Sometimes there is an early sign of trouble when you reach your hotel room……the designers have been just that little bit too tricksy and trendy. The pics below were taken at a new hotel in Sydney’s Chatswood.
And sure enough, the room turned out to be vast, but well…….. just wrong on so many levels (so to speak).
With all the floor space available they designed the room so that the bedside table sat half on carpet and half on tile. The lamp nearly toppled off. Too wobbly to stand a glass of water on.
You must be kidding!
MIRROR MIRROR ON THE HOTEL WALL
Now as a woman of a certain age, this is my biggest gripe. The example here is from a different hotel, in Hobart, Tasmania
Mirror, mirror on the wall.
I cannot see myself at all!
There was an oversized, water wasting shower head, and one miserable light.
A picture’s worth a thousand words.
The only mirror with decent lighting was in the lift. I was tempted to ride up and down, ‘putting on my face’.
1st floor, lipstick, 4th floor, mascara…..
The bathroom pictured below ( a new North Sydney hotel) wasn’t much better. For heaven’s sake! Fortunately for me there was mirrored wall behind the kettle in the kitchenette
And next I present….. a bathroom with an entire wall of mirrored cupboards (who on earth needs so many?) , but a shelf below so impractical it’s impossible to extract a tissue from the box. We are back in the Sydney CBD now.
Honestly! There were six of these cupboards, with most shelves too high to reach.
Here is one bathroom hack that I decided to experiment with at home. Always have a paper cup handy. If there’s nowhere hygienic to put your toothbrush, just put a slit in the bottom of the cup and ‘hey presto’. 😍
The only issue I see is that paper cups would end up as flat as pancakes in your suitcase. 😎
How nice it is when a decent tissue box is provided, except you may have to extract these with a fork.
For heaven’s sake!
Who designs these vast, ineffectual rooms? Here is another example. No proper vanity unity in an ensuite the size of my bedroom at home..
Where can we put our stuff
HOTEL KITCHEN CALAMITIES
Now where would be a sensible place for the cutlery do you think? Waist height? No, not quite. It took us half an hour to find a spoon.
I guess bending is good exercise.
China and glassware? Put them above the stove top, in cupboards so high only a basketball player could reach them.
The fridge in this room was large enough for a family of ten. In fact everything was super-sized. We felt rather like Alice in Wonderland after she drank the famous shrinking potion.
Oh yes, and many new hotels do not have enough power outlets for their techno crazy clientele. We need to charge phones, laptops, camera batteries, etc etc. MORE OUTLETS PLEASE!
Now this warning seems a bit odd to me;
What a contradiction in terms. If it’s a non-smoker it won’t smoke…right? I suspect it’s a veiled threat to nicotine addicts who blame appliances when they have a sneaky puff and set those bells a’ringing
Speaking of smoke, the most recent, central Sydney hotel I stayed in was called Megaboom. I do think a little more thought could have been given to the name, especially when they have placed a ticking clock on every bedside table.
Kerboom!
If there is no cooking facility available in your room you can still make a toasted sandwich, well according to a hilarious hack I came across. Make your sandwich. wrap it in foil, then apply a hot iron to either side.
On almost final note; have you ever been in a hotel room where the radio worked? I haven’t, no matter what country or how expensive the room.
I could go on, and yes, I do realize these are first world problems. My husband suggests we could be employed testing the practicality of hotel room design.
TO BALANCE THE EQUASION, HERE ARE MORE OF THE HOTEL HACKS I FOUND ON-LINE. SOME MIGHT HELP. SOME ARE JUST FUNNY.
FEEL FREE TO LEAVE A COMMENT OR SHARE YOUR OWN EXPERIENCES.
It is amazing what you find. My last hotel was the Marriott and it was apparent they had redesign the rooms. Lovely to look at but he a/c unit took up one wall, and the bathroom door was a fogged glass slide door. Again it was lovely but left me desiring a bit more privacy. Yes, first world problems…that cost big buck.
They need us as design consultants, CJ.
They should employ real people as designers not computer aided design or people who have just started an interior design course!
I can only agree, Christine. All looks gorgeous on the surface, but too many frustrations!!
We should write a book! Over years I have stayed at a hotel where there was a very used mouse hole. When my mum told them about it they said they k ew and just let them be!
Another where the whole curtain came out of the wall when drawn. My dad pushed it back and as an engineer was amazed to see this had been done many times before!!!! It just glided in
Another where they ran out of roast potatoes so my elderly aunt who was with us got an e tea spoon of cabbage!
Oh dear Lorraine, I was very amused about the cabbage substitute. Of course this article was only about modern city hotels, my experience with B&B’s and older hotels in the UK and Europe would fill another volume.