To want to be able to sleep when I’m staying in a hotel.

[Hangerbout]

I work away from home a lot, so have clocked up a lot of experiences in hotels. AIBU? Here are the problems:

1. Bedrooms too hot. Air con default at 23 degrees appears to be the norm now, with restrictions on how low you can go (which is usually above what I need in order to sleep). Last week, the default was 25 degrees. Surely hotel chains have read the research that bedrooms need to be cool?
2. Beds too narrow or short. One time, the bed was so small I had to sleep diagonally.
3. Bed backboards affixed to inferior stud walls, resulting in waking up every time the person in the next room moves in their bed.
4. Hotels not informing customers they are hosting migrants, homeless families and what seems to be recently released offenders: thank you for all the noise in the middle of the night.
5. Doors that look like they’ve previously been crow-barred open. Cue trying to sleep with one eye open.
6. Gyms only open at 7am. Like, that’s too late.
7. Breakfast from 8am. Like, that’s too late.
8. Severe restrictions on the shower temperature options. Thank you for the luke warm shower! Likewise, a lack of industry wide standard shower fixings: I don’t want to solve the shower equivalent of a rubic’s cube when I’m pressed for time. Oh, and the shower head maximum height being set at ‘hobbit mode’. Thank you for the crick in my neck.
9. ’DOG FRIENDLY’ everywhere. Cue me not being able to breathe in a room formerly occupied by a dog due to allergy. But that’s ok because ‘customer wellbeing’.

Thank you for hearing my woes.

I always find hotels too hot, for room temperature settings , bedding options and sometimes non opening windows. Also noisy other guests.
Im not sure the timings of breakfast or gym opening hours affect actual sleep though.

I booked admittedly very cheap room attached to a pub when visiting a uni with my DD. I could hear everything the people next door were doing - chatting, laughing, farting and....dtd. it was horrific, thankfully DD had already fallen asleep when the more embarrassing stuff was happening. I barely slept and wished id just driven there and back on the day!

I have honestly never experienced the vast majority of these problems. The exception being number 8 (although water pressure is a bigger issue for me than temperature).

What kind of hotels are you staying at? I’ve stayed in pretty much every kind of hotel (from extremely cheap to extremely expensive) and I’ve never experienced the vast majority of these problems…

My bugbear is air-con that can’t be turned off. The noise is pure torture! I love a quiet room and any humming noises are so distracting.

You’re not wrong on the dog-friendly aspect- we have to avoid them due to severe allergies and it’s becoming increasingly difficult.

Sounds like you’re staying in some pretty cheap and basic hotels if they’re also housing migrants and homeless etc. Demand a better standard from your organisation.

Being stuck next to a noisy lift when I had a nine hour drive ahead of me the next day. Woken up throughout the night by the noise (WHY? Who the hell moved around that much in a hotel at 3 / 4 am).

Erm yeah like in every decent hotel. What world are you living in? Obviously not one where you work for a living.

I had a job where there was a limit on the amount you could spend on a hotel, and normally this meant it was not a very high standard. I used the pay the extra myself to stay at a nicer hotel - well worth it!

Well I travel extensively for work and have experienced every one of them minus the migrant issue.

Radisson Blu (or at least the ones I use for work) ... Early breakfast and 24 hour gyms.

8 is very late for breakfast

Do you stay in really cheap places? That seems the problem.

Erm no. What you get at Travel lodge is fuck all.
Id rather stay in Premier Inn. As pp said you get decent beds and breakfast. The newer ones with the ac’s and windows you can’t open are annoying though, and can be boiling in summer.

I put the aircon at 23 at home mostly, and in hotel rooms. 24 sometimes. It only goes lower when it’s quite hot.

Can I add in having a billion lights that can't be turned off from one single switch, or even worse, as I experienced recently - a light in the bathroom that was movement triggered only (so no switch) and turned itself off after a period of time - which was around 30 minutes..... Lovely when I wanted to go to sleep after getting ready for bed, or when I needed to go to the loo in the middle of the night... (and no, shutting the door didn' t block out the light!)

The heat is a problem in hotels near airports all through Europe now. It was the same near Heathrow. Windows don't open or if they do just a crack. The air con controls don't work in the winter.
They are set to one hot temp and don't work. Cheap or expensive.

Had the same problem in a Brighton no where near an airport.

And one in Germany.

It was so hot just checking in at a German hotel that people were getting overcome in the very long queue.

