom on day two. Pool heater issue venting into the building. We left and got a different rental. Get the monitor."
— Hugo R., Arizona
"My adult kids travel a lot. I bought each of them a Haven for their carry-ons. My daughter caught 8 PPM in a Bahamas hotel last winter. Got a different room. Get this for the kids who think they're invincible."
— Lillian H., New Jersey
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If you aren’t taking Alpha BRAIN®, you are operating at a disadvantage.
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