The Five Easy Things I Want In A Hotel Room

Hotels spend time and money to figure out what their guests want the most. To find this information, they send surveys asking how the stay was and for guests to rate everything from the front desk to the room cleanliness and even the fitness room. Hotels also have their employees watch Google, TripAdvisor and Yelp! to spot bad reviews so they can try to resolve the problems (in public, so everyone can see they care).

I will save the hotels a lot of money in market research. In no specific order, here are the FIVE things I want from my hotel room.

PILLOWS

Several times, I’ve pointed out that one of my biggest pet peeves with hotels is the situation with pillows. They either give you too many pillows, so you throw them on the floor, or they give you one pillow per person. I’ll travel with my pillow for longer trips (my wife always brings hers), but if I’m only going for one or two nights, I’ll just use what they give me.

I give bonus points to Holiday Inn Express and some other hotels that give you a choice of soft or firm pillow (and label each one on the pillowcase).

POWER OUTLETS

It should be no surprise to hotels that people travel with more electronics than ever. It’s very possible that you need to charge multiple phones, tablets, laptop computers, cameras, and maybe even plug in a nightlight. We have two toothbrushes to charge in the bathroom, a nightlight, and a hairdryer the following day. This is in addition to the items already in the room, like the lights, alarm clock, TV, mini-fridge and coffee maker.

With all this in mind, and knowing darn well that hotel executives have just as many electronics as everyone else when they travel, why have I been in hotel rooms with only 1 or 2 accessible plugs? If you’re at the point where you need to start looking behind the nightstand and under the desk for whatever you can find and figuring out what light or clock you can unplug to have an open outlet, you know something is not right.

Some hotels have lamps with outlets or USB plug(s) in the base. Other hotels have installed multiple outlet connectors with USB on the nightstands. Both of these are easy fixes hotels can make to update the room to modern requirements. What’s up with those who haven’t?

NIGHTSTAND/SHELF ON EACH SIDE OF THE BED

I’ve noticed a trend where only one side of the bed gets a nightstand, table or shelf. The other side is right against a wall with just enough room to walk or has a chair and ottoman. This is usually also the side of the bed I usually sleep on.

I like to have a bottle of water by the side of the bed, and I also like to have my phone nearby to hear the alarm and check the time (now you see why I want the outlet near the bed as well).

The room with the “closet” next to the bed was the most challenging. I couldn’t even leave something on the floor next to the bed (lest you didn’t know, I’ve also become quite skilled at balancing a water bottle on the arm of a chair).

Here are two perfect examples of beds against the wall. This is usually in a room with two beds that only has a single night table, so no matter which bed you use, someone isn’t getting a table. Really? Really?

LIGHTING

Why are some hotel rooms so dark? Even with all the lights turned on, the room’s still not lit up at all. I used to blame this on hotels changing to energy-efficient light bulbs, but that excuse doesn’t cut it anymore because the newer bulbs are as bright as the old ones. It’s just a matter of not having enough lights in the proper places.

The Hampton Inn Charlotte-Belmont, NC, stands out as one of the darkest rooms we’ve had. The light behind the TV might have been helpful if it wasn’t BEHIND THE FLIPPIN’ TV!

Of course, if hotel rooms had ceiling lights, that would probably solve the problem. But we know why they usually don’t.

The other issue I have with lighting is in the bathroom. Why can’t there be a light in the shower? I hate taking a shower in the dark, and installing a light fixture in it is not difficult. Here are two classic examples of the unlit shower, or as I now call it “The Shower Cave”.

CURTAINS THAT CLOSE

One of the only things I still have to bring with me for the last 15+ years is a chip clip. Its function is to close the gap between curtains that are formed when the two sides don’t exactly fit together.

How do they design this so the light from outside the room shines through the crack all night at the exact point where your head is? Or if not that, then the sunrise peeks through the gap to say “Good Morning” at 6 AM. Kill me now.

The problem has been solved by having one curtain for the window that pulls all the way across or the novel idea of having one curtain slide behind the other by an inch or so. Geniuses came up with these solutions, but some hotels still use the old technology, and until they all learn, I’ll always have to bring a chip clip with me. (Others say they’ll use a clothes hanger from the closet for the same purpose)

I used this trick during a recent trip to Las Vegas. And while it wasn’t pretty, it got the job done.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I could have come up with more than five things, but I wanted this to be a list of problems that hotels can easily correct. If you want me to enjoy a stay at your hotel, then just get the simple things right. Don’t have me walk across the room at night to grab a drink of water while remembering not to step on my phone charging on the floor. Then don’t have me wake up at the buttcrack of dawn because the sun is streaming through the curtains, and take a shower in a lightless cave, but yet still need a flashlight to look for my clothes because the room is too dark, At this point, it’s not going to matter how large the TV screen is or what brand the toiletries are; don’t be surprised when I say on my survey that I didn’t have an extraordinary stay that surpassed my expectations.

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