here’s a caveat, this journal entry is going to be sort of bourgeoisie.
caveat 2: i still don’t know how to spell ‘bourgeoisie’.
it’s about hotels.
and what they do right and what they do wrong.
i’m writing this because:
a-i stay in a lot of hotels
b-i have insomnia and i’m bored
c-i’m hoping that some hoteliers will read this and make nicer hotels for me to stay in.
ok, here goes:
a-the rooms should be quiet. really quiet. painfully quiet. thick windows and curtains
that keep out all sound. if you want noise you go outside and stand in traffic.
b-the rooms should be able to be made pitch black. not sort of dark, but pitch black. if you want
light you open the curtains. you want to sleep you close them and it’s pitch
black. not to state the obvious, but hotel rooms are for sleeping.
c-internet. i know, i’m a whiney yuppie, but hotels should have easy to access
internet. and give it away for free. paying $10 for internet just seems petty.
d-smell. hotel rooms shouldn’t smell of anything. not smoke. not hooker perfume.
not dead cats. nothing.
e-pillows. goldilocks pillows. not too soft, not too firm, just normal. and maybe even
a few options to choose from. and no designer pillows that are weird. sleep should
never involve the words ‘designer’, ‘modern’, ‘cutting edge’, or ‘avant-garde’.
no one want’s a cutting edge, avant garde sleep experience.
f-sheets. no one apart from old dusty grandmothers likes tucked in sheets. tucked in sheets are what they use in hospitals to keep sick people from falling on the floor.
an untucked duvet/comforter works just fine and is normal and good.
g-do not disturb. do not disturb should mean ‘do not fucking disturb me or i will throw
a fucking brick at your head and the police will not put me in jail because they know that if you disturb someone who is sleeping they are legally allowed to throw a brick at your head.’
this goes for the phone and the door. there is never a single reason that the front desk
should call a hotel guest unless the hotel is on fire or there is the sound of people
having sex with goats coming from within the room.
h-movies. i know, a bit esoteric, but they have this fantastic new technology that converts
information into binary code. it even works for movies, and it allows people to store hundreds
of movies on one, cheap storage device. this storage device can then be accessed by bored
hotel guests who will happily pay obscene amounts of money to stave off the soul
crushing despair and loneliness that comes from frequent travel.
i-heat and air-conditioning. it cuts both ways. it gets cold in san diego sometimes and sometimes
it even gets hot in aberdeen. every hotel room should have hot and cold running heat and cooling, even if you’re 5 minutes from the equator or the arctic circle. and, not to be too demanding, but
the heat and a/c should actually work. if they don’t work i’m allowed to throw a small brick
at someone. again, that’s the law.
j-modern. some modern is ok. and some modern is like being trapped in an i-pod that doubles
as an insane asylum. contemporary is nice as long as it works and is comfortable. but if you’ve built a hotel that consists of cold, hard floors and molded plastic furniture and a color scheme of: off-white and nothing else, you should probably be put in prison for crimes against humanity and your stupid
modern hotel should be burned to the ground, like frankensteins castle.
nothing wrong with some nice design, but it should be comfortable and nice, not cold
and soul destroying. too many hotels have been built that are the hotel equivalent of a trendy magazine. again, sleep should never be trendy or cutting edge. you can close a magazine, you actually have to sleep in a hotel.
k-complicated. don’t make the systems complicated. light switches should turn the lights on and off.
the remote control should turn the tv on and off. the air conditioning should have 2 things: temperature and fan speed. don’t get clever. no one likes clever when they’re trying to sleep.
no one is impressed with your remote control that turns on the hot water and lowers the blinds and controls the heating and calls the front desk and makes disco monkeys drop out of the ceiling.
ok, i’d be impressed with the disco monkeys, but everything else should be simple. in other words: don’t reinvent the wheel. there’s nothing wrong with a good old fashioned light switch.
l-the mini bar should have a ton of things in it. liquor, water, juice, condoms, food, sunglasses,
ear plugs, candles, etc. the more the better. make a mini-closet and fill it with everything a traveller could ever want.
m-i-pod players in every room are great. thank you for including them. but don’t make
them too loud cos all of a sudden you’re trying to sleep, and the attorney and his new lady
friend are having a coke and tequila party next door at 5 a.m and listening to the new raconteurs
record and you’re trying to sleep and you’re reaching for your bag of bricks because surely it must
be legal to throw a brick at a loud, coked up attorney at 5 a.m who is interrupting your sleep.
n-and the usual. give me a desk and a chair. give me lights in normal places. give me a couch.
give me carpeting(wood floors at home are nice, in hotels they’re cold and creepy).
just give me normal, nice stuff that will keep the wolves of travel despair at the door just long
enough for me to finally get some sleep and go home.
ok, thanks for indulging my 6 a.m insomniac hotel rant.
moby