Monday 16 September 2013

Dear Hotel...




Dear Hotel

Let me make myself clear.  This post is not (totally) about the hotel in which I stayed this week. Nor is it (totally) about the hotel in which I stayed last week.  Nor the one last month.  Nor the one the month before.  Nor indeed the previous months' hotels.  But all of the matters raised in this post things have impacted on my hotel stays several times this year, in one location or another.

It is a heartfelt plea to hoteliers in general to incorporate some novel design features into their rooms. To think about how guests actually use the space, and to make some practical changes to help us.

The issues below are not set out in order of importance, nor order of annoyance, nor even alphabetical order.  I'll leave it to you to decide which to prioritise.

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If I were in your hotel for a romantic assignation, the artful placement of lamps and the overall effect of subdued lighting would be ideal. Alas, romance is not on the menu and I'm at your hotel to work. Please provide lighting that is good enough for me to read by.  And, given that I will be trying to read both at my computer and whilst lying in bed, please make sure that I don't end up squinting in the gloom. 

Moving on.  I use my mobile phone as an alarm clock.  I also need to recharge the phone overnight, ready for battle the following day. Is it beyond the wit of Man to provide a spare socket by the bedside table so that I can do both of these things at the same time?  (A double socket would be even better, then I could listen to the radio though my iPad as I drift off to sleep.)

Speaking of sleep, I like spare pillows.
And spare blankets.
Thanks to those hotels who put some in the wardrobe for me.

(I’m also grateful for the tray of teas and coffees, especially those that give me enough milk.)

And I deliberately turned off the air conditioning when I first arrived in the bedroom, so please don't keep turning it back on.  It is wasteful environmentally to leave it on all day when the room isn't occupied, and it means it's freezing when I get back.

Oh, and speaking of environmental matters, I totally, 100%, support you in your aim to reduce the washing by using my towels for more than one day.  So I would be delighted to hang my towels up as a signal to the chamberperson (ugly word, but I am an equal opportunities hotel guest) to leave them be. Two problems. Firstly, it would be helpful if there were a towel rail, or even a hook, on which to hang them.  And secondly, please inform said chamberperson that if the towels are hanging up, s/he should not replace them with fresh ones.  So often, I hang them up but they are replaced anyway; you seem to be training your guests,  but not your staff.

(Note - that last comment is in no way a gripe against the hotel staff.  I have been fortunate to stay in places where the chamberpersons, receptionists, wait-staff and others were all really good at their jobs, and rather nice to deal with.  Thank you all.)

Right, where was I?  Oh yes, the bathroom.  Let me give you a lesson in anatomy.  Men are convex, women concave.  Without wishing to be indelicate, that means that if the only way to wash the body is a fixed overhead shower, men can wash themselves.  Fully.  Trying to wash the concave bits from just a shower head fixed to the ceiling requires a physical dexterity that I didn't possess even in my youth.  So please can we have a hand-held shower as well?  Or a bath? Or, bliss, a bidet?

Oh, and memo to one particular chain of designer hotels: having the shower head fixed to the ceiling above the centre of the bath would make much more sense if your shower guard were not also fixed, running from the wall to align with the centre of the bath. The shower floods the room, and to be honest, this is your fault, not mine.

While I'm in the bathroom, please can we have a magnifying mirror.  And place it somewhere near a good source of light.  That way, I don't need to use Braille to put on my makeup.

A couple of minor quibbles while I'm on my way through this list.  Why don't you ever provide enough hangers?  If I have to be in your hotel for a week's work, I need to bring a lot of clothes.   These need hanging up; four hangers per wardrobe really doesn't cover it.  (And I don’t like those wretched hangers that are attached to the rail; they are unnecessarily cumbersome to use.  Given the amount of valuable stuff lying round in the room, why assume I’m going to nick the hangers?)  And, incidentally, when did hotels stop providing drawers?  I've stayed in two recently where there was hanging space (assuming I supplemented the hanger inventory with my own, smuggled in from home) but no drawer space.  Is it a new fashion thing, that drawers ruin the line of the furniture?  Not impressed.

Speaking of 'designer', do people really like the trendy idea of having the room functions controlled by an iPad (other tablets are available)?  In the old days, when the alarm clock went off at an unearthly hour of the morning, I could reach out of the bed, feel for the TV remote, press the top button and generally get some form of news broadcast to bring me gently into a waking state without having to move too much.  When the only way to access the TV is a tablet, I first of all have to find my glasses, then wake up sufficiently to see which way up to hold it, how to switch it on, and which touch-sensitive menus to use to get to the required station.  Look, I know tablets are cool - I've already owned up to having one - but they have their place.  And this isn't it.

Oh!  And while I'm on about tablets:
Wifi. Is. Not. An. Optional. Extra.
Charging me an exorbitant day rate for using wifi in my bedroom is like charging me extra for hot water.  Or for the bed linen.  Or chairs.  For heaven's sake, do what most US hotels do and make it free.
(And words fail me for those hotels which charge a huge sum and then provide totally useless wifi.  The number of times I've ended up sitting on a hotel corridor a few yards from my room, waving my iPad in the general direction of Reception in the hope of picking up their weak and ineffectual signal...)

On a related matter...  We have already established that I carry an iPad and a mobile phone.  How do you think I carry them around?  I ask this because your magnetic keys are so pathetically sensitive that when my hotel key resides in the same handbag as my devices - which it has to, as I have no pockets - the key de-programs itself.  You are tired of me coming to Reception to get it re-set.  I've got news for you: so am I.  But no, I'm not keeping the key snuggled up to the devices; it's in a separate compartment, but, yes, in the same bag.  That's the best I can do.  Please sort this out at your end.

And so, dear Hotel, I come to the end of my plea for better design.  Please don’t take offence.  I think that your staff are often excellent, your beds largely comfortable, and your breakfasts generally very good.  But with a little thought it could be SO much better…