A typical list of what makes a great hotel room might include well-located power ports; plenty of bottled water; fast wifi; motion-sensing night lights; luggage space; and working quiet air conditioning.
I’ve given a lot of thought to what makes a hotel great, and how simple design flaws can ruin a property. More often though great physical properties can be ruined by poor service execution or short-sighted cost cuts.
Hoteliers: ever wonder why a property with great facilities and a competitive room rate in a good location isn’t getting the level of repeat business it might expect? It may come down to something simple.
Mandatory Resort Fees
Hotels taking part of the room rate out and burying it in fine print is fraud. We get up in arms over airfare displays when already those are pretty clear and clean, it’s hotels where the worst behavior happens.
These are not optional charges, so they are part of the room rate. Not including them in the room rate is disingenuous. In 2012 the Federal Trade Commission warned hotel chains that mandatory resort fees may be illegal but no one heeded that warning. There’s a new FTC rule requiring full pricing display but we’ll see if it survives and makes a difference.
Instead mandatory add-on fees have been spread to city locations. The idea of the free $50 a night long distance call and access to the hotel gym is no longer limited to resort hotels. Some chains are at least disclosing the fees up front on their websites, but online travel agencies are still bad actors along with hotels, engaging in drip pricing and causing customer resentment.
Billing Guest Credit Cards For Additional Charges After Checkout
When a hotel decides to charge you for something that wasn’t on your folio when you checked out, by just billing your credit card, they should have to email to let you know they are doing it and identify the item(s).
By all means, you should pay what you owe, but a huge pet peeve is additional (usually small) charges showing up on my credit card statement days later. If I didn’t comb through my statements I wouldn’t even know they had done this. And then I have to get in touch with the property to find out what this additional charge is even for.
If a hotel’s systems and processes are too poor to identify charges before checkout, they should at the very least proactively reach out to the customer to explain they’re hitting the card for more charges and send a statement detailing those charges. Don’t leave it to the customer to notice they’ve been hit, and then have to do research to understand why.
A Hyatt property once billed me for the cash portion of a cash and points award five months after my stay. At another Hyatt they always they tell me in-room bottled water is complimentary for top tier elite members and then they bill my credit card for it after I’ve checked out.
They’re happy to remove the charge when called on it. But since it doesn’t make the final folio, it requires follow up — which is more costly in my time and theirs than the actual charge itself.
How am I supposed to submit an expense report for a charge I don’t know about? Why make me spend more time tracking down these charges than the charges are worth? And why put me in the awkward position of submitting expenses for an old, closed-out trip?
Lack of Coffee
Hotels should have 24 hour coffee available and access to real milk and cream.
- A business hotel needs to be able to provide coffee 24 hours a day.
- There are lots of ways to do this: in-room machines, club lounge, lobby, and even room service.
- The coffee needs to be drinkable, and that includes making it possible to get the real milk or creamer of your choice.
That’s just basics. Hotels without in-room coffee, and a lobby option, and that do not offer 24 hour room service are a complete and total fail. Claiming to be an upscale or full service property, and aiming at business travelers, they’re completely missing the point.
I’ve been to too many properties where there’s no coffee before 6 a.m. That’s great, until:
- You’re coming in from another time zone, and getting up at 4.
- You have an early flight.
- You need to get up early to work on a presentation.
Morning coffee can set the tone for the whole day, and entire stay.
I once stayed at what was then the W San Diego and rang up the “Whatever Whenever” line at 5 a.m. They were supposed to be able to get Whatever you want Whenever you want it. I wanted coffee at 5 a.m.. They told me no, coffee isn’t available until 6.
If there’s a coffee shop or coffee stand in the lobby, it needs to be open at its posted time. If the coffee shop opens at 6 then gosh darnit it should be staffed at 6… not 6:15 or 6:30.
The Coffee Stand in the Lobby of the Hyatt Herald Square Opened 30 Minutes Late So I Went to Starbucks
A Hotel Is For Sleeping
Walls should be thick enough not to hear your neighbor, or the elevator. And connecting rooms are for families traveling together. Please don’t assign one to me.
Natural light is great, but not when a guest is trying to sleep. A room should be able to get light, but also keep out the light. Blackout shades are great, but they should cover the entire window so that line doesn’t shine through around the edges.
And do not disturb means… do not disturb. If I’ve got do not disturb on, housekeeping shouldn’t knock on the door. Don’t call me an hour after arrival, either, to see how I like the room? If there was a problem, I’d have let you know. And if I’m off an overnight flight, I may be trying to take a quick nap so I can power through to dinner and adjust to the local time quickly.
