Photo Credit: LOLren via Compfight cc

A little change of pace on the blog today. Like many of you I have spent a fair amount of time on the road during my career, and I am often surprised by what I find in hotel rooms. Specifically, I’m usually confronted with a set of minor annoyances that make spending time on the road less than ideal. This is not an indictment of any particular chain, but here in no particular order are my top ten annoyances about hotel rooms. Feel free to add your own in the comments section.

1. Gymnastics required to reach an electrical outlet. Why in the world is one outlet near the bed buried either behind the bed or coffee table? Didn’t you know where the bed was going when you built the room? Give me a 5-outlet power strip right on the bedside table.
2. Anything that is on the bed should be washed regularly. Why do we have all these pillows and linens that I have to take off and throw on the floor before I can use the bed? Do these get washed ever? Certainly not every day like the sheets. They don’t serve a purpose, get rid of them.
3. Shades don’t fully close. As all travelers understand, your schedule may or may not be a good fit for when the sun rises. Instead of having window coverings that meet in the middle the window coverings should go from one side all the way to the other so there is no split in the middle.
4. Air conditioning/heating units that sound like a train wreck when they cut on. These are usually the wall mounted units with a dial thermometer. Can we please get a wall thermometer with a unit that doesn’t require ear plugs?
5. Showers that produce almost no water. A nice hot shower can cure many travel issues but only if there is enough water volume to get wet. I used to travel with a pair of pliers so I could pull the water restrictors out of the shower heads.
6. TVs with a hundred channels but no list of the channel numbers. I generally like to watch CNBC when I get up in the morning, but I often have to spend 10 minutes finding it, stepping through one channel after another until I bungle across it. If they are on commercial break, then I may pass it twice before finding it.
7. Tubs that are slippery when used as a shower. Falls are the leading cause of death, injury and hospital admissions among the elderly population. I am not there yet, but I don’t want to hasten my demise.
8. Paper thin walls. I used to stay at a hotel in my home town that had real brick walls. Never heard a peep from anyone. Now if anyone enters their room above, below or beside yours, you know immediately.
9. $5 bottles of water. If you want to put water in the room fine, but make it a reasonable markup as to what I would pay if I walked across the street to the 7-Eleven. Otherwise, I feel like you are just taking advantage of me, and I wonder what else is way over priced? Actually, offer the water concession to a local charity. Have them run it and then I will feel good when I pay $2 for the bottle of water that costs them 25 cents at Costco.
10. Check in delays. If Hertz and Avis don’t require me to talk to anyone to take a car and drive away, why do hotels? You know I’m coming and you know my credit card. What else do you need? There should be a place when you walk in where you swipe your card and then your key drops down with the room number. How tough can that be?