I’ve stayed in hundreds of hotels (maybe even more than 1000) during the course of my corporate career and in the last fifteen years of consulting. All classes and price ranges too. As a corporate “fat cat” I’ve stayed in places like the Waldorf Astoria in NYC, and the Hotel Bristol in Vienna (just across from the opera house and the Sacher Hotel with its famous Sachertorte). As a consultant-entrepreneur, I’ve also stayed in Motel 6 and the Comfort Inn in…well I can’t quite remember because they all look alike! And everything in between. In the course of these explorations over the last 30+ years, I’ve come to one conclusion….Hotels are almost universally designed and run by people who never actually stay in hotels!

Here are ten sure signs that the people who designed and/or are running your hotel, never stay in one:

1. A swimming pool is just off the main lobby and in full view of the restaurant. I’d like to know if anyone actually enjoys inhaling chlorine with their breakfast, or worse, likes to be reminded of just how many calories are really in those Eggs Benedict by watching Speedo-clad Belugas doing Cannonballs in the water?
2. Continuing with the pool theme – a kidney-shaped one with water heated to 90 degrees is another sure sign that the designer or owner of the hotel never stays in a hotel. Impossible to do some laps, these contraptions are inevitably empty, save perhaps for a few geriatric patients who get bussed in from the nursing home across the street for Pool Therapy.
3. “Economizer” shower heads that spritz a fine mist with which you are expected to rinse the the soap off your carcass with the hotel’s inevitably hard water. This is supposed to save the environment while 1.3 Billion Chinese are consuming most of the earth’s natural resources in their rush to become us!
4. Bathtubs with curved bases. Sorry, I didn’t train with the Flying Wallendas, nor do I have Rudolph Nureyev’s balance. 90% of people take showers in hotels, not baths! How about something you can safely stand in?
5. Shower stalls with no hand-shower so that you can rinse out your butt after soaping up! My idea of fun doesn’t include gluing my body to the wall at the far end of the shower like Spidey in order to get some distance on the shower head in the hope that some water might trickle down the Grand Canyon!
6. Foam blankets. The standard answer is: “I’m sorry sir, these are part of the fire code in order to prevent smokers from lighting themselves on fire in bed”. “But this is a non-smoking hotel”, I reply, to which the clerk just repeats the same robotic fire-code answer. I don’t even know if that’s true or some bullshit story management has conjured up to justify using these rags that make you sweat like a piece of hot apple pie wrapped in Saran Wrap before its had time to cool.
7. Air-conditioning or heating vents positioned to blow air right onto the bed so you can freeze to death in the nighttime, or wake up parched like the Sahara after a six-year drought!
8. No phone by the bed. Sure we all want to sit primly at the desk and speak to our wives and children after a long, hard day on the road!
9. A TV remote control that doesn’t work because the batteries are dead. Hello! Would it kill the cleaning crew to turn the TV on and off before giving the room the OK?
10. Hangers permanently attached to the closet rail so that no one will steal them. Does anyone still do that…steal hangers I mean? Wal-Mart has 30 hangers for $1.99. If people are denuding the hotel to the extent that you need to nail everything down…why not start with the f*&^ing foam blankets?????