Valet Parking Purgatory
A hotel should help get you on your way. If they can’t get your car out of mandatory valet parking within 15 minutes they shouldn’t charge.
Hyatt Regency Houston Downtown
Or better yet: a hotel can usually project its occupancy levels, and is aware of the conferences and events it is hosting. Staff appropriately relative to occupancy.
Only One Soap in the Bathroom
When I get into a hotel room, usually the first thing I do is wash my hands. I’ve been traveling. That means unwrapping the soap. It goes into the soap dish beside the sink.
So in the morning I get into the shower and find there’s no soap and I have to get out of the shower and put the soap from the soap dish beside the sink into the shower? That’s an early morning fail.
Upgrades That Aren’t
Over the years the surest way to know I haven’t been upgraded is when I’ve received a sticky note on a key folio that says “You’ve been upgraded!”
If a hotel has to tell me my room is an upgrade, if it’s not something I’m going to notice myself, then it isn’t an upgrade. And if they have to outsource it to a written note, because the front desk agent either won’t notice the room I have is better than standard or is going to be too bashful to tell me my room over the HVAC is an upgrade, then it isn’t one.
A simple corollary is that an executive floor room is not an upgrade. Executive floor benefits are. But especially if you’re entitled to those anyway, the room itself is rarely any different than one on another floor. Telling guests that it’s an upgrade doesn’t make it one.
If you aren’t going to upgrade me, I understand. Play by the rules, hotels sell out, or have too many elites and I accept that. But don’t lie to me and tell me my room that’s just like the others is special just for me because of my status.
Unreliable Airport Shuttles
An airport hotel needs to be able to reliably get you to and from the airport.
The whole point of staying near the airport is to get into bed as quickly as possible once you land, and to be able to sleep in the next morning and leave the hotel later than you’d have to if you were staying downtown.
If you have to wait half an hour for an airport shuttle, or you can’t rely on the time the shuttle will leave the hotel and therefore have to present yourself downstairs early to make sure you get a seat or don’t miss it, you give up that time advantage.
And you’ve wound up trading a nicer place in a better location for a nondescript airport property — without the countervailing benefit of proximity (timeliness).
Not Enough Outlets
“This room has too many outlets” said no hotel guest, ever.
Older hotels often have no or very few outlets, and those that are available are badly placed. They’re in use for lamps, they’re behind the bed, or blocked by a large desk.
If a room is meant to accommodate two people then assume that both people need to charge a laptop, a phone, maybe a tablet or a wireless internet device, and an external battery.
There needs to be outlets available at the desk, and also by the bedside. Many people want their phones beside the bed. I only want mine there when there’s no easily visible alarm clock.
So there need to be multiple outlets, in multiple places, conveniently located.
You Have Late Checkout, But Keys Stop Working at Noon
I know not everyone has had perfect experiences with guaranteed 4pm late checkout for elites (outside of resort or convention hotels where it’s subject to availability) but it’s never been denied to me at a hotel where it’s a benefit.
I especially value Hyatt properties where I find I’m nearly universally proactively offered late checkout when I’m checking in.
Clearly it’s part of their procedure. So when a guest says, “yes I’d appreciate a 4pm checkout” they should code the keys for a 4pm late checkout.
I’ll usually remind them to do this. But I don’t always. And every time I fail to offer the reminder I’ll go back to my room on my day of checkout at, say, 2pm and find that my key doesn’t work. So I have to go down to the front desk, where they’ll make me a new key, and then it’s back up to the wrong. This one doesn’t seen to be that hard to get right.
Last fall not only didn’t my key work at the Hyatt Regency Dallas but my belongings had been taken, too.
The Light That Won’t Turn Off at Bedtime
At midnight at the Hyatt Herald Square I wanted to go to bed, so I went about turning off the lights in my room. Only I could not figure out how the light on one side of the bed turned off.
There was a simple light switch on the other side. Easy. You’d think the lamp on the other side of the bed would work the same way. But it didn’t.
I walked around the room looking for light switches, and couldn’t find one that would turn it off.
There were two switches beneath the light, next to power outlets.
I tried each of them, and neither turned off the light. My first thought then was that the switches must control the outlets. Since they didn’t turn off the light. Flip the switch on the right, the light was still on. Flip the switch on the left, the light was still on.
It took me 15 minutes to figure out that you have to flip both switches in order to turn it off.
