A tray of fruit and pastries bobbing on the surface of a pool is highly Instagrammable, but just how sanitary is that side of chlorine?
Floating Breakfasts have taken Instagram and TikTok by storm, with thousands of posts from Bali, the Maldives, the Caribbean, Thailand, and beyond, pulling in tens of thousands of likes. But while breakfast for two served on a tray floating in your private infinity pool is aesthetically pleasing, just how hygienic is it?
I couldn’t help but wonder about it as flaky croissant crumbs fell from my tray into the pool water (I challenge you to eat a good croissant without dropping a single crumb). Would the pool water be changed for the next guests, or would the lumps of soggy puff pastry be left there? It turns out that’s just the tip of this hygiene iceberg.
The concept of floating breakfasts is thought to have been created in Bali a few years ago before spreading to upscale destinations across the tropics, which are well suited for floating breakfasts due to the good weather and abundance of villas with private pools. After all, it’s no fun eating a romantic meal in the drizzle or in a shared pool whilst being splashed by a mob of kids playing Marco Polo.
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Costing anything from $16 to upwards of $280, it involves the typical breakfast fare you’d find on almost any room service menu—pastries, fruit, toast, eggs, and tea or coffee. But instead of it being served on your bed, it’s placed on the surface of your villa’s private swimming pool.
Somehow, the tray avoids sinking under the weight of the feast, but it’s prone to floating off unless you keep hold of it, resulting in you having to do a Baywatch-style one-arm rescue tow of your tray from the deep end of the pool. Nonetheless, the optics are colorful and fun, and when it’s combined with a tropical panorama, you’ve got Instagram/TikTok magic.
I have to start by admitting that I enjoy floating breakfasts. Sharing a meal in a pool with your loved one as the water cools your skin and the morning sun filters through the palm fronds is a unique experience. It is an experience that is infinitely better than shuffling behind people in the line for the breakfast buffet while you wait for your eggs to be cooked.
Due to having lived in various sunny vacay destinations and having a job writing about travel, I’m fortunate enough to have tried floating breakfasts in various luxury resorts around the world. So, I’m completely aware that the question, ‘How hygienic is your floating breakfast?’ is not the worst conundrum to contemplate over your custard pastry. However, this is how it all came about.
Swimming in Bacteria Soup
Not everything is as perfect as it appears to be in photos and videos, even at a decent five-star hotel. I have lots of friends who run or work at luxury resorts, so I’ve heard lots of crazy (off the record) stories about hotel operations; sometimes, the occurrences in White Lotus are not too far from reality, as we’ve all heard by now. Sometimes, guests do outrageous things, and occasionally, staff can drop the ball on something really important, such as cleaning a pool and rebalancing the pH properly.
This is where I began to think about how bacteria starts to grow at 77 degrees Fahrenheit in water—a temperature easily achieved in plunge pools in the tropics. Could chlorine be enough to kill all the contaminants? Are my wet, pool water-covered hands clean enough to touch that toast or feast on that fruit? Or was I running the gastrointestinal gauntlet? The journalist in me needed to know.
So, I asked hygiene and food safety consultant for FHC Maldives, Janet Smailes, who told me there could be something in my hunch. As someone who assesses resorts for a living, she said it would not be entirely uncommon to find bits of poached eggs and crumbs have plopped into a plunge pool during a floating breakfast.
“It depends upon the caliber of the maintenance teams to notice food debris when cleaning the pools—room service in some resorts is dubious anyway.”
“If it is not cleaned properly, then you’ve got a sort of cesspool of bacteria— a ‘bacteria soup’ in your plunge pool.”
“It could clog the filters, too,” said Janet.
This got me wondering about how serious the bacteria could be, so I followed it up with microbiologist and operating officer of OURA, Shaun Veran. With over a decade of experience, he’s a leading expert in microbial growth and strategies to inhibit them.
Shaun told me, “In tropical climates, where floating breakfasts are common, pool water temperatures can easily rise above 77 degrees Fahrenheit. At these temperatures, bacteria like E. coli and Salmonella can begin to multiply quickly, especially if the pool is not properly treated.
“If food drops into the water, it could become contaminated with this harmful bacteria, and if the hotel regularly allows guests to eat in the pool, I’d also be concerned about contamination from other guests.”
Therefore, if you swallow this contaminated pool water or spill it on your food, it can lead to gastrointestinal problems like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal cramps. While data on international pools is patchy, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found 15% of hotel pools in the U.S. are extremely contaminated due to improper chemical imbalances in the water.
Chlorine and Croissants
While I had the ear of a microbiologist, I wondered if one of the other (admittedly a bit OCD) perils whipped up by my over-active imagination might also pose a risk—touching food with pool-water-contaminated hands. Shaun confirmed that if there were any bacteria or pathogens present in the water, they could also transfer to your hands and then onto the food. “Without handwashing or hand sanitizer, these contaminants could easily transfer onto your food, especially with food eaten by hand like pastries,” he said.
Yummy. Could there be any more bacterial boogeymen hiding in your breakfast? Yes, according to Shaun. Since floating trays are in frequent contact with water, the tray itself can become a surface for bacteria to grow on. “If they aren’t properly cleaned between uses, biofilms can form. Biofilms are slimy layers of bacteria that are notoriously difficult to remove. Once they form, these layers of caked-on bacteria require vigorous scrubbing to remove.
“If they are on your tray, they can easily transfer bacteria onto your food or hands as you eat, increasing your likelihood of food poisoning.”
Floating Faux Pas
That may seem like a lot, but I wondered what else could hypothetically go wrong with a floating breakfast. It seems that human error can also create a floating faux pas. If you take a long time to graze over a floating buffet and leave it bobbing in your pool in the sunshine while you pick at it, you’re at risk of getting sick.
According to the FDA, hot and cold buffet food should not be left at room temperature for more than two hours. And if the buffet is held in a place where the temperature is above 90 degrees Fahrenheit (not really an unusual daytime temperature in the tropics), the safe holding time is reduced to one hour.
Dangers From Above
Surely, those are the worst things that could happen. But no! There’s more, and this time the perils come from above. Flies and pest bird species such as crows and gulls may also come to rain on your parade. Now, these are two things that are hard to control when you’re dining al fresco. Both Shaun and Janet agree that flies or birds landing on your tray can contaminate your food.
While birds are not normally as daring as flies with their divebombing antics, if you get out of the water and leave the food on your tray for a few minutes, I probably wouldn’t bother going back to it, as you may not be the only creature that’s taken a bite.
The Columbo Question
Having spoken to two experts, I have to say I do feel vindicated to a certain degree, although Shaun said that if a pool has been treated correctly, even if food has fallen in it, there is a low risk that any of this bacteria will get you sick (the only problem is judging if the water’s really clean or not).
But like Colombo, I always have to ask “just one more thing”: Would Shaun and Janet try a floating breakfast?
“I’d have a few conditions before ordering one,” said Shaun. “First, I’d double-check that the pool is properly maintained, including frequent testing of chemical levels and pH. Ideally, I would want the food placed on a raised platform or tray that minimizes splashing from the pool water. Additionally, I’d have hand sanitizer nearby to reduce the risk of cross-contamination”.
And Janet? “It would depend on which resort I was at and what was on the tray. I would be inclined to really drill down first into what they actually serve as a floating breakfast and would probably avoid things like poached eggs because they sometimes just get left out in the kitchen for ages before they even make it to your plate.”
There you have it. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean the swarms aren’t out to get you!