Sunday, 05 December 2010
10 Things I Hate in Hotels
I spend a lot of nights in hotels – apart from camping, staying with friends, travel on boats, trains and planes and other excuses for being away from home. Last year that came to 116 nights in 61 different hotels. And of course there are inevitably some things I don’t like about some of those hotels. My top 10 hotel hates:
1. @ = $ – hotels charging over the odds for internet connections
2. ▲ Hidden powerpoints – I’ve paid a lot of money for this room, why do I have to crawl around under the furniture to plug in my laptop or phone charger?
3. ▲ Unstealable coathangers – I’ve never had an urge to steal hotel coathangers, but with these I can’t hang a shirt to drip dry from the shower rail.
4. ▲ Mystery lightswitches – where on earth is the switch to turn on that light? Or even more annoying to turned the damned thing off? 
5. Lousy lighting – having ► found how to turn the lights on I still need a head torch to read in bed.
6. Lost stairs – I’m only one or two floors up and don’t want to wait for the elevator, but where on earth are the stairs?
7. ▲ Preset alarms – the last guest to use this room had to get up at 330 am to get to the airport for a pre-dawn flight. So guess what happens to me at 330 am?
8. The environment, what’s that? – I come back to the room and find every light turned on, the air-con set to sub-zero and the TV on with the volume cranked up to 11.
9. The breakfast mystery – why is it that the price tag for breakfast is so often not revealed and/or whether breakfast is or is not included in the room price is a closely guarded secret?
10. ▲ The packed minibar – every corner of the fridge is packed with overpriced drinks and snacks, leaving no room to squeeze my own water bottle in. In this digital era at least I don’t have to squeeze film in as well.
Once while Travelling: The Lonely Planet Story