The last thing I wanted to do was deal with getting help from the hotel at midnight. Wait for help from the hotel at midnight. To turn off a light in my room. But I knew I’d need to, because as much as a part of me was wondering if I could just fall asleep like that, I knew it was a bad idea. I’d fall asleep, but then I’d be up in an hour. And sleep off and on through the night.
Hotel room design must be intuitive. Turning lights on and off in your home is iterative. Since you turn the same lights on and off over and over you train yourself in a way that it’s second nature. But each light in a hotel room is used once or a handful of times by a person approaching it for the very first time — every single day or every few days. Everything in a room needs to be intuitive.
What Are Your Pet Peeves? What Have I Left Off the List?
Are my pet peeves peculiar to me? What are the basic things hotels get wrong that keep you away from repeat stays? What are your must haves and pet peeves you’d like to fix?
I have never understood this. Last two years I’ve stayed in three 4 star hotels. All of them provided liquid soap for washing your hands at the sink.
The rest of them have been upscale hotels and all of them have a square white piece of soap.
If you’re single, that may not be that different hygiene wise. But if you’re sharing your room with family the solid piece of soap for washing your hands is not the most hygienic solution. Yet never understood why upscale hotels always stick to it.
Fantastic article and sums up most of my things but the two I would add are:
Cleanliness – the room must be clean above all else with everything in it working
Quick check in – if I’ve had a long day, don’t keep me waiting for 20 minutes to get my key
Bathroom doors that fully close.
Thank you for this!! It’s all so true and I 100% agree… I often wonder how these big hotel chains get away with the above mentioned bad behaviors. And it’s true… I’ll never stay again at a big city Marriot Marquis or Hyatt (both in downtown Atlanta).
Gary, it takes a whole lot less words to simply write: Greed and incompetence.
Unreliable housekeeping on multi-day stays. If I sleep late, I should still be able to get the room made up.
And why am I asked if I want housekeeping when I check in? (Do I get a discount if I say it’s not necessary?)
Great article that hit all the key areas! My biggest issues are:
1. Despite being Ambassador/Titanium level in a program and KNOWING the ADA act in the USA which requires ADA rooms of each type which includes suites – I never get upgraded – they should be pre-blocking those rooms out first due to accessibility needs and upgrading that way – not upgrading OUT of an ADA room into regular rooms and thinking for me that is an “upgrade” and okay. In my 15 years of travel I have been upgraded to a suite once and that is in the country where I live – Canada – on the other side and that was only when the accessible room was not accessible! So they had to put me into the only other accessible room which was a suite and as they said – I should have been put there first in the beginning.
2. As you mentioned – those darn “Resort” or “Hotel” fees. Often they include things that people with disabilities cannot partake in OR they include benefits that we already get due to the tier of the benefit program we are in. Yet there are no “replacement” options. I often get these fees waived instead.
3. As you mentioned “Hotel Shuttles” – they have to be ADA compliant too! Nothing like arriving from somewhere after a long flight into the USA and running into a hotel shuttle without a lift on it. Then the driver says he will “help” you onto the shuttle. Nope. Then I have to call the hotel and argue until someone with the authority can order an accessible taxi (which I often have to wait for) to get me to the hotel. There needs to be a better way in the USA to report these types of violations. The last time I did the department was closed.
4. Different definitions of “Elite” breakfast – I have had awesome FULL breakfasts to some hotels offering for their Titanium/Ambassador level members toast and coffee as their Elite breakfast in the USA. Outside of the USA – especially in Asia, Canada, AU, NZ the breakfasts are fabulous! In Europe they are also great – depending on the chain – even AC hotels they are standard fare however the $10 US is worth it! It is embarrassing what happens in the USA at some higher end hotels you would think would treat their guests better.
5. Now this is a pet peeve of mine only due to my disability however as I am physically disabled, I am often in a room that is for people with hearing or visual difficulties too. The noise and lights that go off in that room when a fire alarm is triggered is dangerous for me. I appreciate the safety involved for these signals however I wish I could somehow turn them off when I am in the room and for them to come back on by default when the next person occupies the room who needs these features.
Thanks for listening and allowing me to provide feedback from a road warrior who often looks at things from a different point of view!
Guest: It says Whatever Whenever – why can’t I get my coffee?
Hotel clerk: Whatever.
Once stayed at Marco Island Marriott. They were so delighted to tell me I had been upgraded. Yes, one floor higher; same typical room.
“Quick check in – if I’ve had a long day, don’t keep me waiting for 20 minutes to get my key”
How are they supposed to know you’ve had a long day?
