Does your beach motel have a moldy smell? Heres what to do.

When I walked into a motel room at a waterfront spot in Cape Cod in October, I was hit with a musty, dank smell. You can probably smell it, too, as you read this.

As a frequent road tripper, I knew what it was. I had smelled the exact same thing in hotels and motels in St. Petersburg, Fla.; Jekyll Island, Ga.; and Wildwood, N.J. It was mold.

Mold and mildew (which is a kind of mold) are constant scourges in air-conditioned waterfront buildings in humid climates, said Christian Kaltreider, a systems engineer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Rooms like mine in Cape Cod, during an early fall week when it was still humid enough to need an air conditioner, create prime conditions for mold spores always present in the air to grow.

“A body of water is a constant source of water vapor to the air around it, which will result in a general increase in humidity in the surrounding air,” said Kaltreider, who studies energy efficiency in buildings. Humid air, in turn, will condense on cold surfaces. Much like with dew collecting on grass, it will hit cold surfaces in an air-conditioned room and settle down.

If that’s on a mold-friendly organic food source, such as paper that’s part of drywall, wood products, air-conditioning filters or just dust, the mold will latch on and start to grow.

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What hotels do to fight the smell

If rooms in hotel, motel and short-term vacation rentals in these climates are not regularly and ruthlessly cleaned, and/or air-conditioner filters are not routinely changed, then that stink in my Cape Cod hotel room can result. I suspect it came most from the air-conditioning unit, because when I pried off the cover, I saw that the filter was full. That’s not an uncommon mold smell source, Kaltreider said, because air-conditioning units dehumidify air. If they aren’t properly cleaned and maintained, they become a hotel for mold, too, and “now it’s just being blown into the air from the unit itself.”

Generally, mildew and mold can be kept at bay by rigorous cleaning routines, said Steve Turk, founder of Turk Hospitality Ventures, which works with vacation rentals in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. “If those establishments don’t have a regular inspection and protocol, that smell starts to come through. They’re not really treating this right away,” he said.

Older curtains and carpets may also be a culprit, when moisture continues to seep into rooms “and mold spores build up,” he added. When his company takes over a property, they may replace those drapes with mold-resistant ones, and get rid of carpets all together to prevent a similar thing from happening again.

Hotel engineers should also be checking air-conditioning filters at least monthly, and bathrooms should regularly be inspected, because that’s the spot in any vacation rental that’s going to be the most humid, especially after showers.

That smell can still be present even if these typical problem spots look pristine, Kaltreider said. Sometimes mold can end up trapped in walls, especially if they’re covered in a vinyl-type wallpaper. The moisture has nowhere to go, so it (and the mold) digs in. If that’s the case, there’s nothing anyone can do in the short term, except close the room to visitors entirely.

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What you can do if you have a beach-stink room

As a guest, you have a few options if you’re stuck in a stinky room, experts said. You can always ask for another room, said David Mariotti, divisional vice president of operations at Remington Hospitality, a hotel management company. “That next room might be more comfortable and have less of that aroma,” he said.

If you can’t be moved, or if you realize that every room has the same smelly issue, you can ask the hotel or motel for a dehumidifier to run in your room, Mariotti said. It’s not uncommon for hotels and motels to have a few, if they’re based in humidity-prone areas.

If you’re nosy like me and see that an air conditioner’s filter is dirty or suspect that that’s the source of the smell, he said you can also ask for it to be changed. Also, if you spot mold on a curtain, let the hotel know.

When seeking these kinds of adjustments, especially if the person at the front desk is less than helpful, ask for the executive housekeeper or director of engineering, because these issues fall directly in their domains, Mariotti said. And if you can’t work things out with whoever is on-site at the time, take pictures. The last thing a business owner wants is pictures of mold showing up on travel review websites such as Tripadvisor.

If you or someone in your traveling party is especially prone to breathing issues (and it’s not a pain to lug one around), you can travel with your own air purifier — not unlike what many of us bought because of the pandemic. Kaltreider said to look for purifiers that have filters with a MERV-13 or higher, or a HEPA filter. “Those levels of filtration will remove mold spores and make for cleaner breathing,” he said. Although air fresheners or disinfectants may mask the smell a bit, they won’t get rid of it, or the root of the problem, he added.

I ended up doing nothing about my Cape Cod room. I was there for only three nights, and to me, it was more of an annoyance than a breathing problem. I did, however, tell the motel in its post-stay survey what I thought about the smell of the room. And when I head out to my next beachfront hotel? I’ll be ready, should I encounter that ick.

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