Things that I hate about hotels

Time was when hotels invested and hired training experts to teach young recruits about “Total Guest Satisfaction.” But despite this rigorous in-house training, there are still some pet peeves that can spoil your hotel experience.

Fake photos. If you check the hotel’s website, you see postcard-perfect bedrooms and facilities in full, vibrant colors that would entice vacationers to book. In reality, the location, the look and the smell of the hotel could cast a shadow of gloom on your dream holiday. Downright deceitful. 

Welcome cocktails. In Jaipur, we were served chilled lassi (yogurt) while in Maui, a tropical drink with a Polynesian-sounding name. But just a sip of the cocktail and I knew that the mixture was stale. No one in Food and Beverage bothered to make a fresh batch but merely topped it off with more ice and water. In contrast, our hotel in Xian, site of the terra-cotta underground army in China, served a refreshing drink made from fresh lychees that perked up my spirits and promised a marvelous, comfortable stay.

Bell boys. They show boredom and contempt by staring at the ceiling and cursing travelers with packed luggage. Guests love pleasant, smiling faces with an agreeable disposition. One blog said it plainly: “I’ve dragged my luggage to the taxi, plunked it on the check-in counter, pulled it from the carousel, got it up the trunk of the taxi and carried it into the hotel reception. Why give the last 20 meters of handling that luggage to a person who would simply put it in a cart on an elevator and then expect a fat tip for it?” 

When you dig into your pocket and find only big bills, what do you do? The bellmen in New York and Hong Kong are notorious for being obnoxious and severe. One bellman wryly remarked, “Ten dollars? Ma’am, you need it more than I!”

Poor Wi-Fi connection. You are charged by the minute but it takes an eternity to get a good connection. When you finally do, you suddenly get a weak signal so you repeat the whole rigmarole. In Poland, I was so incensed that I went down to the lobby, where there was an uninterrupted signal and it was free. Of course, the hotel didn’t volunteer that info upon check-in.

Temperature controls. First, I had to do a bit of sleuthing to find where the room thermostat was. Having found it, I could not figure out what switch to touch. Should I switch it down to cool the room or move it high to warm the room? Worse was when I found only two settings: hot as the earth’s core and as icy as liquid nitrogen. Go figure. ?

Electrical sockets, or the lack thereof. Nowadays, you need at least three sockets to charge the cell phone, camera and laptop. I had to crawl under the desk, careful not to hit my head and found one that needed a two- or three-prong diagonal plug. Oftentimes, I end up unplugging a standing lamp or the lamp on the side table and praying that I don’t forget or leave my gadgets behind.

Hangers with clips. Some hotels believe that guests will steal hangers so they use chrome hangers that you cannot pull out from the closet and since housekeeping never checks them, they’re used until worn and rusty.

No full-length mirror. It got so bad that I stood on the chair of the dresser to get a full view of what I wanted to wear. My head was cut off in the mirror.

Shower fixtures that make you feel like a moron. Give me a simple handheld shower with left and right knobs to turn on the cold and hot water. This bath shower had red, blue, green and purple lights and eight buttons with multiple rubber tubes pressed on the wall. I got so confused that I showered in the bathtub and poured bath salts in the tub to soak my weary self.

Tightly wrapped bar soaps.  No matter how I tried, I could not rip the plastic wrapping off. Luckily I brought a miniature Swiss knife to cut the knot off this user-unfriendly bath soap.

Pillows. They are either as hard as a week-old baguette or soft as marshmallows, guaranteed to give you that drowning, gasping-for-breath sensation. In Budapest, I ended up sleeping on the bare mattress and thought, “Will it be like this when they lay me down like a corpse?” Morbid.

Beds with hard corners or bed frames. In the middle of the night, you stub your toes on this bed and you scream all the expletives and curse to high heaven; you look down at this monstrous frame that does not react but you wish it did so you could hit it back, but you’d just hurt your knees and toes once more. Grrrr.

“Duvet tightly folded over the corners of the mattress that when you try to pull it out, you accidentally punch your own face.” In hotel jargon, they call it an “apple pie” bed or “short-sheeted” bed so that the guest and/or victim cannot get inside it. Sometimes hotel staff do this on purpose for their co-employees as a practical joke, especially if their colleagues are on their honeymoon. 

Executive lounge. If you reserve a suite or a superior room, that entitles you to the use of the Executive Lounge. When you check what they have in the buffet, you find cold, cold hors d’oeuvres that have seen better shifts. Even the hardboiled eggs have turned rock hard. You turn to the staff but you see them rushing to go home, eager to lock up the lounge.

Wafer-thin walls, the smell of smoke in non-smoking floors, over-bleached towels and missing bathroom amenities ... if the list grows any longer, it’s time to go home and enjoy all the creature comforts that you have obviously missed.