Good article Gary. Don’t forget bad mattresses, noise from adjacent railroads or freeways, safety & security (both in the hotel and in the neighborhood), and non-working ice machines. Something I ran into lately occurred at a stay in a 4-star hotel (part of Hilton’s Curio Collection). For this caliber of hotel, it was positively shocking that the bathroom was stocked with single play sandpaper (aka toilet paper). Unbelievable.
You’ve flagged the top ones and unfortunately I’ve experienced them all. What’s arguably worse — and this has happened more than once at both mid-tier and upscale properties — is when the staffer asks at checkout how the stay was and then essentially shrugs when you raise significant issues. I recently mentioned several service issues — clogged shower drain, window that wouldn’t stay up and had to be propped open with a toilet paper roll, peeling paint on bathroom ceiling — and the clerk looked at her screen and then asked if we wanted a paper or email receipt. This was a brief overnight stay or I would’ve asked for a room change. Needless to say, I don’t return to a hotel when this happens.
Thank you Gary. Once they have gotten to the point where it’s clean, convenience beats luxe every time. These are all spot on and remind me why I am so happy I don’t travel for work any more.
No chlamydia magazines in the bathrooms.
Soap must be in individually wrapped packages.
Love this article. Agree 100% on all of them. I was reading it but kept hearing Andy Roomey’s voice. I think he would love this article as much as I did. RIP Andy.
@ Gary — Park Hyatts thay charge Globalists for a second Americano, even though their breakfast is “free.” FYI, turns out that this didn’t appear at checkout… 😉 🙂
To add to the list: low shower water pressure, dirty showerheads, lukewarm (or even cold) showers, shower curtains instead of glass shower doors, dirty irons that can ruin your clothes, stained or dirty ironing boards, and the absence of an in-room safe.
@ DinDFW — Sounds like your average Hyatt Place/House
Lamp outlets so worn that chargers and my cpap machine plugs fall out.
@ Jeff — Ooo, that’s bad.
Stop installing rube goldberg shower faucets. Hot and Cold, left and right.
If the hotel front desk volunteers that it is a light occupancy night, stop assigning me to rooms adjacent to the ice machine just because I’m using points for a stay.
1. Shower faucets that are not clearly labeled. Is it an all-in-one handle, or multiple unlabeled handles that control shower head #one or #two, or the tub, , and what controls the heat?
2 Hotels that don’t have circulation pumps for hot water, so you have to wait ages for the hot water to arrive if you have a room at the end of a hallway or on a high floor.
3. Not adequate counter space next to sinks.
4. Stupid placement of vanity mirrors.
5.Labels on conditioner, body wash, and shampoo bottles are in tiny print or fancy logo type print that is hard to read.
6. Pump mechanism of shampoo dispenser often gets stuck or doesn’t work properly.
7. Toilet paper roll placed in accessible place you must make acrobatic maneuvers to swipe a sheet of toilet paper.
8. Master power switch at door entrance requires a card, so if you forget your room key there, you’re out of luck
9 Master Switch some times shuts off outlets bedside or desk side, so you can’t charge phones or laptops when it is turned off,
10. Noisy air conditioners. Only quality 5 start hotels have silent air conditioning.
11. Thermostats. Illogical user interfaces. Motion sensors means you can wake up in the middle of the night bathed in sweat because the “smart” thermostat thinks no one is in the room.
12. Bed pedestals with sharp corners. I’ve gotten multiple blue marks on my legs from these.
13. No Drawers bedside. No drawers anywhere
14. Sluggish “Smart TVs”. Illogical, confusing controls for these. Maximum volume is locked to prevent disturbing neighbors. But for these with even minor hearing loss, the volume is not high enough.
15. Inconsistent wi-fi log in screens for Elites. Is the premium Wi-fi free or not?
16. Getting bumped off wifi seems to be a normal late night occurrence.
17. “Smart” wireless phones with difficult user interfaces.
18. QR codes for everything.
19. Which bottled water is free, and which costs.
20. noisy in-room refrigerators.
21. Illogical room controls. Especially the new smart ones are incredibly complex.
22. Springhill Suites often have shower head directly above shampoo dispensers. If the shower not recently de-scaled, the water will gush into your hands as you try to pump the dispenser. So the shampoo is washed out of your hands.
Kudos to the following hotels: (I have stayed, with my wife at all of these properties):
1. Madison Hotel Hamburg: Owned by the woman who sold the German “Block House” steak house chain, and decided to a build user friendly hotel. When you walk into the room, the woman’s magic touch is everywhere, thoughtfully laid out, down to the smallest detail.
