Hotels: a general critique

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1. The automatic charging mini-bars (and snack bar separately on the desk) - a real pain. Hilton Sydney had gone to this model last time we were there (and it will be the last time because of the effort it took to remove a charge for something we did not use. I thought the customer/client was always right????)
2. Club lounges full of hogans. It seems to be happening more and more.
3. Things that don't work
4. Providing 2 UHT milk single serve capsules (a la airline) only ! Please in a 4 or 5 * can we have fresh milk or at least a bigger pack of UHT
 
Totally agree, I hate when hotels are doing that. Like when HSP sometimes close half of its exec lounge (the half with the better view) for private functions and hotel guests are left without a place to sit. Anything for a penny...

Hmmm...sorry about that :) I was at a FF function (part AFF) at the HSP a couple of years ago and the lounge manager kindly sectioned off a nice part of the lounge for us. If it was any consolation, we did not spend the entire night there; we moved to a private room soon enough for the main event. :)

One of my biggest dislikes is "adding a charge" to things which I expect the hotel to be provided for free. This usually happens at resorts where they want to charge you $x for a beach chair for example.

I think my larger dislike is pretty much all around the world, which is that hotels seem happy to charge you for things and then be rather amused or surprised when the customer gives them a bad reaction. It is as if they provide all these "extras" or "services" for customers of which if a customer is in principle happy to use, they also have no qualms in paying for it. I don't know too many customers that are either that stupid or have dispensable income to literally burn, so don't insult most of our intelligence by not being upfront as to what costs money and what does not.

One nice example is sometimes water bottles in the room. In some cases they are free and others not. A bottle sitting either on your bedside table or on the study desk rather than in the minibar, but there is no label saying whether it is complimentary or not. That's confusing (although I'm sure most would presume that the said bottle is chargeable in such a case).

Easy to locate light switches. Have had to use a bathroom in the dark on more than one occasion.

How about labelling which lights are activated by which switches. A panel with six unmarked switches and playing trial-and-error to work it out? Seems a bit rich.


As for free wifi (or free internet in general), I'd like this too and at least a decent speed for surfing, social media and email (not necessarily for mass downloading, P2P or video streaming). Limiting by bandwidth is dumb (e.g. 200 MB only, I'm looking at you Riverinet), as are subscriptions which terminate upon closing a browser / disconnecting the network adapter / restarting the computer without option to resume the remainder of the subscription. That said, when people start saying that free wifi is a basic human right, that's going too far.


The two double beds equals one king bed blah-blah never gets old... it's not right, but what do you do.......


Other pet hates:
  • Clean glassware properly. Yes I'm aware they are either just simply wiped down with a certainly not clean cloth, or simply run under the tap. How stupid do you think I am?
  • Go easy on the chlorine on the towels, or rinse them out properly. Yes it kills germs, but it isn't exactly good for humans either. I'm looking at you, Holiday Inn...
  • No or wrong / outdated instructions to operate the non-intuitive air conditioning system.
  • Shower baths with a glass splash panel which only covers 1/3 or less of the bath, i.e. useless, and is usually flimsily attached to the wall, so it is also a potential sharp hazard.
  • When the heating element or metallic parts of a kettle start to show rusting or signs of exposed metal / deposition, it's usually time to replace the kettle.
  • Ditto the above to any appliance in the room whose electrical cord starts to show signs of fraying or damage... or when switched on, shows some sparks coming from the power point.
  • If I bring any of the previous two points to your attention, I'm genuinely trying to help you out to avoid an accident. So don't treat me with contempt as if I'm just being uppity for uppity sake, or trying to extort something for free out of you, or I'm a moron.
  • One bin in the bathroom and one bin in the main room, preferably near the desk. Not too difficult and hopefully not too expensive to have two bins.

I feel sorry for housekeeping staff sometimes. If there is a better example of people who are overworked, underpaid and the only attention they get in return is the honour of being a scapegoat, genuinely honest housekeeping staff are somewhere up there for the contender.

Not a criticism as such, but sometimes it amuses me when the room can look old and run down, from the paint and the carpet to the furnishings, and yet on one wall or piece of furniture against a wall of the room is a brand spanking new schlick and large flatscreen television with free cable channels (and of course the standard offering of pay movies and cough)...

I suppose in the end, a clean room with comfortable bed and ability to climate control the room (either with air con / heater / windows) is the basics you expect. The rest will scale on the complaint severity scale based on how much I paid for the room.
 
2. Club lounges full of hogans. It seems to be happening more and more.

crocodiledundee1.jpg

You call that a knife? This is a knife!

Haven't seen a lot of them in a while, but I'll start getting concerned if I start seeing too many "knives". :D
 
Keys that don't work straight after you check in.

Hopefully this will be a thing of the past once all hotels take on RFID locks but until then I'll continue to cringe when this happens (way too often).
 
I don't drink coffee or tea so my favourite hotels have vending machines or a nearby 7/11 and empty fridges.
Come to think of it I should be getting a discount for the things I don't use...coffee, tea, sugar, extra kettle power, bathrobes, iron, hairdryer, shower cap, all the other tubes of stuff that are not actually for washing me, shaver power point, gym, room service, restaurant, pick up laundry, spa/beauty, office, the 15 extra pillows on my bed....
 
crocodiledundee1.jpg

You call that a knife? This is a knife!

