To think hotel designers should at least have once slept in a room before being allowed to design a room.

Special mention for the Novotel at Birmingham Airport. The room was perfectly pleasant and contained all the usual equipment, except that there was no rubber mat in the bathroom, but there was a printed notice stating that you could get one from reception. Who wants to flog back downstairs and queue at reception for a piece of basic equipment? Why can't they leave one in the room, rolled up, for the guest to use or not use according to preference? It's almost as if the hotel does not want older or less mobile guests.

i just popped in to say I loved your post. I had a laugh. I have a bladder prolapse, but I keep a tiny torch by the bed, for my night excursions to the toilet.

Definitely the plugs issue, never in the right place and then as I had to keep my phone by the bed to use as a torch to avoid the lights issue when going for a nighttime wee, i could leave it charging while I go downstairs for breakfast, except the electric goes off if you take the keycard with you.
To add to the nowhere to put your shampoo and conditioner plus fixed point shower head, when the water pressure is so high that I can barely stand back up after I have bent down to get the conditioner from the shower floor. Also towels, I want a hand towel for regular hand drying, a clean towel for drying my hair and a bath mat to stand on but there’s 2 non descript little squares (at least dp doesn’t have enough hair to need his own towel!) and the bath towel is also far too small.
2 single beds pushed together disguised as a large bed, so one of us spends the night sleeping down the gap. No proper duvet, just a sheet and the option to add a heavy scratchy blanket to combat the over zealous air conditioning.

Ha yes, I was just thinking about the Garner as well. On the bright side there is the Palmerston just a corner away for any meal of the day and a 12 Triangles a three minutes walk down Dalry Rd for bread, pastries and decent coffee.

There is just one room out of six floors that I like in a certain hotel- the manager told me that it was the initial test room when the place was redesigned. For some reason, after proving the test room a success, they decided to make every other room smaller so guests have to navigate carefully around the end of the bed.

I had the 'free tea and coffee available' experience at the Garner Hotel at Haymarket in Edinburgh, also by IHG group. It wasn't even a station on the corridor - you had to go down to reception to get yourself a hot drink (and some nice free snacks, I have to say). Horrible!

With regard to the whole washing my hair every day - as I got older (late 60s now), my hair got drier and drier. I keep it short, so it looks like a normal texture, otherwise any longer and it looks like shredded wheat! My hairdresser specifically told me, not to wash it every day, because that would dry it out even more - to leave it at least 3 - 4 days. As it is, I wash it and put conditioner on at the beginning of the shower and leave the conditioner on, until the end, when it’s the last thing I wash off.

One more thing about baths - now we are getting older, we are more conscious that if we fall and break bones, healing takes much longer and still there’s potentially a lifetime of problems with that bone. The big chain we used to stay in, never had grab rails over the bath to help with getting in and out. We stayed in one, and the bath was so slippery, that our daughter with LD could not get out. She was panicking and crying. Normally, I take our own shower mat; but this time I had forgotten. DH went to ask reception, if they had a shower mat; but they didn’t. Luckily, I managed to grab her, as she tried to stand up, and was able to pull her up. (She’s heavier than I am) DH had a bath later, and commented it was so slippery, he struggled to get out of it!

It would be nice if major hotel chains could remember that elderly customers may struggle more in slippery baths; and that applies also to standing on a slippery surface under the bath shower?

Bugger- I was ready to get all inspired.

I WILL say though- I'm Australian who has lived in Europe the past 30 years. I can certainly see a massive difference in my skin (daily sunscreen) and my friends and family in Australia (also daily sunscreen) so after my last trip I became even more rigorously adherent to sunscreen. Mind you, they are all pretty health conscious and have active outdoor lives, which I need to emulate a bit of too.

You got a shelf for toiletries? Luxury. So many hotel showers are bare white cubicles with no shelf or hook and nowhere to put anything other than the floor.

This.

The Bloc Hotel at Gatwick exceeds on this one. From some rooms you have to negotiate a lift to get a cup of coffee.

That is after you have got out of bed, had a wee and a paddle from last night’s shower water, which has also soaked the loo roll.

Not really, she looks just like every other seventy year old. She says that she's only doing it because she's done it for so long that now it's a habit.

