My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be. When I turned 40 I started wearing glasses for reading. I would occasionally bring my laptop closer to my face to read, or enlarge text. I was using my laptop on a brighter screen setting to see clearly, which of course drained battery more quickly.
I finally gave in, got glasses, and the world became crisper. I haven’t had a desire for laser eye surgery, and I haven’t ever been good at putting eye drops in my eye, so I never considered contacts. There are just a few times, though, where wearing glasses isn’t practical. The major one is… in the shower.
The person who helps with cleaning my house (whom I really appreciate) drives me a little crazy. Every week she switches the places of my shampoo and body wash bottles in the shower. I have to switch them back. It matters where they are because I’m a creature of habit and don’t read the bottles – I just reach for a given bottle in same spot.
Staying at hotels I can’t rely on the order of placement of the bottles in the shower. I need to read the labels. But invariably, writing on the labels is always too small for me to read without glasses. I have to get in the shower with my glasses on, remember which bottle is where, get out to remove my glasses and get back in.
And I usually forget to do this! So I have to get out, get my glasses, get back in, get back out and get back in. There has to be a better way!
This could be easily solved with larger, darker writing on the bottles or offset against an easier to read background.
Hotels could encourage this, and only buy toiletries with bigger font sizes on the bottles. Hotel brands can pay attention to this when selecting for a brand standard. It’s basic user experience.
Even within a single brand, bottle variance is huge. Here’s what purports to be Marriott’s ‘white tea’ products where it’s actually readable.
If there’s one underlying theme across my writing, and the feedback I offer most in my airline, hotel, and airport experiences is that paying attention to details matters and is often far more important than how much money is invested in the product. You have a job to do, so do it with abandon. Focus relentlessly on how customers will experience it from start to finish.
Otherwise you wind up with hotel guests trying to wash their bodies with conditioner, or getting into the shower and turning on the water only to find out they have no idea which bottle is shampoo, getting out and getting the bathroom floor all well while they’re cold until returning back under the hot water. And that’s not a great way to start the morning – and not how hoteliers want guests experiencing their property.
I much prefer a packaged bar of soap and a small double or single use shampoo container. Personally I can’t stand the body wash garbage. At this point, I usually bring my own soap and shampoo in small containers, I hate all the overdone fragrances in the hotel supplied mystery bottles.
Yes to this concern!
Designers are paid to think of things like this!
Regardless of what the labels say, there is no way to know what is in those bottles as more companies become less trustworthy.
I prefer my own products.
I couldn’t agree more!
The lower-end IHGs at least use Dove products. You really can’t mistake the smell and texture of Dove products for anything else, so no fakery going on, and their fonts and positioning are clear on the bottles so you know what’s coming out of them. The easiest hotel group to deal with: Motel 6. One bar of plain white soap and nothing else. Does a great job of cleaning my hair as well.
So true….I always struggle with reading the labels as well…lol
Not as annoying as the bottles being near empty.
I bring bar shop and my preferred shampoo. But, your complaint is valid and extends to so many things. How many times have you read a menu that seems designed to look “cool” to those with near vision, but makes it nearly impossible for us to read because of color choices, fonts size, etc.? And, the less light in the restaurant, the harder it is to read even with light. Don’t get me started on modern nighttime scenes in films/tv or expecting us to read that text messages that takes up only 10% of the screen.
BOOYAH!!!
Can’t even tell you how many times I have experienced this problem.
Thanks for writing about this!
Agree 100% percent too small labels. A piece of bar soap is always nice to get under the nails.
It isn’t just hotels; cruise ships do the same. Since I’ll be aboard ship for a few days, I put a piece of painter’s tape on the shampoo, and don’t worry about the other two, as I don’t use conditioner or body wash (just give me a bar of Irish Spring, and I’m happy)
I recommend also to lower them as some are very high that shorter people can’t reach them. In one shower I was at my tippy toes and could have fallen in the shower.
@swanee — Booyakasha!
@ Gary — Hope for cataract surgery at an early age (like now). You will have new eyes and won’t need anything to help you read.
One of the other problems with these bottles is that bodily fluids are often put into them. And there’s really no way to reliably tell if something nasty is in the bottle.
Never trust those dispensers. One…hotels will do anything as evidenced by this blog to get out of paying anything or upgradings. That being said when you’re franchised you tend to do anything to turn a buck. One of the easiest methods of turning a buck is cost control and expensive shampoo/conditioner/bath gel is one of the easiest expenses to control.
@Matt — For ‘premium’ bodily fluids in your ‘bottles,’ please consider Delta (Hotels by Marriott).
(@L737 — Keeping the dream alive!)
Yup, I spend too many seconds in hotel rooms trying to figure out what’s in the bottles they’ve left me. The purpose of the product — like “SHAMPOO” — should be more prominent that the supposed brand. What annoys me the most is at the sink when there’s often two identical bottles with tiny print, one with hand soap and the other lotion. Since I almost never use lotion (just who are these lotion fiends?) but use plenty of soap, I’m in the habit of rotating the lotion pump opening around to face away from me so I don’t have to keep remembering which bottle is the soap when I’m trying to wash my hands.
Those 39 north bottles are definitely the worst offenders:)
I wonder if the body wash and shampoo are really two different products besides the label in some cases.
The bottle label issue isn’t just hotels. The airline lounges have the same problem… Just have a bottle of SOAP in the head, whats with the lotion in the exact same bottle with miniature writing?
@Kevin — Are you saying you’ve accidentally ‘lotion-ed’ your hands, when you meant to ‘soap’ them? Same goes for ‘hand-sanitizing’ them, when you meant to soap them. So many ‘goofs.’
These require two hands to operate. These are often used in accessible rooms, where a person needs to have one hand on a grab bar at all times.
Or they are anchored high up on the wall, difficult to reach from one sitting in a tub.
Or the are anchored on the wall on the opposite side of the shower nozzle, resulting in messy and dangerously slippery dripping as one is traipsing back and forth.
No customer asked for these. As they are mostly water, we can understand why properties thought it was a good idea.
Designers don’t think about the convenience of hotel guests. Nor are they the only ones. Consider the information included with many prescription meds. There are often many sheets folded as only an Asian puzzle maker might get them refolded after unfolding to read them.
A hand lens has become a necessary item in my and many other households. Else how am I to read the prescription bottle, much less the encyclopedia included with the med or in the package.
As for the wall-mounted bottles of body wash, shampoo and conditioner now found in many hotels, a friend carries a few small, empty bottles — they’re often on sale in big box stores where “travel items” are sold. He squeezes enough from the wall-mounted bottles and showers in relative bliss, not having to extract the liquid he needs from a designer’s elegant creation.
@Ronin — 2? Why not… 47.
This happens to me 90% of the time. I am so grateful when I don’t have to get out of the shower to put on glasses to read the bottles.
. Plus many hotels place the bottles on the long shower wall which means the narrow part of the shower becomes much narrower for someone with big shoulders. Very stupid.
Just making the primary words big and bold would be an easy fix, as implied in the article.
Plus color coding.
I have to admit hotels should standardize on at least some level.