There are a few things that tend to frustrate me when I stay at a hotel. For instance, I get annoyed if there aren’t enough power outlets in the room. However, I understand that guests need more charging points nowadays than when the room was originally designed, so I can forgive hotels for this (to some extent). Although there are ways to work around the issue and add more outlets, my greatest annoyance is something else entirely. It’s a simple matter that hotels could easily fix, which is why I get really upset when I have to deal with it.
WHAT’S UP WITH THE PILLOWS?????
Really? Do the people who design these rooms actually sleep on a bed? It’s not so hard to figure out how many pillows you need.
Maybe I’m just a bit of a Goldilocks here. Sometimes there aren’t enough pillows for me. If you have only one queen or king-size bed in the room, you should have more than 3 pillows. I say it should be a 2 pillow per person norm for hotels.
Not Enough
Of course, some hotels want to show off by giving you multiple sizes of decorative pillows on the bed. Does anyone sleep on these? How do they get washed between guests? If the pillows take up more than 1/3 of the bed space, that’s too many.
Decorative Pillows
Be honest – if you’re like me, you throw those pillows on the floor. The housekeeping staff nicely stacked them in the corner for us.
The W New Orleans French Quarter has upped their pillow game with a bow-tie throw pillow.
I removed the pillow from the bed every day and left it in various locations around the room. It always ended up back on the bed. Housekeeping even trolled me one day by removing my pillow from the bed and placing it where I put the bow-tie.
Occasionally, hotels will get it just right. I wasn’t surprised that the Waldorf=Astoria had their pillow game at 100%. Those were some comfortable pillows.
Just Right
The Hyatt Centric Key West also gets the pillows right (and they should for what they charge for these rooms!)
You don’t have to be a fancy hotel to get the pillows correct. Even a Crowne Plaza and a Courtyard by Marriott can do it. It’s not hard.
Crowne Plaza Times Square, New York, NY
Courtyard by Marriott Fort Lauderdale East – Fort Lauderdale, FL
Final Thoughts
If the first thing I have to do when I get into bed is to throw three decorative pillows on the floor or go and grab an extra pillow from the other bed (or the closet), you’re already digging a hole for your hotel.
Now, none of these even approached the level of pillow confusion we had at one of our casas in Cuba. The pillows on the bed were the only ones they provided – 2 decorative zebra-stripe ones. That’s it. At least the polyester pillowcases matched the polyester bed sheets in style and texture. But really, not even the towel swans could save them.
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1 comment
It’s a huge pet peeve for me too. The two biggest problems are (1) decorative pillows that aren’t washed and reek of someone else’s perfume or scent (yuck) or (2) pillows that are not firm enough (this is true for just about all hotels as most don’t offer firm foam).