Oh yes that was another issue I had with the hotel with the massive free standing bath. The bedside lamps were so huge there was no room for anything else on the bedside table.

Yes.... but does her hair and skin look amazing? I'm trying to pay more attention to my skin, so enquiring minds want to know! (I've swapped most of my daily wine for green tea and that has made a HUGE difference).

I'm an every day hair washer- my hair is very fine, and greasy. I'm 52 now and know what I need to do to keep it looking and smelling good.

Not on MN, you have to shower twice a day and use a clean towel for every shower - that was a whole other thread. One person even showered 3 times a day. Once when the got up, once at the gym after their session and then the final time before they went to bed. Not sure about their preference for how fresh their towels had to be though, that wasn't mentioned

No wonder the planet is fucked

Hotel in Tallinn that I stayed in last year had a sensor that switched on the most gentle warm light in the bathroom when you got up at night, just enough light to find your way when you gwent for a wee, then turned itself off a few minutes later, fantastic. That was a great hotel anyway. I can't think of a single thing I disliked about it.

I had the same issue with the Ruby hotels chain. They seem to think it's fun for guests to walk round three sides of the hotel to a 'galley space' (a glorified cupboard with a boiling-water tap and some teabags) when they want a hot drink. There's actually plenty of flat space where a kettle could go, but presumably they like to keep the surface clear for the ridiculously oversized and extremely ugly table lamp. Oh, and they don't believe in drawers. There is a bit of shelf space in the wardrobe, but it's not accessible to anyone under 6ft tall.

See also noisy fridges/minibars.

Going back to sockets. We regularly use the Sofitel at Heathrow T5 if we have an early flight or late return flight. Hard to beat for convenience but dear god their electrics need a complete overhaul. There are normal sockets on the room, one for the kettle which is by the door so useless while you are in bed, and two on the desk which is kitted out for early 2000s IT and no working USB socket. All the other sockets don’t fit British plugs or any adaptor I’ve tried. Their bathrooms are good though, walk in shower cubicle with dual head as well as a bath with hand held shower, and lovely Balmain toiletries.

Oh, and I wash my hair every 4 or 5 days unless I go to the gym. It's takes hours to dry.

DD & I stayed in a lovely (luxurious) hotel earlier this year (I've been several times & love it). However: not enough hooks, towels too small & I never did work out the complicated arrangement of light switches. We were constantly flooding the room with light unintentionally.
Everything else was wonderful including the pillows & positioning of sockets! And no runners/cushions (a pet hate of mine, they must be filthy).

Terrible!

Flashing LED lights, or non flashing ones that are really bright, are the worst. Especially blue ones that light the room. Also, air conditioning or ventilation systems that are loud or make noises e.g. every ten seconds. I tend to unplug the tv. In my last hotel I took the batteries out of an obnoxious loudly ticking clock. All I want is quiet and dark for a good sleep.

I am also a regular business traveller and recently came across a new horror - no room kettle but a 'drinks station'...at the far end of each corridor. Same mediocre drinks but less conveniently placed.

I did a full on feminist rant in reception about women's safety in hotels and how no woman wants to go wandering around dark hotel corridors (no doubt having first had to get fully dressed!) in search of a late evening or early morning drink. A kettle and drinks tray was eventually found. I still question whether any woman was consulted in this decision making process, which was apparently made for 'environment reasons'. Voco hotels if you also want to avoid this fresh new horror.

Air con that switches between a loud turbo mode and quiet mode during the night controlled by thermostat.

Or air con controlled by motion sensor so if you roll over in the night it goes straight into turbo mode

I stayed recently in a room that only had a handheld shower arrangement in a huge, deep free standing bath. I have dodgy knees and the bath was too deep for me to sit down and get up in it, so I had to manage standing up with the shower head trying to soap my bum and hold the shower head at the same time. I can manage perfectly to get myself clean under a fixed shower, just stand with my back to it.

Shower caps - awful for the environment. Just buy one from a supermarket - cheap as chips, or there’s a huge selection on Amazon - and keep it in your washbag. And no I don’t want to wash my hair every time I have a shower either. It doesn’t need it.

Lack of sockets by the bed, or within easy distance of a mirror for hair drying/styling - yes yes yes. I’ve just bought an extra long extension cable with USB sockets.it.