Totally agree, I hate when hotels are doing that. Like when HSP sometimes close half of its exec lounge (the half with the better view) for private functions and hotel guests are left without a place to sit. Anything for a penny...
Hmmm...sorry about that
I was at a FF function (part AFF) at the HSP a couple of years ago and the lounge manager kindly sectioned off a nice part of the lounge for us. If it was any consolation, we did not spend the entire night there; we moved to a private room soon enough for the main event.
One of my biggest dislikes is "adding a charge" to things which I expect the hotel to be provided for free. This usually happens at resorts where they want to charge you $x for a beach chair for example.
I think my larger dislike is pretty much all around the world, which is that hotels seem happy to charge you for things and then be rather amused or surprised when the customer gives them a bad reaction. It is as if they provide all these "extras" or "services" for customers of which if a customer is in principle happy to use, they also have no qualms in paying for it. I don't know too many customers that are either that stupid or have dispensable income to literally burn, so don't insult most of our intelligence by not being upfront as to what costs money and what does not.
One nice example is sometimes water bottles in the room. In some cases they are free and others not. A bottle sitting either on your bedside table or on the study desk rather than in the minibar, but there is no label saying whether it is complimentary or not. That's confusing (although I'm sure most would presume that the said bottle is chargeable in such a case).
Easy to locate light switches. Have had to use a bathroom in the dark on more than one occasion.
How about labelling which lights are activated by which switches. A panel with six unmarked switches and playing trial-and-error to work it out? Seems a bit rich.
As for free wifi (or free internet in general), I'd like this too and at least a decent speed for surfing, social media and email (not necessarily for mass downloading, P2P or video streaming). Limiting by bandwidth is dumb (e.g. 200 MB only, I'm looking at you Riverinet), as are subscriptions which terminate upon closing a browser / disconnecting the network adapter / restarting the computer without option to resume the remainder of the subscription. That said, when people start saying that free wifi is a basic human right, that's going too far.
The two double beds equals one king bed blah-blah never gets old... it's not right, but what do you do.......
Other pet hates:
- Clean glassware properly. Yes I'm aware they are either just simply wiped down with a certainly not clean cloth, or simply run under the tap. How stupid do you think I am?
- Go easy on the chlorine on the towels, or rinse them out properly. Yes it kills germs, but it isn't exactly good for humans either. I'm looking at you, Holiday Inn...
- No or wrong / outdated instructions to operate the non-intuitive air conditioning system.
- Shower baths with a glass splash panel which only covers 1/3 or less of the bath, i.e. useless, and is usually flimsily attached to the wall, so it is also a potential sharp hazard.
- When the heating element or metallic parts of a kettle start to show rusting or signs of exposed metal / deposition, it's usually time to replace the kettle.
- Ditto the above to any appliance in the room whose electrical cord starts to show signs of fraying or damage... or when switched on, shows some sparks coming from the power point.
- If I bring any of the previous two points to your attention, I'm genuinely trying to help you out to avoid an accident. So don't treat me with contempt as if I'm just being uppity for uppity sake, or trying to extort something for free out of you, or I'm a moron.
- One bin in the bathroom and one bin in the main room, preferably near the desk. Not too difficult and hopefully not too expensive to have two bins.
I feel sorry for housekeeping staff sometimes. If there is a better example of people who are overworked, underpaid and the only attention they get in return is the honour of being a scapegoat, genuinely honest housekeeping staff are somewhere up there for the contender.
Not a criticism as such, but sometimes it amuses me when the room can look old and run down, from the paint and the carpet to the furnishings, and yet on one wall or piece of furniture against a wall of the room is a brand spanking new schlick and large flatscreen television with free cable channels (and of course the standard offering of pay movies and cough)...
I suppose in the end, a clean room with comfortable bed and ability to climate control the room (either with air con / heater / windows) is the basics you expect. The rest will scale on the complaint severity scale based on how much I paid for the room.
or ones in the Gym/pool area when you think you may make a "mess"
