On couches

[ladyofastolat]

Surely I can't be the only person who considers a couch (or similar) to be a vital component of a satisfying hotel room? Unless we're only using the hotel as a place to stay after an evening out, chances are we'll have several hours of an evening in that room, and I hate having to sit on the bed for computer use / TV watching / tea drinking / game playing. I also like somewhere to sit in the morning when I get up before Pellinor's awake.

But do hotel websites ever make it easy to find out if their rooms contain such a thing? No! I've looked at lots of sites where every room is listed separately, with a whole gallery of photos, allowing you to choose which room you want. Even then, they tend to show close-ups of ornaments, arty shots of hanging curtains and so on, but leave you entirely in the dark about what furniture is contained in a room. You can't even assume that this means there is no chair or couch. I've taken a chance on such rooms in the past, only to find that they're large and lovely, with both couch and armchair, even though the many many pictures on the website admitted to neither of these things.

Obviously I want to know how many it sleeps, and whether it's an en suite. I'd like the bed to be comfortable, but that's such a subjective matter than no hotel website can help me here. Tea and coffee making facilities are essential, but are taken as read. (However, if a hotel offers real milk instead of UHT cartons, they should shout about it. I've stayed in hotels that did this, and it was great, but they kept entirely silent about this on their website.) I want to know if there's free wifi - and that, too, is sometimes very hard information to extract from the websites of larger hotel chains. Ideally I'd like to know if it's quiet or not: if the hotel is on a busy road and each room is listed separately, it would be nice to know which rooms are quieter. It's not essential, but given the choice, I'd like a nice view: another thing hotel websites can be strangely coy about, even when they boast about their lovely gardens and setting.

I don't care if there are fluffy bathrobes. Why does every hotel website under the sun make such a thing about fluffy bathrobes?

I don't care what colour the decor is. I don't care who makes the soap; chances are I won't have heard of them, anyway. I don't care what colour the cushions are. I'll just chuck the cushion mountain off the bed as soon as I get there, and the cleaner will carefully pile them all back on again, and I'll chuck them off again. Why are hotels so obsessed with piling a million cushions on the bed? And what's with these funny little coloured strips of material they like to lay across the bottom of the duvet?

I just want to know if I'll have somewhere to sit that isn't the bed. Why are hotels so reluctant to tell me this?

Comments

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I quite like sitting on the bed in hotel rooms.

On the other hand, the thing I do really hate about hotels is them making the bed so tightly that you have to completely dismantle the bedding just to get into bed.

[leesa_perrie]

This!! Why do they think it's such a great thing? I'd like to get into the bed without doing work first!!!

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I haven't noticed that as much now that most hotels use duvets, but I've definitely had to do serious excavations in the past, untucking the bedding from top to bottom. I'd be quite happy if they didn't bother making up the bed between one night and the next. I know they do it because they have to - and many guests would be outraged if it wasn't done - but it only turns a comfortable bed back into an uncomfortable one.

[leesa_perrie]

I've started using the 'do not disturb' signs on the door to stop the maids coming in. It's rare I'm staying at a hotel long enough to want new towels or the bin changing etc. You can usually get more milk, teabags etc from reception, though it does mean reusing the cups - but there's a sink to wash them out in.

This is mainly because I tend to ask for a couple of sheets and ditch the duvet, seeing as most hotels use winter duvets all year round (hot, hot, hot in summer!!) and I don't want to have to remake the bed that the maid has put the duvet back on!!

Also, once I left the towels hanging up to dry out, which in most hotels these days also means 'no clean towels please'. The maid didn't put new clean towels in, which was good and what we wanted, but she did fold the wet towels up and put them back in the cupboard/shelf, where they were when we arrived. Trouble was, this cupboard/shelf was the only place to put folded clothes in and so I ended up with wet towels on top of clean clothes!!! What?!!

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, fresh milk and teabags is really the only reason I would want my room serviced. And given that I usually reuse my mug several times at home (or do so until Pellinor starts sighing and rolling his eyes at my shameful lack of standards) I wouldn't even mind about not getting fresh mugs. What we need is two different Do Not Disturb signs: "Do Not Disturb At The Moment Because We're Having A Lie-In, But Come Back Later," and "Don't Bother Coming In At All."

[leesa_perrie]

LOL! Yes, we need signs like that! :D

[leesa_perrie]

Husband would like to know what the light levels are in the rooms. So many hotels have bad lighting, making it really hard to him to read. Just because it's a bedroom doesn't mean we want low lighting as the only option!! And yet websites don't cover that either!

As for the cushions, totally superfluous and unneeded!

I agree, the websites need to provide more information of a practical nature and less stylistic stuff!

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I hadn't really noticed that before, but thinking back, yes, I do remember many hotels - especially large chain hotels - having low lighting. My bugbear about hotel lighting is not knowing which light switch controls which light. It's often not at all obvious. So I wake up early and want to read, but never know which light switch will flood the whole room in light and wake Pellinor up. I sometimes end up sitting on the floor outside a half-open bathroom door, using the light from there.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I once spent one night in a B&B with a whole suite of mood lighting. I didn't investigate it before I went out for the evening; got back with a glimmer of light in the sky, and went straight to bed; and woke up in the middle of the night, desperate for the loo, and unable to turn a single light on.

[ar-richardson.livejournal.com]

And what's with these funny little coloured strips of material they like to lay across the bottom of the duvet?

I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this! It's the same in mattress stores - it's so that when people lounge on the bed with their shoes on (which you know people will invariably do) it won't get the duvet - or mattress - filthy. And with that I think I've expended my usefulness for the day, haha.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

THat makes sense. I hadn't thought of that. My working theory was that it means that they can have white sheets which can be boil-washed en masse without worrying about the colours running, but can still have a splash of colour on the bed. I'd wondered if the cushion mountain was also done to add colour to what would otherwise be a stark white bed. But your explanation makes sense.

[ar-richardson.livejournal.com]

Oh that makes sense too, though. Maybe it's a little of both?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I don't care that much for a couch, but here are two things many hotel rooms, even upscale ones, don't have:

1) drawers. To, like, put your clothes in. You know clothes? Many travelers carry them. Imagine that.

2) a desk. Somewhere to spread things out on, and to eat if you have take-out or room service.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I'm happy without a desk, but would always quite like a coffee table of some sort, for dumping stuff on, and putting drinks on, and even for playing games on. (We usually take along a few board games.)

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I darkly suspect that where they don't make a fuss about the wifi, it's because they have wifi that is a bit dodgy, or which works in some rooms and not others.

I have accommodation and even hotel customers who *in theory* have wifi, but have long ago given up assuming that when I go there for meetings I will actually be able to get a working connection.

I don't know why they don't tell you if there is a seat or not though.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I find that small hotels and B&Bs are quite happy to admit to free WiFi, but in large hotel chains, the information tends to fall into the holes between the "what you get in this particular hotel" page, and the "what you get as standard in all our hotels" page. But, yeah, given that the chain website whose website was particularly guilty of that turned out to have VERY patchy (and not free) Wifi, perhaps you're right.