Man checks into Wisconsin Marriott. Then he looks under the couch—and accuses the hotel of being ‘bugged’

A Marriott guest has sounded the alarm on TikTok after claiming that his room contained suspicious devices.

In a recent video on the platform, which has garnered over 68,200 views, TikTok creator @mcolorado3280 films what he allegedly found in the Marriott room he and his family were staying in.

“Marriott bugged,” the text overlay on his video reads.

The TikToker starts filming from outside the room and then enters. “So we’re at a Marriott, and I’m laying on this couch,” he says.

He then sits down on the couch. “And I find something under here,” he says, now filming under a coffee table placed near the couch.

There, he discovers a small white device with a blinking green light stuck to the underside of the table.

He picks it up, asking, “What is this?”

Viewers Offer Up Theories

In the comments, both guests and those saying they used to work for Marriott provided a more innocent explanation.

“Former Marriott AGM here,” one commenter wrote. “That is a location sensor for housekeeping and other staff members in case there is an emergency in the room so they can be located quickly. They carry an emergency button on them at all times.”

Another person said the device was connected to staff emergency buttons.

“It’s a sensor to activate the emergency button housekeepers have on a walkietalkie type device,” they wrote. “They go off WiFi and these help make sure they stay connected.”

Someone else said it looked like part of a safety system.

“This is a safety device for housekeeping called relay if something happens to a housekeeper they press a button on the radio and security will know there location and be able to asset them,” they wrote.

Is It Really A Surveillance Device?

Most likely, no.

Just as commenters suggested, the device appears to be a locator beacon, which is used to support employee panic button systems inside hotels.

The way it works is that a beacon is assigned to a specific room or hotel area and broadcasts a low-energy Bluetooth signal. Housekeepers and other hotel employees carry a separate alert device.

If an employee is in an emergency and presses the button, the system uses those nearby beacons to identify where they are and send help to the correct location.

As most manufacturers describe these systems, the room beacon does not record video or audio. In fact, it is completely dormant unless a staff member presses the panic button.

Marriott announced in 2018 that it would start installing this exact type of personal alert technology, capable of pinpointing an employee’s location, across its U.S. and Canadian hotels.

@mcolorado3280 #bugged #marriott #spy #secret #tracking ♬ Welp, Didn't Expect That – Yu-Peng Chen & HOYO-MiX

The Mary Sue has reached out to Marriott via email and the TikToker via direct message for comment.

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