The staff behind the desks were overheating as well. They had to open all the front doors and wedge them to keep them open

Apparantly the heat is controlled by a central system in a lot of hotels now. At the German hotel they claimed that in the winter they could not change it to cool.

They say that it can be controlled by the front desk at some hotels but my experience is that it took hours to cool down if at all and i needed to keep ringing every 6 hours as it went back to hot.

It's not just cheap or airport hotels now. I've noticed it as a trend after Covid. Complaints all through Tripadvisor etc.

Also noted all through europe air con just 'failing' in individual rooms for no apparent reason. France most recent example. Same room worked last year. This year no air con. Moved to another room and just an occassonal light breeze if at all.

Are they trying to save money, obey local laws on air con or just not fixing known problems?

Too hot rooms combined with no top sheet, what the hell are you expected to sleep under a heavy doona when you’re boiling?

Overhead ‘rain head’ showers that are impossible to wash under without saturating your hair.

Shower temperature that goes continually up and down and terrible water pressure,

Inadequate lighting to apply makeup.

No outlet near a mirror for hair drying/styling.

Not enough hangers in the wardrobe and lack of shelves or drawers for accessories and folded clothes.

In all honesty I stayed at a private quite cheap hotel when I went to visit my son and yes it did have a lot of foreign sounding men staying there but they were not ‘migrants’ in the way it’s being said , they were perfectly legal workmen doing electrical and plumbing work ironically on a big brand new travelodge!! I got chatting to them outside , friendly pleasant Lithuanians and yes they talked to each other in their home tongue . Yes they did have cigarettes outside , they weren’t causing any hassle and this is not The Ritz - it’s not a tourist area so it’s not as if it’s going to be full of Judith and Mary’s doing a spot of sight seeing.

most of the migrants that are at the processing stage are not held in hotels that are open to the public - they buy out the whole place if necessary .

I do think some people see darker skin and a foreign accent and think ‘illegal migrant’ - it very often simply isn’t the case.

my biggest bugbear is people ‘any people’ going out talking loudly on landing or slamming doors before 8am - often leaving for airports etc

1. Read reviews before booking
2. Dont book something only because its cheap

Get yourself a good lightweight, fold-up fan. I got mine on Amazon and take it everywhere. It charges up on USB in the car so it doesn't even need to be plugged in. Get some earplugs too.

But your employer must be booking some really shitty hotels for you. As someone has already suggested, Premier Inns are a good basic choice.

I agree with most of your gripes, although 7am for the gym and 8am for breakfast seem OK for me, maybe a for breakfast actually.

the thing I absolutely hate, and no amount of prior reading of reviews protects against it, is when they allocate you a room next to the lift so all you can hear all night and most of the early part of the morning is the lift mechanism clanking away all night. Or next to the plant for the swimming pool, or the central laundry. I've had all of these so many times now that when I check in I specifically ask not to be put next to the lift.

Noisy neighbours are always a pain. I was in a hotel earlier this week where someone came in about midnight and started banging and slamming stuff so everything in my room was shaking. I get dropping something by accident, but I often find myself wondering what the hell people can actually be doing to make the noise they do.

My main issue, though, is hard mattresses and unyielding pillows. I need a bit of give in a mattress but it's more and more common for beds to be extremely firm. Since pillows went to whatever plastic stuff they put in them, many are really hard and / or lumpy. So I often wake with aching hips and neck pain.

Never experienced breakfast starting at 8 anywhere that caters to business travellers. That really is crap.

Airport hotels are the worst. They have all the trappings of a nice hotel but at the stuffiest places on the planet.

My pet hate is heavy winter duvets all year round (including heatwaves), and no lighter alternatives in the cupboard. I travel with my own light duvet.

We stay regularly in premier inns and we have never had a bad night.

If you're regularly having to stay in these shitty hotels, with no choice over which one, I would have a plan to make it more bearable rather than shouting into the void.

The worst of these is the temperature, but if you're driving stick a fan and an extension lead in the boot. If you're on public tranport there's got to be some kind of portable one you can stick in your bag.

Decent earplugs, get some made to measure if off the peg isn't working.
Decent eye mask
White noise

If you can't see or hear the other residents, it doesn't matter what they're up to and when.

Take your own pillow from home

The times for breakfast are set and they either suit you or you'll have to make other arrangements.

The shower, suck it up, it's a shower, you can work it out. Next time you'll know how it works.