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On hotels
by Malcolm O'Brien

As a pilot, I am in the fortunate position of travelling quite a lot and frequently staying in hotels - anything up to around 20 nights per month. You could also say that I'm in an equally unfortunate position of needing to frequently stay in hotels. Although I don't have any plans to start-up a hotel on my own, during the last few hotel stops, I thought that it might be interesting to jot down those aspects of hotel like that I find particularly irritating, and conversely those that can really help to make a hotel stay a pleasant experience. As I'm quite likely to return to some of the hotels described, I have held back from the desire to "name and shame" them - but hopefully this article will give an insight into what I like to find or hope not to find, and may provide a starting point for further comments on this topic. It's also a very personal view of things; I'm sure that some of my pet hates are things that someone else will be delighted to see. I've also thrown in a couple of tips that I find help things along more smoothly. I'll start with the dislikes, and them banish them from my thoughts by mentioning some of the better aspects.

Firstly, muzak. Particularly when the hotel only appears to own one CD and the CD player has had the "repeat" button pressed, so it loops round and round. A multi-CD player with a "random" selection would go a long way toward taking some of the pain away, if the hotel insists on muzak to "enhance the guest experience".

When travelling reasonably lightly, and having managed to transfer my baggage from an aircraft into a car, possibly through a terminal and into another car, out of the car and to a hotel reception desk, I find it immensely irritating that cries of "no thanks" or similar to hotel bellhops can be so easily ignored. Really enhancing the moment is when the bag is grabbed and put onto a luggage trolley for delivery to the room as soon as you take your eyes off it for one second. Now I'm not saying that hotels shouldn't offer this service, in fact sometimes it's a really useful provision, but I wish that that the hotel guest would be listened to and their wishes respected. There are times after a long flight when you don't want to be waiting for your bag to be delivered to the room, you just want a quick wash, to get your jeans on and get to the bar!

So on to the next frustration. Ladies, I don't know if this applies to you, so please bear with me on this one. Sometimes, in some hotels (and it seems generally to be the more expensive ones), after visiting the loo there is an attendant whose sole purpose in life is to turn the tap on and off for you, hand over some paper towels and then stand around blocking the door until a tip has changed hands. Sometimes they pretend to be cleaning the immaculate sinks to justify their hanging around in a gents toilet until their services are needed. It seems strange that guests suddenly lose the ability to use taps or hand-towels, things that most have been doing for many years, when in these establishments.

Whilst in this sort of area, on to bathrooms next; have you ever stayed in a hotel where the shower curtain only comes about half-way along the bath, so you end up spraying the bathroom with water and not being able to do much about it? Annoying, isn't it? How about a bathroom that isn't on an exterior wall so has no window, and where there is no extractor fan, so it instantly steams up when showering, or where odours tend to linger because there's nowhere for them to go other than into the bedroom itself.

To conclude on the subject of bathrooms, what is the point of folding the end of the loo paper into a little triangle? As far as I can tell, it doesn't affect its function at all. Perhaps the hotel thinks that the hotel guest needs a visual reminder that the room has been cleaned, when the bed being made, new towels hanging in the bathroom and a general air of tidiness isn't enough. (If the folded loo paper is the only clue that your room has been serviced, perhaps you should think of changing hotel!)

Have you been woken up by a banging on the door only to be told "sorry I didn't notice your Do Not Disturb sign" that was hanging in plain view on the door handle? This is not usually a major problem, but certainly a fairly frequent irritant - and something that is really nice when it doesn't happen, so I won't mention this is the "likes" section. Even worse, as happened only yesterday is when the sign is blatantly ignored, after some knocks someone tries to open the door only to have it catch on the security lock, goes away and then a couple of minutes later calls the room to see if you want it serviced. If I hadn't been researching the previous paragraph at the time, I'd have opened the door.....

I've worked out that wake up calls are not to be relied on so always travel with 2 separate alarm clocks, as a failing battery once almost caught me out quite spectacularly. Another common finding in hotels is a device in the room that used the credit-card type plastic room key to control the power and light to the room, so if you leave the room and take the key with you to get back in later, the a/c stops and all the lights go out. If it's a hot day, the room starts to heat up. Hang on to this little card when you check out, then the next time you're in a hotel with one of these devices, you can leave the one you hung on to in the room to keep the a/c and power sockets working whilst taking the proper card key with you to get back in the room later. (Don't leave it in during the whole day though, or if your room is likely to be serviced whilst you're away, it will be gone when you get back.)

So on to the things that I find can make a stay much more enjoyable.

Somehow it's nice to be greeted with a "welcome back" by a familiar face, but even when checking in to somewhere new it's nice to be welcomed by name.

Small things can make a big difference. Arriving in our rooms for the first time on this trip, there was a small box on the table containing 6 dates, with different fillings. The cost to the hotel was minimal, but it was a nice touch that we appreciated.

When en route to checking out from my room recently, I was asked on two occasions by two of the staff cleaning rooms if I needed any help with my bags - I didn't and was relieved to not have them snatched off me, but it was nice to have been asked and showed how attentive the staff were.

On a long trip, especially to somewhere a fair way away, Internet access in the room really allows you to feel as if you're staying in touch with family and friends back home much more than spending lots on international phone calls.

Finally, in the room itself, a kettle and cup are wonderful accessories to find, so you can make a cuppa at any time of the day or night without having to go to the trouble of ordering and waiting for room service, or having to go out and find one amongst the hotel facilities. In fact, that's what I'm going to do now. Cheers.

First published in VISA 79 (Jun08)