The 5 Best and Worst Airport Bathrooms in America, Ranked
· Vice
At some point, every traveler has stood in an airport bathroom doorway doing a quick cost-benefit analysis about whether to go in. A new study confirms that the instinct is sometimes correct.
UK bathroom retailer QS Supplies combed through thousands of Google reviews across major U.S. airports, pulling out every comment that mentioned restrooms and scoring each airport on ratings and the language travelers actually used. The results land about where frequent flyers would expect, with a few surprises.
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Miami International took the bottom spot among U.S. airports, averaging just 2.2 stars across bathroom reviews, with 31% of those reviews mentioning dirtiness. Philadelphia wasn’t far behind at 2.49 stars and actually generated the most bathroom complaints of any airport in the study — 514 restroom-related reviews — with 32% citing uncleanliness. For what it’s worth, Airports Council International research has found that restroom cleanliness accounts for up to 34% of overall terminal satisfaction scores, meaning a terrible bathroom visit doesn’t just ruin a layover. It retroactively makes the whole airport worse.
On the other end of the list, Tampa International came out looking like a totally different category of facility. It earned a 4.43-star average — the highest of any airport in the study — with 54% of bathroom reviews mentioning cleanliness and just 3% flagging dirtiness. LaGuardia, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and San Francisco rounded out the top five, which is a more encouraging group than most frequent flyers would have predicted.
5 Best-rated U.S. airport bathrooms:
- Tampa, FL (4.43 stars)
- Salt Lake City, UT (4.35)
- LaGuardia, NY (4.24)
- Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN (4.19)
- San Francisco, CA (3.99)
5 Worst-rated U.S. airport bathrooms:
- Miami, FL (2.22 stars)
- Philadelphia, PA (2.49)
- Houston Intercontinental, TX (2.65)
- Seattle-Tacoma, WA (2.76)
- JFK, NY (2.78)
The bottom five is where it gets harder to be charitable. Miami and Philadelphia anchor the list, but Seattle-Tacoma and JFK showing up at fourth and fifth is a useful reminder that being a major hub and maintaining a clean bathroom are not mutually exclusive goals — just difficult ones, apparently. Houston Intercontinental slides in at third, surprising no one who has connected through there.
The one American airport that kept up with the UK on smell complaints was Miami, at 8%. Given everything else in its bathroom reviews, that tracks.
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