2. The Karol Hotel in Clearwater Florida. The husband of a Florida Beauty Queen gave her this hotel. Again, the woman’s attention to detail is obvious everywhere.
3. The Wynn, Las Vegas. A hotel that got “smart” controls right. Easy to read, and navigate.
4. Hotel Continental, Oslo, Norway. Now in the fourth generation of female management. Need I say more.
Okay, so I don’t have special status with any hotel. But there are a few simple, obvious things that would make any hotel stay better: 1) provide two, instead of one, luggage stands in the room; 2) provide a small shelf outside the door for me to put stuff while I try to get/use the door key (such as when I leave the room to get two coffees — one for me and one for my wife — and must hold one in each hand); and 3) at least consider installing ceiling fans in rooms.
Why not 2 luggage racks in every room?!?
So, two broad thoughts:
(1) I realize that charges can trickle in a few days after checking out (especially if it’s e.g. a meal on the last day), but if a hotel can’t be bothered to bill you within some reasonable period (I’d say 30 days), I don’t think it would be unreasonable to bounce the charge (and there’s a good chance that quite a few folks might bounce it thinking it had already been paid). I’m pretty sure that their authorization won’t hold out for /that/ long, anyway.
(2) When I see what’s included with resort fees (and isn’t explicitly included with elite benefits), I often wish I could just waive all of the not-included benefits to drop the fee.
(3) I do love how when I tell housekeeping /multiple times/ that I have a 4 PM checkout, they sometimes keep turning back up. Repeatedly. (Once, on the off chance that I’ve left early? Sure, fine. But one of these days I’m going to have an underpacked trip, they’re gonna make the bed, and I’m going to come back at noon for a nap, sleep in it, and hilarity is going to ensue when the next guest shows up…)
(4) I think I would add three things to your list:
-First is a lack of A/C controls (or the presence of mostly-illusory controls) and/or controls that seem to randomly cut out.
-Second is less-than-daily housekeeping (outside of discounted long-stay rates, at least). Sometimes there’s an excuse (my favorite was a hotel citing “social distancing” when it was very obvious that nobody in town was still doing that; I was stuck staying there repeatedly, and it was getting close to me handing them a letter responding to “We’re still social distancing!” with “No, you’re not.”).
-Third is “performative environmentalism”, usually cloaking cost-cutting, with no way to really drop a bad note in surveys. NGL, antics in this respect have done wonders for giving “green” initiatives a bad name. (I still want to respond to some blather on this front with “Sir/Ma’am, I drove up in a 1970 Eldorado that I just drove 500 miles today. I probably burned more gas on the drive down here than you burn in a month and tomorrow is going to be just as bad. So…please, try again.” It’s not quite “Captain Planet villain”, but it’d be close.)
Having to stay on top of dynamic currency conversion ripoffs on checkout on overseas hotels. Last week at Conrad Punta Mita in Mexico on checkout my folio had a $1250 USD balance on it and I requested to have the charge processed in Mexican pesos on belief that it would get a better rate as the USD was based on a DCC rate, where 1250 USD is equal to 21,870 pesos.
On processing my card they handed me a receipt to sign for 22,500 pesos meaning they added nearly 3% on top of what the conversion from USD to MXN was supposed to be! Lesson learned is to ask what the exact charge will be in each currency before proceeding with the transaction, but I was short on time with uber ride already waiting outside!
Hotel room with the bed(s) facing the window with the A/C (that has never been cleaned or rattles when it operates) blowing directly into your face as you sleep. The “curtain” that won’t completely black out the room. Thermostats that are set to 65°F and you can’t seem to get it up to 73°F. Then, finally you figure out how only to have the automated system reset it. While easier to put on clean sheets, the “one size fits all” duvet/upper sheet/bedspread that is either roasting hot or freezing cold since there’s no “layer” in the middle. Power outlets 10 feet from the desk. “Adnausium”
Hotel showers that are impossible to turn on without being blasted with cold water (this seems to be most of them).
All of the above PLUS decent pillows
Pet peeves:
1. No clock in the room
2. Embassy Suites on Congress Ave in Austin Texas has pass cards to open the door. In my experience, most door levers turn down to open. But not in Ausitn. Some of them turn up to open. i never knew that and no one told me until 2 trips back to front desk and finally the building engineer had to come teach me how to open my door.
3. Not all Hilton properties offer Diamond Parking places.
One way to avoid extra charges is to pay cash and do not use a credit or debit card.