Would you expect 2 hotel rooms for parents and teens to be close to each other

[Frumpylab]

Just wondered about others experience. Our holiday in a smart 4 star hotel - one room for parents and a younger child, and second room for 2 teens. I emailed ahead and requested rooms to be close by. When turned up the rooms were on different floors and slightly different part of hotel. When I asked if we could switch to be closer it felt like the hotel staff had a bit of a 'tough shit' attitude. I felt it was very reasonable to expect families to be placed close by and a bit of an apology for not managing this. What do others think?

BTW it wasn't about security etc - it's just very inconvenient having to trek along corridors to wake them / make plans / share sun cream and water etc etc and quite nice to be able to pop easily to each other

I don’t think you are being unreasonable at all. You booked the rooms together and you emailed. How many nights you there for? How old are the teens.

It's a bit inconvenient but I think that teens are fine wherever. If not, splitting with one parent in each room would be the solution

No. They never seemed to be unless we asked to switch on arrival. Not great. It's one reason we self catered for most holidays when our DCs were younger so it was only ever the occasional overnight stop.

Depends how old the teens are. Mine would have been delighted to be on a separate floor.

No.

Travelled a lot with teens and ime unless requested at check in rooms can and will be all over the place.

Teens are definitely old enough to be on their own (14 and 16). It's just a pain in the arse not being close! And their attitude pissed me off, would have liked a bit more of a 'so sorry, we do try and put people together but couldn't this time' rather than come away feeling like I was making an unreasonable request!

IME, providers/hotels wanted a legal adult in each room. So 1 parent + 1 or more children in each room and thus parents cannot share a room! We fudged this: teen DDs shared a room and we had ours. Theirs happened to be 2 doors away which was great.

If you requested it, they would have tried (or should have). I would go back and say that it was requested in the booking, you realise they may not be able to reallocate today but could they try agsin tomorrow? That’s what I’d do, anyway.

Whenever I have booked more than one room, even though my 'kids' are adults they have always put us next door or close by, even though it's not something I've requested.

I would have thought it's common sense and that would be the default with a requests if parties wanted rooms on different floors?

this summer we stayed in three hotels, got two rooms booked in each. In each case we got rooms next door to each other without asking
I know it can’t be guaranteed but Yanbu to hope this would be possible in most cases.

Are the room types the same? When we last travelled the teens were in the next block, but this was due to them having a twin room and us having a family room. All our block were family rooms so they couldn’t move them. They did put us so we could pretty much see onto their balcony (not sure if this was intentional or just luck).

Given you presumably booked both rooms at the same time and called ahead to ask to be together, I think it’s reasonable to oblige (and given the size of the hotel, it’s realistic to think it was possible to manage).

Inconvenient yes. Keep asking for rooms closer together- a room may come available.
In the meantime split the adults up and have a teen or 2 each. My parents did this and we did it too. It’s only for a couple of weeks so it’s not going to ruin your life or anything.

We have has that twice. Kids were 14/16 and 15/17. The first time they were requested to be close to each other- on same floor but about twenty rooms apart.
Second time, in same block, different floors. Really cross as we booked 11 months in advance and asked for them to be joining. TBF lucky in last hotel that weren't further apart as hotel had numerous blocks!

Exactly. That's what irritated us. Most rooms standard in this hotel but they would not accommodate us.

Premier Inns have always given us interconnecting room, absolute game changer and a great way to have privacy and extra space.

I have never had a problem with this. Myself, DP and my parents went away last year, I am disabled and despite us all being adults they were more than happy to accommodate rooms close together. Not that it was absolutely necessary, but like you it could have been a bit of a pain.

As a teen I would have been thrilled to be on a different floor from my parents, but if it continues to be a pain then it's worth asking again tomorrow.

I've had this happen, sometimes it's because you have two different kinds of room, perhaps a sea view premium and a basic room.
However I agree it's handy to be next door and the hotel should have at least apologised.

If you booked rooms of different types (a family room & a twin) then it's not always possible due to the layout if the rooms are grouped together by type, no amount of emailing ahead is going to solve that I'm afraid.

And as for the attitude, well my attitude always depends on the person I'm dealing with and their attitude towards me and how reasonable their reaction to the no is, given what I have to work with tbh. If it's physically impossible to meet the request because of the layout, timing of the request or other factors like everyone else has checked in, then I'll explain that politely and apologise, but if you take the attitude that I should be able to work a miracle and find me wanting because I can't, then you're going to get the tough shit attitude in return.

Personally I would only book two interconnecting rooms, though I understand this probably limits the choice of hotel.
Mine aren't old enough for separate rooms from us yet but I remember when I used to holiday with my parents my mum would drag us around the travel agents and insist these were part of the booking.

Thanks for the responses. It's interesting to hear others views. I just wondered if I had unrealistic expectations as can't see it being too hard to plan room allocation when so much notice, and so many rooms and loads of couples here. On questioning the location of the rooms, I came away feeling a bit miffed that there was no apologetic air in the conversation. Anyway it is sorted out now - the hotel gets such good reviews and I guess I had a high expectations about how helpful the staff would be ( also spoilt by last year holiday!).

Most hotels require an adult in the room and can’t guarantee the rooms will be close. We had to book an adult and child for each; but swapped when we got there; both teens stayed together; one hotel had the rooms close to each other; the other one we had to walk a bit but still same floors. Teens loved the independence

It depends how the hotel is set up. If they have twins on one floor and doubles on another then there isn't much they can do at check in.

I suppose the ideal would be connecting rooms.

At booking, we always requested interconnecting, or if not available then next to each other. Then, would follow up with a phone call after (online) booking, to get them to confirm it was noted at their end. Then would follow up with another phone call a few days before arriving. Never had an issue😁.