As holidaymakers we have a bitter sweet relationship with hotels. They have the power to enhance our holidays; making them dreamlike and forever vivid in our memories, but they can also compound them into the seventh circle of a stress induced hell providing us with ammunition for the rest of our stay to complain about how bad everything else is even though there’s not much wrong.
There will be plenty of people reading this who have stayed in a hotel over the summer and it’s quite likely that a few things on this list may just ring a bell. There are always going to be good hotels and bad hotels, and on the face of it you get what you pay for, but it’s those unforeseen problems that can really though a spanner in the works and act like a metaphorical pin to your holiday-shaped beach ball.
So what are our biggest hotel bugbears?
Losing Your Reservation –
It doesn’t matter if your reservation is lost for a few seconds or permanently; nothing compares to that sinking feeling you feel in your stomach after you have just travelled half way across the world, dragged your luggage from the car and waited at the reception desk only to hear ‘sorry we can’t seem to find your reservation on our system’. Whether this is resolved or not it can really get your holiday started on the wrong foot and have you cursing the polite receptionist you booked the room with.
Poor Hygiene –
It doesn’t matter if you have kept your budget tight and booked a cheap hotel in Cheltenham or broken the bank to stay in a five star luxury resort in the Bahamas; there is no excuse for poor hygiene. And a clean room is such a basic request that even the slightest violation of this is enough to get our blood boiling to the point where we are quite happy to run down the stairs in our dressing gowns in order to ask to be moved to a different room.
Outrageous Hidden Charges –
Anyone who has ever travelled with a budget airline will be well aware that you may end up paying hidden charges for added extras that you thought were included in the original price. When staying in a hotel this can include having to pay for Wi-Fi, being charged for sun loungers around the pool or having to put money in a slot just to unlock the tea and coffee making facilities in your room. Some added extras are expected but when you have to pay extra for additional pillows or loo rolls you start to wonder where your initial payment actually went.
Thin Walls –
Most luxury hotels seem to have the noise reduction down to a tee these days, but there are still plenty of hotels out there that see no problem with building their internal walls out of cardboard and crossing their fingers that it won’t lead to sleepless nights. At the end of the day the primary function of a hotel is to give you a quiet and comfortable place to rest your weary head and therefore alarm bells start to ring when this box isn’t even ticked. And don’t assume that your handy ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door is going to make much difference as you are still likely to be awoken by the maids as they furiously hammer on the doors to the adjacent rooms.
The Hotel Looking Nothing Like The Brochures –
There are probably a lot of people out there that have fallen foul to this one. You flick through the brochure and find what you think looks like the perfect location. The pool is massive, the sun seems to constantly shine and the hotel itself looks like something out of a movie, but your perspective soon changes once you arrive. The least of your worries could be that the pool is half the size you thought it was and is now filled with floating leaves and endless inflatables, but at worst you could be faced with a structure that is still in the process of being built.
What are your biggest bugbears about staying in a hotel? Perhaps you had an experience this summer that you’d like to share? Add your comments in the box below.
