I have stayed in way too many hotels over my professional lifetime and over my pleasure travel lifetime. A good hotel is a good thing when one is on the road, clearly. I don’t need perfection – though I know it when I see it and love it – but I also have some pet peeves that REALLY turn me off to a property or even a chain. These are by NO MEANS the biggest problems in the world but, with that, what follows are, in no particular order, what ilivetotravel finds annoying in a hotel experience.
- Bath robes for giants. Either giants are the vast majority of hotel guests or hotels are slightly clueless. Yes, I am a short guy but some of these would be evening gown length for most people. And the average height for a man/woman in this country is not 6′ – that I know of anyway. I understand a 6’2″ giant needs to cover his/her modest parts to avoid catching a nasty cold but these are below the knee even for them! The W Hotel in DC did really well in this category with reasonable length robes. Thank you.
- Dark carpets. No, I have no skills in terms of interior design so this is not an opinion based on the look of the room. This is about dark carpets affording a hotel the opportunity to be a little more lax with cleaning carpets. I am not saying hotels with dark carpets do not clean as often as they should BUT why stay somewhere where that opportunity is a little easier?
- Drafty windows. You’d think that this is not a common issue. And you are right. But in January this year I had TWO back to back hotel stays where the windows did not properly close. These were in Chicago and DC during very cold spells. But besides the cold, I could hear street traffic late at night so I dreaded what it would sound like in the morning. In both cases, the windows were not closing properly, something I would expect someone would have caught before me. Both times, I called to have it looked at. In one case, the hotel immediately just changed rooms for me (giving me an upgrade in the process – GREAT customer relationship building move) and, in the other, I had to call a second time an hour later because no one had come to take care of things… (bad customer relationship building move).
- Poor lighting. This really gets me. I NEED to see. I know you are trying to create a mood. Ever heard of dimmers?? Or at least offer some lamps with good strong light and others without it. I stayed at a VERY nice DC hotel where none of the lamps seemed to have much of a light bulb making my ability to read anything impossible. Come on!
- The waste culture. One of the largest hotel chains I have stayed at, across all their brands, seems to do a poor job of minding waste. That I know of, they don’t participate in any program to recycle used soap, for example. Or when I hang my towel back, it still gets replaced the next day. But what really takes the cake is how they take my still half-full little shampoos or lotions and replace them. I understand you want me to have enough and not run out (thank you for that). Go ahead, add the new bottle but LEAVE the half-full one there so it doesn’t go to waste. One little bottle doesn’t make a difference but add this up across all their properties and rooms and nights, and that’s a heck of a lot of not caring about being wasteful. This chain is not the only one doing this, sadly.
I would love to hear YOUR pet peeves when you stay at a hotel!
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