There are a few things that can make or break a hotel room for me.
Not enough power outlets? Annoying, sure. But I can usually give a hotel at least a little grace there, especially if the room was designed before every traveler started carrying a phone, watch, laptop, tablet, headphones, portable battery and, somehow, three different charging cables that are never the one they actually need.
Bad lighting? Also annoying.
A desk chair that looks nice but was clearly designed by someone who has never sat in it for more than eight seconds? Been there.
But one of my biggest hotel-room annoyances is much simpler than any of that.
Pillows.
Or more specifically, hotels that either don’t give you enough pillows, give you way too many pillows, or decide that decorative pillows are somehow a substitute for ones you can actually sleep on.
What’s Up With Hotel Pillows?
This shouldn’t be complicated.
If there’s one queen or king-size bed in the room, there should be enough pillows for two people to sleep comfortably. To me, that means two usable pillows per person. Not one pillow per person, plus one sad extra pillow in the closet. Not three pillows total for a king bed. And definitely not a collection of decorative cushions that look nice in photos but serve no practical purpose once someone actually wants to sleep.
Maybe I’m being a little Goldilocks about this. But after enough hotel stays, you start to notice the pattern.
Some hotels don’t give you enough pillows.
Some hotels bury the bed under so many pillows that you need a staging area just to go to sleep.
And every once in a while, a hotel gets it exactly right.
Too Few Pillows
This is the easy one to fix. If there’s only one bed in the room, don’t make guests choose between sleeping with a pillow that’s as thick as a folded towel and calling the front desk to ask for more.
Yes, I know you can usually request extra pillows. But that shouldn’t have to be the first thing someone does after checking into a room. By the time I’m getting ready for bed, I don’t want to wait for housekeeping, wander down to the front desk, or start raiding the closet hoping someone left a backup pillow in there.
Hotels already know how many people a room is designed to hold. Stock the bed accordingly.
Too Many Pillows
Then there’s the opposite problem.
Some hotels seem determined to turn the bed into a pillow display at a furniture showroom. You walk into the room and the bed looks great. Then bedtime arrives and you realize half of the bed is covered with things nobody is actually going to sleep on.
Be honest. What do most of us do with those pillows?
They end up on the chair, the floor, the bench, the luggage rack, or whatever unused corner of the room looks least offensive. And then housekeeping very kindly puts them right back on the bed the next day, so the whole routine starts again.
We stayed at a W hotel with a bow-tie throw pillow, which was memorable, if not exactly useful.
I removed that pillow from the bed every day and left it in different places around the room. Every day, it somehow made its way back to the bed. Housekeeping even appeared to have a little fun with it once, removing my pillow from the bed and placing it where I had left the bow-tie pillow.
Still, decorative pillows raise a question hotels don’t seem especially eager to answer: how often are these things actually cleaned?
Because if I’m not supposed to sleep on it, and it spends half its life being moved from the bed to random surfaces around the room, maybe it doesn’t need to be there in the first place.
Just The Right Amount
Of course, some hotels get it right.
I wasn’t surprised that the Waldorf=Astoria had its pillow situation under control. The bed looked good and was also practical. There were enough pillows, they were comfortable, and none of them felt like they were included only because someone in design thought the room needed “texture.”
The Hyatt Centric Key West also understood the assignment. And for what they charge for those rooms, they should.
But this is not something only luxury hotels can manage. You don’t need to be a Waldorf Astoria or a high-end resort to figure out how many pillows belong on a bed.
A Crowne Plaza can do it.
Crowne Plaza Dulles Airport – Herndon, VA
A Courtyard by Marriott can do it.
Courtyard by Marriott Fort Lauderdale East – Fort Lauderdale, FL
That’s what makes this so frustrating. This is not a complicated hotel amenity. We’re not talking about a high-end espresso machine, heated bathroom floors, or a complicated lighting system with 14 unlabeled switches.
It’s pillows.
Final Thought
If the first thing I have to do when I’m ready for bed is throw three decorative pillows on the floor, steal an extra pillow from the other bed, or call the front desk to ask for something that should have been there already, the hotel has already made the room more annoying than it needed to be.
This is not a complicated amenity. It’s pillows. Get the number right, make them comfortable, and the room instantly feels better.
Want to comment on this post? Great! Read this first to help ensure it gets approved.
Want to sponsor a post, write something for Your Mileage May Vary, or put ads on our site? Click here for more info.
Like this post? Please share it! We have plenty more just like it and would love it if you decided to hang around and sign up to get emailed notifications of when we post.
Whether you’ve read our articles before or this is the first time you’re stopping by, we’re really glad you’re here and hope you come back to visit again!
This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
