Annoying hotel room designs!

[pestothepenguin]

I get the impression that hotel room designers never stay in hotel rooms.

Currently in a busy med resort reasonably nice 4*. The hotel is fine it's just the room is lacking

But the room is really poorly designed.

No bedside lights! Instead a sole spotlight operated by a switch next to bed. No relaxing here !
No usb sockets
No bathroom hooks or anywhere to put Clothes
No bathroom storage except a tiny shelf and a fold down cabinet )of that makes sense like a concealed shelf)
Tiny wardrobe and four tiny drawers
A luggage rack for a cabin sized case in a resort for week long stays
No where to put lugggae usually under the bed - not this time!
No vanity area - a nespresso and a kettle that no one well dare use and huge tv and no chairs for the "desk" to plug in hair toools is a slalom around the mini kitchen!

Also why don't all hotel rooms have a rock of hooks near the door so you can sling up coats bags?

The room Is huge! Bit non of these

We use airbnb villas and UK cottages a lot.

I always think that the owner/host should stay in the accommodation for at least a week so that they can see if everything works out.

For instance, we have just had 2 weeks in a modern open plan villa. The master bedroom which was huuuuge only had the bed in it. Nowhere to put your clothes, ie, chuck them on a sofa or armchair.
The towels in the bathroom were on a small wooden ladder, but there was nowhere to hang your wet towel to air.
There were only 2 coat hangers in each of the bedrooms.
There was no bottle opener
No vacuum cleaner
No door mat, so coming into the villa from the pool, left wet, slippy footprints on the tile

I did mention these things on the review (the one that only the host sees).

So many hotel rooms are so badly thought out, so many have no plugs near a mirror so it’s a pain trying to dry your hair, or the only mirror in a really poorly lit area so it’s near impossible to do your makeup.

Or only plug sockets on the opposite side of the room when mist people want to plug their mobile in next to them so they can put the alarm on.

Can I add to those:
Gap under the room door that lets light in from the hallway

Curtains that don't close fully, so outdoor light comes in (street lights, daylight)

Mirrors at weird heights and angles from anywhere you might want to use them

Small gapey towels you can't wrap round your body with any semblance of dignity

Kettle that you can't fill from the sink tap because there isn't the space to fit the kettle in the sink

Glass partition between the toilet and the room 🤢

Thousands of unnecessary cushions and throw rugs on the bed (the more there are the less chance they wash them between customers)

Nowhere to put a suitcase

DM stayed in a single room so small the bathroom door hit the bed and couldn’t be opened fully. You had to climb onto the bed to get round it. That was a shit design.

We stayed in one with underfloor heating so hot you couldn’t actually walk barefoot on the floors without burning your feet. I don’t know if you’d call that bad design or poor implementation.

Oh, and Malmaison-style dark badly-lit rooms. I appreciate mood lighting, but I do want the option of turning the lights on if I’m looking for something, or packing my suitcase up.

Oh we had one last week! Tiny room (France, so expected) but they'd gone to the bother of putting a tall thin wardrobe in with no shelves whatsoever. So I could hang my one jacket, but had nowhere to put anything else.

What about designer bathroom fittings that get water everywhere but where you need it? Shower cubicles that leak all over the floor so you have to paddle to go to the loo or clean your teeth.

Places like Travelodge and Premier Inn may seem boring and not-much-change-from-everyday life, but they do offer all these little conveniences and, in my experience, fix things if they stop working.

Stayed in one hotel room that had an abundance of throw cushions and a grand total of five table lamps. In one room.

I clean for Airbnb and try to organise it how I would like to find it.. Had a negative review a few months ago from a guest complaining the bedroom door wouldn't close due to the coat hook rail...
A rail which simply hangs over the door.
Wonder if they still would have moaned if there wasn't one at all?

Premier Inn/Travelodge/Holiday Inn Express - all designed for the solo traveller, one coat hook, room for one suitcase and so on. Going on about being eco but nowhere to dry and air your towels between uses and in holiday inn nowhere to hand them full stop.

No soft lighting option in the bathroom so if your partner goes in the night you're wide awake too.

Also in holiday rentals, self catering, the internet hub or box or whatever it is, emitting a light at night, either in the bedroom (crazy place to put it) or in a hallway or landing where it can be seen in the bedroom.

