Why I love hotels.

I stayed in a really old hotel last night. They sent me a wake-up letter.
  - Steven Wright   

 

I love hotels. I have always loved hotels. I have wonderful memories of checking into a hotel with my parents, my dad handing me the ice bucket, and sending me on my mission: locate the ice machine and bring back a full bucket. I really don’t remember my parents ever using the ice, but it was a very important mission for me.

As an event marketer, I have the pleasure of really nice hotel rooms during site visits, and really bad lower-than-run-of-the-house rooms during the actual event or during regular travels. No matter the hotel, no matter the property level, there are a few things that I just love about hotels. Some may sound like pet peeves, but it’s these qualities and features that I find endearing about hotels!

Behold my photo essay. 

The Kleenex flower.

Why do I have a flower made of tissue on top of my tissue box? When I need a tissue, it’s usually because I sneezed or actually just need a tissue. With the tissue flower, I have to pull out the massive lump of tissue that is now unusable because someone else touched it and crumpled it together so I can’t easily get a single tissue from it. My favorite was the time when I removed the tissue flower only to discover a completely different color of tissue in the rest of the box. I was given a “previously owned” tissue flower! Ew!

The little shampoo and conditioner and lotion. 

Of course the lotion is only in the nicer of the hotels. More recently, hotels have begun renaming things from the mundane “Shampoo” and “Conditioner” to the more glamorous – and frankly confusing – “Hair Revitalizer” and “Hair Protectant”  or "Hair Mask." If you have to think for more than two seconds to determine if they are actually shampoo and conditioner, then it’s too complicated for the guests.

Free coffee. 

Why is the coffee free, but the water is $7?

The magnifying mirror. 

I love this thing. I do not actually own one at home, but when I go to a hotel, I look forward to checking out my giant pores and random eyebrow growths at ridiculously intensely magnified levels.

The wake-up call. 

Since I can never trust that the alarm clock is set, I really like this service. I especially love it when it’s a real person who tells you good morning and offers the weather for the day. I do not love it when it is 15 minutes late, which leads me now to always use my phone alarm clock as a 5-minute back-up to my wake-up call.

The phone in the toilet room. 

Has anyone ever used this phone? I don’t know, and that is exactly why I will never touch it. What kind of phone calls have they had on the toilet? Were really amazing business deals lost or won from this phone?

The TV in the bathroom. 

I don’t watch TV in the mornings when I’m getting dressed. Nor do I have a TV in my bathroom. This is exactly why I always use the TV in the bathroom in hotels that offer this feature.

The remote to the bedroom television.

The things this device has seen… oh lordy. Why don’t they put a protective cover on it? Much like the toilet phone, I cringe when I touch this remote. I believe I will add a plastic bag to my travel carrier to protect myself from this going forward. Brilliant.

Non-HDTV. 

And along the lines of this remote are the HD televisions in all the hotels without a single HD channel. So I get to watch my favorite Seinfeld episodes all squished and out of proportion. And why does it take so long for the channels to change? What’s up with that?

The stationary.

When was the last time you wrote an actual letter. When was the last time you wrote an actual letter on hotel stationary? I actually remember the last time I did this: I was 13 years old and in a city in Japan. I wrote a letter to myself about my trip using the hotel stationary. Now I check to make sure it’s in the drawer when I get to the hotel. It provides comfort.

The Gideon Bible. 

More important than the hotel stationary, this item must be in my nightstand drawer. If I am in a hotel that the Gideons have not visited, I go online and report it to the Gideons immediately. I’m not kidding.

What are you favorite things about hotels?