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

I am a bath person.

The soap etc is now bolted to the wall but only at the height that is accessible by standing up/in the shower. So I can't reach it from the bath.
Just a little niggly annoyance.

Maybe ppl should stop stealing soap and they could leave some for the poor bathers.

No hook in the bathroom and nowhere to leave your toiletry bag. A double whammy.

FIXED SHOWER HEADS ARE FROM HELL. I’m 64 and don’t want to have to do downward-facing dog in the shower to wash my bum - even if there’s space which there won’t be.

Shower cubicles so small you can’t bend to wash your feet.

Rooms where you can’t adequately open the window.

First prize goes to the hotel where the central heating was jammed on full during an August heatwave and the owner implied that I was being unreasonable to complain about it.

This might derail, but it’s bad for your skin to shower every day too ;)

100% yes. I have been saying that that this should be a minimum requirement for years.

Why are there never any plugs near the miniscule mirror that is always placed in a dark corner with no lights?

Why does the room always turn into a disco as you battle with all the lighting options just to turn on the bathroom light?

Who invented a bathmat to resemble a tiny slippery tea towel with zero absorbency?

Kettles with water left in them from the prior occupant

Windows that don't open, radiators that are just for show, not enough teabags.

Things I always pack are my own bathmat, an extension lead and a mirror.

It’s amazing how common some of these issues are, especially the shower ones and the no sockets by the bed. And the bathroom lights are usually accompanied by loud extractor fans that don’t switch off for an hour after you’ve left the bathroom

I would add that that holiday cottage owners should have to spend at least a weekend in their own cottage . Lumpy pillows and duvets, huge duvets for a week in August, blunt knives and no sharpener, floorboards that creak horrifically in the night, tiny bath towels, shite showers, kitchen cupboards full of unused crap (wine decanter, asparagus tongs, grape scissors - that level of usefulness on holiday) so nowhere to put your own things.

Also, mirrors that you can't get close enough to to pluck your eyebrows or chin hairs! There's always a table or vanity unit in front of them, or else it's too badly lit to be of any use.

I don’t often stay in hotels and I was SHOCKED by the en suite with glass wall to the bed in one I stayed in.

Being in my own no problem but I made a mental note to check this for any future bookings if not just me and it can be as perfect as you like in other areas, but I will not book!

I want the first designer to have done this to own up and please explain why the F?

And cushions, runners, uncomfortable pillows, need full size mugs please and extra supplies of proper tea.

Lighting and positioning of the dressing table/desk is my bug bear. Even in lovely hotels they seem to shove it in a dark corner. I always end up doing my makeup standing in front of a window (I always bring a makeup mirror now) to get natural light. I don't want to do my face in a soggy bathroom with no natural light and no surfaces to put things on!

I would add- no mirror anywhere a plug so I can't do my hair

Tiny cups and glasses.

Tiny kettle

Not enough coathangers

Hooks in the bathroom that don't actually hold anything

Tiny towels and bathmat

Windows that hardly open

The room lights at the Edinburgh airport Moxy, I couldn't figure out how to turn them off. Every time I turned the bedside light off every single one of the many other lights in the room came on. I tried every possible combination of switches nothing worked. In the end I went down to reception in my pyjamas (past a couple that had a a shouting match further up the hallway) and got the receptionist to come to the room and switch them off for me. I still don't know how to do this.

The DCs and I spent a few weeks over the summer holidays in Australia and amused ousrselves by doing a 2 week road trip, staying in Motels all up and down the East Coast.

On the last day of driving home (5 hours) I asked them to rate the places we stayed. It turned out that they had both silently been rating them the whole time by which motels had enough sockets for the phone chargers. The best place, they agreed, was the third night's hotel. They had not recalled that I had to wedge the door shut from the inside due to security concerns; once we were in the room after an early dinner we dared not go out again and that there were alot of drunken fights in the courtyard until the early hours. It had enough sockets, so was the best one.

If you travel a lot surely your travel kit contains the various gadgets you need to combat many of these common issues though?

