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

Not weird at all!

We stayed in one where the fucker flashed. I put a plaster over it.
Stayed in two hotels where the bathroom became an accidental wetroom when you showered. One shitty hotel in Greece one cute and trendy place in amsterdam.
Oh and beds pushed against walls- looking at you cute amsterdam hotel again and Premier Inn hub Covent Garden, where the bed was also ridiculously high

Pillows. I absolutely hate the thick bouncy pillows. Even one is too deep.

Whaaaat? I don't know anyone, in my friends or family, who washes their hair every day other than men, and even most of them don't. And yes, we do all shower daily.

I was at a place with a 'rainfall shower' last weekend (no hand shower) - and it was absolutely HUGE, about 50cm long and 30cm wide. Never seen such a large shower head. Water pressure amazing, so I'm sure it was lovely - but I had to have a bath because I didn't want to wash my hair!!

Those of us with long hair don't wash every day necessarily so a hand held or an adjustable height shower is really useful.

I would also like to add a request to remove the rock hard beds which have become the norm in the last 8-10 years. I swear there have been instances where the floor would have been more comfortable. Some hotels now are using toppers so they know their beds are simply too hard.

Not if you have curly hair it's not.

I guess the hotels I usually stay in are designed by slightly more intelligent people as the only gripes I have are not enough hooks to hang towels and coats (and bathroom hooks that aren't actually hooks so the hand towel falls down very easily). Otherwise the bathrooms have been great, proper walls and doors, suitable lighting, showers that can be handheld (or when there's a rainfall shower there's a handheld too). Countertops stretching the length of the room so there's room to put all your toiletries and, not being the UK, sockets in the bathroom for the hairdryer in front of the massive mirror.
Good heavy firedoors so no sound or light from the corridor. Sockets and bedside tables. Lights that work well, one hotel even had a switch by the bed that switched all the lights off except the reading lights. Adjustable room temps. Breakfast buffets with separate gluten free sections that have their own, proper, toaster. Often there's a selection of different style pillows, so thinner and thicker ones and when there hasn't I've just asked at reception for extra pillows and get them.

Stayed in the Hilton at Stansted airport once and the shower head couldn't be adjusted and it sprayed the water out forwards rather than downwards! Was horrible trying to shower in that. And the beds for the children were hard as planks.

a toilet roll holder with razor sharp edges placed so you can't avoid it with your knee.

shower pods inside the bedroom part. of course with translucent door and nowhere to place the towel.

Yes, I agree, OP. I'd make a general list even 4* business hotels fall foul of (and sometimes expensive boutique or luxury hotels too)

• Shit lighting
• Poorly placed/ lack of plug sockets
• Shit coffee at breakfast (almost all hotels)
• Poor temperature control
• Can't do a decent cooked breakfast

I stayed in an otherwise pretty good hotel for work last week in central London., with actually a very well-designed room ☺️ But my room wasn't ready an hour after check in time and I ended up only having half an hour to get ready for an event. Not impressed. I guess they have enough regular custom to not bother to do any better.

Stayed in a hotel in China last month and the bath was in a glass-walled room. On the balcony.

Skimping on towels is another bugbear. Two people in the room = two large towels please, not one to share. And they should be bath sheet size not bath towel size.

1. Over complicated showers. Went on a two week tour earlier this year staying in about 8 hotels and in each one you have to work out which knob or lever to turn in which unique combination to get a shower. Complicated by the lack of HOT and COLD arrows and fixed shower heads so you’re squashed against the wall getting drenched in freezing water while you figure it out.
2. No hooks ever. They cost 50p.
3. Mugs and cups are those tiny thick things that you can’t make a decent cup of tea in.
4. Special mention for the hotel in Florence I just stayed in for one week that had a kettle and coffee machine and pods and teabags but no mugs. Only glasses. Assumed this was an oversight but reception said they were ‘against local regulations’. They wouldn’t give me a cup. Had to buy a souvenir mug and use that.

Oh and the breakfast cups were tiny thick coffee mugs and hot water was from a spout on coffee machine and not boiling so couldn’t even get a decent cup of tea at breakfast

The paucity of hooks is the oddest as they’re cheap.

I’ve encountered all the issues mentioned but I’ll add a couple more:
Bedrooms with a big freestanding tub which look glamorous in photos but which are often not at all comfortable to bath in, give no privacy (bar the one place which provided a movable screen), nowhere to put your towels near it and sometimes roll top with nowhere to put your toiletries.

And an extra special mention - I’m not a fan of those bathroom doors which swing so you can close off either the toilet or the whole bathroom but the worst was the one with the towel rail on it and nowhere else to put towels. If you shut the bathroom door, the towels would be on the outside.

No extendable mirror! I am very shortsighted so need to be about 10cm from the mirror to put my mascara on. I hate it when the only mirror in the bathroom is on the other side of the enormous sink so I have to somehow contort myself over it to get close enough.

Poor lighting. I want lighting options, not a room with just a handful of side lights. Nothing worse than a dimly lit room with horrible yellow lighting, gives me a headache.

Windows that don't open...

THIS! I hate those. Don't need them and they are by definition dirty, as I don't know when they were last changed/cleaned.

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.

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.

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.

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 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!

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!

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.

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.

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