Some of my pet hotel peeves can ruin your stay. For those that can be fixed, don’t hesitate to have the hotel correct them immediately.
Room at Copenhagen Radisson Blu Royal Hotel, Copyright © 2015 NSL Photography. All Rights Reserved.
Whether traveling for business or pleasure, hotels can make or break your trip. They can help you get the rest you need or deprive you of it. Hotel peeves can irritate you to no end and cause real problems. They can provide you with convenient quality breakfasts or gag you on powdered eggs.
I’ve got a list of my pet hotel peeves that can make your stay very unhappy and maybe even ruin it. These hotel peeves include dirty bed linens, terrible pillows, packed mini-bars, and dim-witted housekeeping staff.
Free hotel airport shuttles that leave late and are only available from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.:
Many hotels offer free shuttles to and from the airport. When they run late they can waste your time and cause you to miss your flight. When they only run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. they’re useless for the countless travelers like me who fly early to avoid delays and cancellations or come in late for early morning appointments the next day. Be sure you know when your hotel’s shuttle runs.
If your hotel pillows are limp or linens dirty, call housekeeping and get them fixed or consider another hotel.
Flat, limp pillows:
When you walk into your room for the first time, don’t you get a sinking feeling when you scan the bed and see flat, limp pillows that are worthless?
Grimy bed scarves and duvets:
Speaking of beds, I hate it when I pull down the covers and reveal both fresh sheets and a filthy, germy bed scarf or duvet that obviously hadn’t been cleaned in weeks. I tell the hotel to remake the bed, but it always makes me wonder how clean the rest of the room is. Sometimes, if possible, I go to another hotel.
If your hotel room’s bathroom doesn’t have enough towel racks, stay healthy — get fresh bath linens daily.
Only a single towel rack in the bathroom:
Don’t you love it when the hotel asks you to reuse towels to combat climate change, but provides you with just a single towel hook or rack for drying them?
Moist towels are germ magnets. Damp towels quickly build up mold spores and harbor significantly high levels of bacteria including coliform and E. coli. Always demand fresh towels daily in hotels that don’t provide adequate drying racks. Towels that remain damp for hours in your hotel room bathroom are likely hazardous to your health. Towel hooks are worthless, as they don’t allow towels to dry quickly. Even with good drying racks, follow the advice of experts and get fresh towels after three uses.
Mini-bars with no empty space:
Like many, I always try to reserve rooms with a fridge in them. When I enter the room for the first time after check-in, I check the fridge to see if it’s on and cold. If I find it’s actually a mini-bar full of expensive drinks and awful snacks, I usually let out a scream. Particularly if I’m there for multiple nights, I point out to the hotel that the room description says refrigerator, not mini-bar, and ask them to have housekeeping empty it immediately so I can use it as a fridge. I’ve only been refused once and that was quite some time ago.
Slow, free WiFi and one or two hard-to-reach electrical outlets are not acceptable in hotels.
Slow free WiFi, but high fees for speed:
I hate it when hotels say they have free “high speed” WiFi, but when I connect, it’s barely able to pull in my email, and filling out web pages is painful. Then, when I find out that they charge $20 per night or more for real “high speed” WiFi, I get very upset. Considering that these days just about every hotel is paying for high speed WiFi for their own use, it should be free for guests. What’s really peevish about the situation is that too many advertise that they have free “high speed” WiFi, but don’t.
Only one easily accessible electrical outlet:
In 2023, having an adequate number of electrical outlets in convenient locations in hotel rooms is crucial for most travelers. When my wife and I travel together, we have cellphones, tablets, cameras, rechargeable hearing aids, a laptop and other rechargeable items that need to charge nightly. That’s nine-plus items. It’s essential that today’s hotels provide more than one duplex outlet in their guest rooms. In addition, the outlets need to be near furniture on which electronic devices can be safely left to charge. Just in case, I usually travel with a three-outlet extension cord and a USB charging station, and sometimes I go to another hotel in the morning.
Dim room lighting:
Years ago while traveling, I ran into so many hotel rooms with low wattage light bulbs that I brought my own 4–pack of 100 watt bulbs as temporary replacements. A hotel room with a trio of thirty- watt bulbs or their equivalent doesn’t cut it. LED lights with 100 watt equivalence are cost effective. Hotels need to use them and provide plenty of light in their rooms for guests. And please, hotels, dump the cutesy, but opaque, painted lamp shades.
Don’t accept housekeeping that treats “Do Not Disturb” signs as invitations. Make it clear to management that you expect better of their staff.
Do not disturb signs that housekeeping treats as invitations:
Decent training and good hotel policy should be implemented world-wide to tell housekeeping staffs to not even knock on hotel room doors with “Do not disturb” tags on them, particularly if it’s only for a turn-down service.
One luggage stand:
This drives me crazy. I regularly travel with my wife. Like many couples, each of us has a full size bag and a carry-on. At the very least, every hotel room should always have two luggage racks or places to use full-size luggage that aren’t tables, chairs, desks, beds or the floor.
Don’t use a room safe that still uses the factory’s emergency codes.
No room safes or room safes with the factory enabled emergency code:
Every room should have a room safe so you don’t have to carry all your travel documents and valuables with you every time you leave the room. In addition, hotels must change the safes’ emergency code so those who are aware it’s typically 0000 or 1234 can’t steal its contents while you’re out of your room. Before using the safe in your room, put in your own code, then try the defaults to see if they open the safe. If they do, don’t use the safe until the hotel changes the code.
Powdered eggs at breakfast:
Real eggs from real hens just aren’t so expensive that hotels need to use awful powdered egg mix for their breakfast buffets.
One-ply toilet paper in hotel rooms tells me to cross the hotel off future visits and move to another hotel for the current stay.
One-ply toilet paper:
This is my number one hotel peeve and it really chafes my you know what, literally and figuratively. For the pennies saved by buying super cheap toilet paper, hotels are losing repeat guests. I’m one of them. I never go back to a hotel that uses one-ply.
Eliminating these hotel peeves should be on the fix list of every hotel that has them. Except for the installation of additional hotel room outlets in strategic locations, fixing the peeves isn’t particularly expensive, and they can easily pay for themselves many times over with highly positive guest reviews and repeat guests returning for additional stays.
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After many years working in corporate America as a chemical engineer, executive and eventually CFO of a multinational manufacturer, Ned founded a tech consulting company and later restarted NSL Photography, his photography business. Before entering the corporate world, Ned worked as a Public Health Engineer for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. As a well known corporate, travel and wildlife photographer, Ned travels the world writing about travel and photography, as well as running photography workshops, seminars and photowalks. Visit Ned’s Photography Blog and Galleries.