I always take -
A very low wattage nightlight (USB rechargable) so that I can switch off the sensor-activated bathroom electronics (if its not glaring lights its a noisy fan) usually with an isolator switch at ceiling height and just use my nightlight.

A multiplug in case there are insufficient sockets

A 5m long usb wire in case a aocket isn't near the bed

A hotel door security gadget set (similar to https://www.amazon.co.uk/Portable-3-Piece-Security-Compact-Stopper/dp/B0F2Y9QNZL/ though this isn't the exact set I have

I haven't found a gadget that combats the annoyance of fixed-head showers. I think thats a misogyny thing - male bathroom designers have never had to pay attention to how to wash the underside of ones boobs and don't need as much of a wash between the legs so it simply doesn't occur to them that other people have different needs.

The other thing I hate is insufficient towelling. I admit it's on me that I do have a larger than average circumference but too many places (airbnbs more than hotels tbh) have their "large" towels sized so that you'd have to be a size 10 or less to get one fully wrapped around you. Depending on where I'm staying I either bring my own decent-sized towel or rely on being able to beg extras at reception.

My absolute favourite was a shower with a semi transparent glass panel which could be made completely transparent... by a switch on the outside of the shower! I'm sorry, what? Why on earth would I want that?

Its not weird at all. Mine would be dry as a bone if washed daily and if it gets wet its a hassle to blow dry & restyle.

The things that bug me the most

1. no plug sockets by the bed but usb only that don’t work now that so many chargers are usb-c

2. shower baths where they’ve only thought about the practicality when standing and not lying down (eg impossible to reach taps for a top-up or to reach the toiletries attached high to a wall.

3. stupid lighting

Only if you are only showering once per week. Those of us who shower daily (or twice per day like me) are not washing our hair every day. I am not white and do not have fine, straight hair. There's no need to be washing curly hair everyday.

Hotel annoyances for me are definitely the shower controls under the shower, which is how they were on our recent holiday.

Fifty little spotlights all over the room, none of which are bright enough to see anything and all in the wrong place. And all of them on different light switches so you have to spend twenty minutes before bed hurting them all down. Then having to find your way into bed in the pitch black without breaking your shin on the stupid little table and chair stuck right in your path.

Agree with all of these, and would add those irritating hangers in wardrobes that can only be removed from the rail by some serious wiggling about. Do they think guests are going to steal the hangers? And please, please, just put a coat hook behind/beside the door, so that I don't have wrestle a hanger off the wardrobe rail and put my wet coat on it inside the wardrobe. Finding two armchairs in a double room is a vanishingly rare event. Do they think only one person has the right to sit comfortably? Those automatic dazzling bathroom lights - I was in a nice hotel last week where the lights not only snapped on when you entered the room, but plunged you into darkness if you didn't move under the sensor after less than a minute! I ended up not having a shower that night, too scared to do it in pitch darkness. Not only more 3 pin sockets needed in convenient places, but some usb sockets, too. I travel with an extension lead for my phone and a couple extension adaptor plugs. Decent hairdryers needed in every room. This is a great thread - hope hoteliers are reading it and taking note!

i presume they think white bin liners don’t look right in the room bin but I’m going to leave a couple of wet teabags in there which is not nice! I pretty much agree on all the other faults too!

This one isn’t the fault of the room designers but in hotels expensive enough to provide bathrobes and slippers (especially if they’re intended for walking between pool and room) it’d be nice they could give a choice of sizes. One size does not fit all.

I've stayed in a lot of hotels all over Europe and the best breakfast buffets tend to be in Poland and Switzerland.

The worst was in Florence. Nothing but cake.

Shower floors that don't slope towards the drain so the water ends up drenching the floor, especially in conjunction with an ill-fitting or non-existent door.

The "no socket near the bed" and windows that don't open are deal-breakers for me. I always find out whether the windows will open before I book. I can't sleep in a sealed room.

I will say, you were lucky to get a kettle! Most hotels I visit nowadays just have those awful Nestle coffee makers. I always request a kettle when I book.