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

I'm pleased to see I'm not the only one. 😅

I've stayed in quite a few fancy hotels and, hoenstly, the one that gets the most right is a good Premier Inn. Was in one last week that ticked all but one of those boxes. Invariably, it's where I get the best night's sleep.

Something I’ve had a couple of times lately is rooms where I couldn’t lock the door from the inside, meaning that anyone with a key card could enter.

Both times I ended up sleeping with the chair against the door, so that if my room did get allocated twice by mistake, or someone tried to get in for any more sinister reason, I’d at least be woken up.

I agree. Holiday Inn are also usually pretty good with "ticking the boxes". The chains seem to have it sorted, as they cater mostly for the likes of contractors, workers, etc who can pick and choose where they stay, so the hotel tend to standardise their rooms, even down to colour schemes, for consistency, basically making full use of the franchise model for consistency of room, service, food, etc.

Our experience is that it's usually the hotels who think they're special, i.e. boutique hotels, independents, etc., that often don't cover the basic requirements well and some are fur coat and no knickers with all kinds of "gimmicks" such as fake antiques, weird artworks, lots of useless soft furnishings, etc., but then don't provide a hook to hang your coat nor adequate lighting to read a book!

Interesting the praise for Premier Inns. I have only spent a few odd nights in Premier Inns but hated them. The rooms felt so claustrophobic, tiny windows and a bathroom where you could shower, clean your teeth and have a wee all at the same time. I wouldn't book them again.

Brilliant idea. I've just written "little black dots" to my packing list spreadsheet for future holidays!

Maybe there's some variation and I've been lucky. But last week's had:

• a row of 5-6 hooks just inside the door
• a well lit vanity mirror with shelf to put makeup etc and hairdryder (seperate to the bathroom)
• a bathroom with optional low purple lighting for overnight, doesn't wake you up, doesn't shine into the room
• bathroom was big enough for two people and was, more importantly, clean and in good condition
• seperate small bedside lights and a variety of lighting options to make the room very bright, if needed
• desk with chair that was nowhere near the tea and coffee station
• large luggae space that would take two full sized suitcases
• plenty of available power sockets (at least 4 I can recall), plus USB ones
• wardrobe and drawer space was not brilliant but it was a short stay for me, so not an issue
• dark room
• comfy mattress
• spare pillows of a different firmness to the ones on the bed, for choice
• a dedicated, easy to reach HDMI input for the telly, so you could plug in a laptop or similar and stream netflix etc
• awful wifi - though when I told them this they acknowledged it and said they were changing suppliers

That's not a bad checklist for a budget hotel, imo.

Bathrooms with no doors or with glass walls.

Having to turn all the lights on to go to the loo in the middle of the night.

Stayed in a nice hotel in Lisbon...all the reviews mentioned how difficult it was to work out how to switch on a light.

Fridges that hum loudly in the night.

Playing hunt the hairdryer.

I stayed in a hotel where the light automatically turned on when you opened the bathroom door. Not what I want at 2am!

Stayed in a hotel in a nearby town for a Wedding for 1 night. It had no bedside light/lamp just a main overhead light with some sort of 1000 watt bulb. The switch was at the side of the door. So going to bed went from blinding light to plunging into blackness.

Very sensible. I always end up cutting up one of my emergency plasters to block them.

@TheyAllFloatDownHere yes the brand newly refurbished ones are like that sadly not many of the ones awaiting refurbishment.

Staying in a hotel right now that has a little washing line round the edge of the balcony on three sides. It's genius, looks tidier than using the actual balcony and lots of hanging space.

All hotels in hot places with pools/beach should copy!

Generally, why is there never anywhere to put your washbag in a bathroom??

Hooks or lack thereof has always been a bugbear of mine. It doesn't reflect how cheap or expensive a place is there are so few places that have them. I wonder whether they are concerned about wear and tear on the wall?
The last hotel I stayed at had hooks galore for a change and more towel rails than towels.

They lost marks for the piles of unwanted cushions and the bath in the bedroom.

Two holiday homes this year at opposite ends of the country had rechargeable torches plugged in that emitted a bright vertical light when the room lights went off. I think they were in case you had to escape in a fire and had a little notice not to unplug them. Is this a new rule? Wrapped them in towels at night.

It is a rule that there has to be a torch I think (or at least, it's good practice) but I think one with regular batteries covers it!

Common ones for me

• overheated rooms, with no way of opening a window or turning down a radiator
• a desk + chair that I never ever use, I would much rather have a comfy chair for reading in, rather than sitting on the bed
• noisy pipes or fridges
• no coathooks on the door
• wardrobe with only two hangers. I do travel light, but really!

I could go on!

Recently I stayed in a newbuild hotel aimed at walkers. There was

• nowhere to hang wet clothes! Or indeed, any hanging space at all, only drawers. I hung my dripping wet coat on the corner of the telly!
• a massive bathroom, but the bedroom area was so small that the double bed was against a wall at one side
• no bedside lights or tables
• a window that I couldn't reach to open or shut (DH could reach it, so that's something)
• sockets were in weird places, so you had to put the kettle on the floor to plug it in (luckily no one tripped over it and scaled themselves)

It was very smart looking, but designed by someone who hadn't the faintest idea what was required.

Crappy hairdryers attached to the bathroom wall. This seems to be the case in even the nicest hotels abroad. Who wants to dry their hair in a damp bathroom?!!!!

Crappy hairdryers attached elsewhere in the room - only marginally less annoying than point 1.

Lack of a decent shelf or drawer in the bathroom so you have to have your toilet bag on the floor.

Agree with all the comments re drying towels or lack of a well lit mirror.

Inability to think that having a mirror, dressingtable/desk and socket in close proximity would be a good idea.

I'm in a fairly posh hotel where they have upgraded me to a suite (not that I need it as only me...but nice).
The lights are operated by a panel on the opposite side of the bed I sleep on;
The curtains open/close all the way... I like them open a tad in the morning;
The bedside plug socket/ USB port is too far away to plug phone in and scroll
No heated rails in bathroom to dry swim stuff
Sofa facing the wardrobes...not the ( 2nd ) TV

But apart from that..... 😁

We stayed in one at the weekend that had a window in the wall between the bathroom and bedroom. It meant you could lie back in the bath and look through the bedroom to the view outside. It also meant that putting the bathroom light on in the night woke your partner, who then had the added bonus of seeing you sat on the bog.

What I find really annoying is that they try and persuade you to reuse your towels but when cleaning the bathroom they usually refold and organise the towels so you don’t know which one you used previously.