Haven't seen a lot of them in a while, but I'll start getting concerned if I start seeing too many "knives". :D
Sorry about that - a real shocker but you did make me laugh! I can only say I did not have my glasses on and the two keys are quite close together. Do you believe me? Lesson to learn….proof read and proof read again before hitting the all important 'Post'.:mrgreen::oops:


Another pet peeve, pillows that are well past their prime. You know the ones; hard and lumpy and defy any guest to actually get a good night's sleep.dow
Oh, and the penchant for hotels to not use a top sheet. With the air-conditioning that roasts all night, a sheet is plenty, not a goose down doona! The more stars a hotel it seems the thicker the doona!
 
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1. Hotels that discretely turn off the AC in the middle of the night during Winter
2. Low flow shower heads, I will save water elsewhere but NOT in the shower!

I have found many hotels that between about 1am and 6am will switch off the AC and the end result is the room becomes quite hot, along with pathetic water saving shower heads

So, I like to sleep at about 18 degrees in a room, be that at home or in a hotel. During the day, great, the AC in the hotel will generally cool the room to 19 or thereabouts but I have found many top end hotels (Park Hyatt Paris for an example) the AC will stop working magically in the middle of the night, the room will warm up to 22 or warmer (I have a thermometer with me most times)

Oh and hotels that have water saving shower heads, I will leave the bath tap running while I shower/shave/brush my teeth :) So you are not saving any water with me
 
I do like modern design, however it is so frustrating where form cripples function... my favourite... the walk-in showers that leak out or flood the rest of the bathroom, further accelerated by a shower door which only opens outwards, and is high enough off the ground that water flows out, but low enough to the ground that it pushes the bath mat around into a neat pile off to the side of the shower as you get in... Grrrr
 
Great thread. As someone who stays in hotel rooms weekly or more often, it really resonates. I have to agree with most of these already mentioned, its actually a pretty extensive list already.

My top few are:

1. Almost every stay I need to iron my shirt for meetings the next day (having folded it to travel with carry-on luggage only), so a clean iron is a must. Who is making these irons filthy ? What are they ironing ? Empty the darned water reservoir after you use the iron so it doesn't fill with rust (also hotels, buy decent irons which don't rust or calcify) !

2. I suspect I'm not the only one who carries lots of gadgets these days... provide a few accessible power points to charge them. Side note, why did Apple change the 'standard' adaptor... it was become quite common to have an iPod dock in hotel rooms which meant I would charge my i-device and listen to my music in room... but I think this will become less frequent after the change.

3. As others have stated, I'm tall, so shower heads should be high, above the height of most adults, not just above the average height. And while we are on it, give me decent pressure and constant temperature (at least in first world cities, I would understand if I was staying in the Grand Botswana Inn.)

4. I find those wall mounted soap and shampoo dispensers are just distasteful. I don't often see them, but its never a good look, especially in a high star-rating hotel. Leave this penny pincher for caravan parks and motels.

Agree also with comments on aircon, mini fridge (I have been known to put all of the mini-bar cr@p in a cupboard or drawer so I can use the fridge for my stuff) and clearing up papers (its not rubbish unless its in the bin!).


OzEire
 
Sorry about that - a real shocker but you did make me laugh! I can only say I did not have my glasses on and the two keys are quite close together. Do you believe me? Lesson to learn….proof read and proof read again before hitting the all important 'Post'.:mrgreen::oops:

Don't apologise! I know what you meant, but it was a nice time for an unintentional mistake segue.

Of course, it kind of alludes nicely to your point... but if only those who don't bother to look the part would at least just play the part, like Hogan does :)
 
Ohoh oh, I have one for this, and I write it in all my Tripadvisor reviews when it comes up. Bit of a tricky one to put umm...:oops: diplomatically but I hate it when some of the posher hotels don't provide you with a toilet brush! Especially when you are travelling with someone else and you want to leave the loo in a nice state for the next person, no toilet brush can be a real disadvantage.
 
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Ohoh oh, I have one for this, and I write it in all my Tripadvisor reviews when it comes up. Bit of a tricky one to put umm...:oops: diplomatically but I hate it when some of the posher hotels don't provide you with a toilet brush! Especially when you are travelling with someone else and you want to leave the loo in a nice state for the next person, no toilet brush can be a real disadvantage.

Lobby toilets are a god-send ;) or ones in the Gym/pool area when you think you may make a "mess"
 
Soap that is really hard to rinse off you.... [Hiltons CA, USA, I'm looking at you] and also off the bath floor making it really slippery in the shower.
 
1The automatic charging mini-bars (and snack bar separately on the desk) - a real pain. Hilton Sydney had gone to this model last time we were there (and it will be the last time because of the effort it took to remove a charge for something we did not use. I thought the customer/client was always right????)
I don't think I have encountered the automatic charging mini-bars. Is this in top of the range chain hotels?
 
I don't think I have encountered the automatic charging mini-bars. Is this in top of the range chain hotels?
The Hilton in Sydney has added them. We were in a Club room so maybe they thought we were riff raff. A bit of a 'to-do' when a charge for nuts which we hadn't eaten came up on the bill. On ringing, we were told that we must have taken them out of the cradle - ah, no, did not touch them. This insistence went on for some time before the charge was removed. The sign on the nibbles (the box sits on the desk) is hidden on one end (very sneaky) so I can see that it would be easy to pick up the chips or whatever to look and incur a charge. IMO installing auto-charging mini bars is just another tacky move from Hilton.

Markis10, I don't remember seeing them in Brisbane last time I was there but I didn't look and probably didn't even open the fridge.
 
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