Also TVs with the big red light showing bright in the darkness at night, or charging plugs with lights on. Awful

Glass walled bathrooms! Why? They seem to be everywhere, I’ve been married for decades, but I doo sometimes want privacy in the bathroom.

Yes all these things!!

Daft as they are easy to fix and cheap!

I can never work out which light switch operates which light and it takes several attempts to switch them all off.

Hate all the cushions and the way they make the bed.

I found a Van Dyk hotel a fortnight ago lovely except the lights in hallway showing under the door, had to put on of the many towels there to block the light so I could sleep, there was also a phone to contact reception with a bright display I had to cover to sleep 😬😴

I’ve started taking my own over the door plastic hooks in my case to hang over the bathroom door to hang towels etc on as there are never enough hooks.

The nowhere to hang your towel to dry drives me bat shit…they bang on about reusing your towel to save the environment, but then there is nowhere to hang and dry it so you have to reuse a damp one. If its just me I can hang it over the shower rail (so it flaps in my face when I am moving around the bathroom), but that doesnt work when I am traveling with DH

I hate when the hotel lights switches are wired oddly. I stayed in one recently where if you turned off the bedside light with the switch on the left hand side of the bed it turned on the light on the desk. If you turned off the lamp on the right it turned on the hallway light.

I stayed in a hotel recently that had usb charging ports, but it only had usb charging ports, so you couldn’t use a hairdryer etc, the coffee machine and TV were wired in so you couldn’t unplug those.

A hotel in Spain, lovely room but the only socket was halfway up the wall with no table, so you couldn’t only charge things that either had a very long cable, or that would stay plugged in while dangling.

Open bathrooms, booked a hotel for a night away when I had known my now husband maybe four weeks, so not long at all, hadn’t seen me naked or anything like that. The bathroom did not have a door, this wasn’t at all apparent on the pictures. The toilet was opposite the ‘door’ which was in direct eyeline of the bed, not even around a corner. I had a very upset stomach.

I stayed in a hotel in Spain recently that was a revelation for all the right reasons. It had lots of good lighting including bedside spotlights, USB charging points, sockets near mirrors. There was even a magnifying mirror in the well lit bathroom so I could do my make up. I said to DH the room must have been designed by a woman.

The little lights on tv, smoke alarm, a/c, etc etc. 🤯🤯🤯 I carry a set of adhesive black dots with me now, and go round covering up all the dratted pinpricks of light before I get into bed.

I agree. There should be a legal requirement for the CEO and the room designer to spend a week living in the least luxurious of their own hotel rooms-and for the full experience, they should have to share.

My main recurrent criticism is dark rooms. Whether dark coloured walls or inadequate lighting. We stayed in a hotel in Berlin a few years ago where the lighting was so poor it was impossible to read at night. Just a couple of weak ceiling lights and a couple of really tiny, dim, bedside "spotlights". I alternated between reading my book sat on the loo, or sat by the window with the curtains open reading by the orange street light outside.

Just been away to a holiday let in York. Just the same, except it was the whole house that was dark. The kitchen/living area had a tall ceiling and just four small spotlights in the ceiling, which not only isn't enough for a fairly big area, but they were 2.5 stories above so there was little light down at floor level! The only kitchen work surface light was on the cooker extractor hood! OK during the day, but impossible to do anything at night. We had to bring in the bedside lamps from the bedroom to be able to prepare any food and then moved them to the lounge area for eating/watching TV.

I really do think that designers/owners should stay in these places themselves for a few days to actually try things out to really get the guest "experience".

And yes, to the poster above who mentioned lack of hooks. There were none in the last house we stayed in. None on the back of any doors (not even bathroom nor bedroom), none in the entrance/hallway. We ended up trying to bend metal coat hangers over the top of doors to hang things.

This is an excellent idea but who should have to do this?

We stayed in a fancy hotel in Rome and couldn't get the shower to work. I'm usually good at things like that but we couldn't do it. There were no instructions anywhere either. We had to ask for someone from the hotel to come and show us how and they couldn't do it either. Finally another person came and while they did work out how to do it they also ended up soaking their whole upper half by accidentally turning on some side jets. It was really funny.