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

Ok, this is me being very British tourist abroad...
American hotel rooms usually have a coffee machine, sometimes quite fancy but you can't make tea (from the little stash of Yorkshire Tea bags you can carried with you).
Some will provide a kettle on request ,but a lot don't have any to offer

I once stayed in the Side Hotel in Hamburg. All very modern in styling complete with lightly frosted glass cube bathroom and no obvious curtain to the massive glazed window wall. Which conveniently looked out onto the office I was going to be visiting the next morning.

So Dagmar in accounts would be able to keep an eye on me and provide a running commentary to her colleagues...

'Oh yes, Gnome, has woken up, been to the toilet and is now having a shower...'

I seriously considered sleeping in the bath. Fortunately someone came to turn down the bed (why? I'm an adult and can manage bedding) and showed me the switch which operated the window blind. It was hidden behind the headboard for the bed.

Used a shower once that had nipple blasting water pressure level, was very uncomfortable! I think there was something wrong with that particular shower though as none of the others were as powerful (old military base shower room outside the sauna so rows of showers, tried that one and almost blasted my nipples off so tried another, then tried several more for research purposes luckily I was alone so no one there to think me weird!)

Beds where I either need a step ladder to get on them ... or take a run and jump 🤣. We're not all 6ft tall 🤦‍♀️

I have found my people! It’s so rare to stay in a hotel now and not be enraged by some shoddy or poorly thought out design. And so many of them are clearly because the person designing them was a man and has never considered what women might find useful in a hotel room. Consult women! Or even better, employ women designers who might actually have a clue about what 50% of the population might need. mirrors, for example. We need a full length mirror somewhere, and not one that we can only stand a foot back from. I need to see myself fully and at a distance to properly
appraise what I’m wearing. Desk mirrors - they are never well lit so I have to do my makeup in the crappy dim light that every hotel seems to have nowadays. Half the time I can’t straighten my hair directly in front of a mirror because the chair/desk/mirror/plug socket configuration makes it impossible in some way. How about putting a tampon or sanitary towel in among the free shower caps/toothpaste/hand lotion sets for emergencies? Plug sockets AND USB ports on both sides of the bed please! Light switches that don’t need a training course to work out which combination of switches turned on or off around the room will give you a dark/lit up room. 2 shower heads so that if I don’t need to wash my hair I don’t have to use the rainfall head. WiFi code clearly written somewhere obvious in the room. A shelf in the bathroom that can fit 2 people’s overnight toiletries. If you must only provide one towel per person, could it please cover both my arse and my boobs at the same time? I could go on and on….

I'll never forget a hotel I stayed in once, not a chain. Vast room with four poster bed, a massive circular bath on a plinth actually in the room, with a toilet and washbasin tucked away in a separate ensuite, then a large walk in shower room with a choice of different showers. It was more like staying in an old rock star's mansion than a hotel!

I stayed in an Ibis Styles hotel recently where I thought this. The designers should be made to sleep in the two types of room for 2 nights:
a) with a friend in the twin room
b) with a partner in the double room.
And then they might see that having the shower and washbasin in the room is not ideal. Especially not with the handily-situated large mirror giving a full view of the shower from the bed. The excellent ventilation in the shower area meant the glass on the shower door didn't fog up in the slightest meaning that anyone sitting on the bed would be treated to a ring-side seat while the person in the shower washed their bits.

Fortunately I was travelling alone!

The top of the range Ibises are usually fine for a night if on the small side, but only stayed in a Styles once - never again.

Absolutely!

My would be so dry and irritated if I washed my hair everyday (yes, even with gentle shampoo).

I also have a lot of hair that takes a veeeeeerry long time to dry (it’s still wet after several hours if I don’t blow dry it) and I really don’t have the time or dedication to wash and blowdry my hair every morning!

Solution to the electricity going off when you take your key card - you can use any old card in the slot. Maybe not a bank card in case you forget it, but even something like a business card will work.

I once had to call reception and get a staff member to come and show me where the last light switch was. I was ready to go to bed and turned off all the lights except one. I searched the room for ages before finally giving up and calling for help.

It was placed on the wall under the (only) towel hook (see also no proper bathroom, the shower stall opened into the room). So the light switch was hidden behind the towel!

I’d also like to complain about thick, overly warm duvets, but no top sheet. So you spend the whole night alternating between boiling and freezing, trying to regulate your temperature by sticking your feet in and out or throwing off, then putting in the duvet.

My most recent ‘favourite’ was the hotel room I had last week which made a big deal of the free drinks included in your room’s mini fridge. Turned out that meant 2 bottles of beer and 2 bottles of Diet Pepsi. No bottle opener. I eventually managed to get a bottle of Diet Pepsi open using a teaspoon as leverage but it took ages.

I’ve stayed in this same hotel before. Previously there was a bottle opener in the room but the fridge hadn’t been plugged in. There was only one power socket so assume that Housekeeping hadn’t noticed that the previous guest had unplugged the fridge so they could plug the Nespresso machine in. 😳

Mind blown, I never knew this! Thanks

Not a design issue but hopefully a helpful tip for Mumsnetters. I once checked in an hotel for work and went on to meeting up with some people later on. I left the hotel in daylight but returned shortly after 11:00pm. The room had a power fault which meant no lighting.

l had to change rooms after one too many glasses of wine, late at night. To this day, l always switch the lights on when l arrive at a room.

Yep. Good old Premier Inn

Has anyone mentioned inadequate sound proofing so you can hear every word of the conversation the people in the room next door are having? Not to mention snoring and sex noises (not necessarily in that order).

As an aside, my hairdresser told me off for washing my hair daily, she said it was bad for it.

I agree with all the other points, especially the ones about all aspects of lighting - I get particularly irritated by sliding cupboard doors which don't close properly and leave a chink of light on all night, and mirrors placed so they reflect the smoke detector light or the red light to show the electricity is on, or both. The worst part is that it doesn't seem to matter if you are staying in a 5 star hotel or a Premier Inn, there is always some kind of design fault to be found!

Yeah, I had that. The cleaner saw more than either of us intended....

Oh and can I add a big 'BOO' for hotels that offer you free drinks to make up for anything that goes wrong? I don't drink alcohol and there's only so much Diet Coke you can put down you to try to make up for giving me a room with a faulty toilet.

Grape scissors sounds great. We've just returned from one with no oven glove, measuring jug, scales or non-stick pans....

God yes. Stayed in one this summer where the stairs were uncarpeted (as was the whole house) and the toilet was downstairs. You couldn’t go to the toilet in the night without making a horrific amount of noise.

Yours sounds pretty normal, to be honest!

Ah, no, it definitely isn't. Any hairdresser I've ever been to has said washing your hair every day is bad for it. Leaches out all the natural oils. And it just makes it more greasy faster because the hair overcompensates. And if you have long or styled hair using heat on it every day isn't good for it either.

All the little green/blue/red lights on the gadgets ☹️ Lovely thick blackout curtains, on ruddy poles!!!! Put them behind a pelmet like Premier Inn. Glass walls on bathrooms. We travel with sticky tape and sheets of brown paper, just in case.

There's another hotel chain called Dakota which are weird, or certainly the one I went to was. Dark furniture, low/hardly any lighting, there was a big curtain across the entrance door IIRC. Came in from a sunny day and couldn't see a thing. Such a bizarre atmosphere, more like a skanky strip club.