Perhaps the one thing that drives hotel guests to frustration more than anything else is bathrooms that offer no privacy. That’s no big deal when you’re staying on your own. But if you’re with someone, it’s awkward enough if you’re in a relationship with them (toilets should stay private unless non-private is your thing). If you’re just sharing a room with a friend to save money? Brutally awkward.
Someone even created a searchable database of hotels whose rooms don’t have doors on the bathroom to name and shame, and to help you avoid getting stuck in this situation yourself.
That raises the obvious question, then: why do hotels do this? Do they just not understand the grief they’re causing? The answer actually is simple.
My hotel made the walls of the bathroom fully transparent…
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u/_fatherfucker69 in
mildlyinfuriating
Hotels do this for several reasons, one of them is that rooms like this photograph better and therefore are more bookable online.
The glass bathroom is the most A/B tested feature in modern hotel design.
It exists for one reason: it converts on https://t.co/wn2qd450oS and Expedia. When the major chains compared listing photos with opaque walls vs glass, the glass version booked at materially higher rates.… https://t.co/EYNwrByCGC
— Aakash Gupta (@aakashgupta) April 26, 2026
Hotels have been designing rooms around marketing, and star ratings, for decades. AAA used to include telephones in the bathroom as part of achieving Four Diamond status. That made a bathroom phone a checklist item for hotels chasing four and five Diamond status.
Since the criteria also had “separate or semi-separate enclosed commode area” as a Five Diamond bathroom feature, and the phone would connect into the wall, it often wound up by the toilet. This wasn’t a hard go/no-go item for Diamond status, but if you were aiming for AAA Four or Five Diamond, you’d check this box. It is no longer a criteria in AAA guidelines, however.
Open plan bathrooms have a similar story. It isn’t quite the claim that this “exists for one reason: it converts on Booking.com and Expedia.” But it’s close.
- Expedia’s guidance emphasizes that search and booking data shows that photos drive conversion, and they expect a bathroom photo for each room type. Bathroom images are ranked “very important” by 60% of travelers.
- Booking.com also says that bathroom photos are important to drive bookings.
- Open bathrooms also do make the room look bigger. Glass and barn-style doors are space-efficient. They make a windowless bathroom feel brighter and larger. So small bathrooms especially edge decisions toward glass.
Hotel I’m staying in with my mum has the shower open to the entire room
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u/Makewayfornoddynoddy in
mildlyinfuriating
Bathtubs are also part of the story. They’re rarely used but do signal luxury. People actually take showers. Oberoi saying bathtub use in city hotels is less than 10%. A lot of hotels have moved away from them, but many luxury properties still offer them.
That’s not about misleading customers in online photos, but it’s about how design choices often aren’t about functionality. Meanwhile, maintenance and cost matters too. Drywall in bathrooms needs more work than glass and tile, and mold becomes a risk. So what’s going on here boils down to:
- Marketing. Bathroom photos matter online for converting bookings. Open and glass bathrooms allow photos to showcase more space and design.
- Perceived space and light. Glass borrows light from the bedroom and avoids chopping the room into small dark spaces.
- Cost and standardization. Sliding barn and glass doors can be better in compact rooms. Walling the bathroom in can mean greater maintenance cost.
- Perceived luxury: Showing a tub can make the room feel more premium, especially in lifestyle and luxury hotels, since it’s a status object.
Hotel bathroom has no separation from bedroom
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u/autobot12349876 in
mildlyinfuriating
Ultimately, hotels view the cost savings and marketing power as more important than the complaints from friends sharing rooms.
Another reason to go solo.
“Open concept”… works great for kitchen-living room; not-so-much for hotel bedroom-to-bathroom, unless you’re a couple, but even then, if any member of the ‘party’ has ‘the shits’ you’ll want a door for the toilet ‘room’ at least.
The trade off is unhappy guests, which translates into negative reviews. In turn that means lower rates as well as fewer returning guests.
@1990 I thought you didn’t like to yuck other’s yum…
No room privacy = Groups booking more individual rooms.
Stayed at Sofitel Beverly Hills last week, and was surprised about the glass to the bathroom. I have also noticed the trend, but this was the first time the glass was looking right from the bedroom to the toilet itself, as opposed to the toilet being in another corner or behind a door. I was not happy, even though it was my wife with me since I brought her along on a work trip. But then a work colleague who was staying in another room decided to try the gray light switch that didn’t seem to do anything when I tried it, and he was observant enough to notice that it frosted the glass 🙂
I recommended that the hotel label the switch. But it’s actually a good solution to mitigate the privacy concerns/uncomfortability vs marketing. I guess it wouldn’t be practical for the full-length glass from the pictures above…
@Larry — Ohhh…you got me. You do you. Or, in this case, you do… poo.
Its a cost saving exercise.
Also the same reason why closets with doors are disappearing. Its mostly open closets in most new or newly renovated rooms.
Glass walls for light, ease of cleaning, less potential for mold build up, fine….but FFS, FROST THE DAMN GLASS!
Lower priced hotel chains like Best Western, Hampton Inns and Comfort Inns do not have glass open-view bathroom doors. Perhaps the best way to assure that you will have bathroom privacy is to avoid the luxury chains and stay elsewhere.
I’m in Munich now, and I would’ve preferred to stay at the Andaz. However, it has those nasty glass box bathrooms.
There are just some limits with privacy, you know?
I travel fairly often and have for 25+ years. I have NEVER seen this in the wild at any chain or independent hotel (I usually stay at 4+ stars or better). Weird.
Nice article, this is something I always check when traveling with others as I’m usually in charge of logistics. Usually scout out guest photos but most of the time it’s a big enough deal that people complain about it in the reviews. Not a situation you want to enter with your pants caught down!
Keeping a little mystery in any relationship is a good reason to avoid these cheapening remodels