After the bed, the shower and the TV (and cleanliness), there are some basic amenities that I want in every hotel room I stay in. It’s not hard. Really. My message to hoteliers. Please make sure you give me:
… A remote control for the TV, preferably with a sleep timer.
… A TV that swivels, so I can watch it from my desk, the bed or other parts of the room.
… A TV channel guide. Not just on-screen. Printed. Sometimes I don’t want to wait for the scrolling guide to find out which channels are available. Or I can’t find the specific channels I want.
… A thermostat that I can adjust. And please make sure it actually works.
… A high-speed Internet connection that (too) actually works. Preferably included in the rate.
… The telephone number of the hotel, printed clearly on the phone (or a card right next to it), large enough for anyone with aging eyesight to read. And while you’re at it, please include the fax number too. (You’d be surprised how many hotels don’t even put their own phone number in the room, or make it so tiny that even a person with 20-20 eyesight would need a magnifying glass.)
… Enough electrical outlets. In an accessible place, so I don’t have to move the bed and crawl under it to plug in my phone or laptop. (Who told hotels that one outlet, behind the desk, would be enough when I have three or four things to plug in? Jeepers. I now carry a three-outlet converter for all of those many times the hotel doesn’t have enough.)
… Hot and cold running water. With the faucets in the proper order. (At an aging but gorgeous hotel I stayed in recently, the faucets in the shower were reversed. And since it took about three minutes for the water to heat up, I wound up taking a rather unusual shower.)
… An alarm clock that has been checked so the alarm does NOT go off at 3:30 or 5 a.m. unless I have set it to do so.
I stay in a lot of hotel rooms, some of them the finest in the world and a few of them in the “far below finest” category, frankly. But none of the items above are expensive to provide. They just require a hotelier to think about hospitality and serving guests. Please.
