During the month of March Fred was travelling around Southern Ireland with work.
That meant several hotel rooms to enjoy or not to enjoy.
He had to go to Sligo, Galway, Limerick and Athlone in one week which meant a lot of driving in the evenings between those cities.
I rarely travel with him but that week I decided I was going too when I saw his itinerary.
Neither of us had been to these places before so obviously it was a good opportunity to see a bit more of our neighbouring country but more importantly I did not want my husband getting too tired having to drive so much in the dark, that he might have an accident.
Now of course it also meant 4 different hotels in one week - and that is not pleasant no matter how good they are.
Then the following week he had to go to Cork and Clonmel so he asked me to go then too because of the long drives.
Another 2 hotels in 3 days.
It might sound like a great job to be able to travel and stay in hotels but when you talk to most people that do this type of job they will tell you it is not one to be envied.
Hotels are not homes away from home unless you are paying an exorbitant amount to stay in the fanciest hotels imaginable but even then no matter what your home is like
"Home is always BEST"
You will be most relaxed and comfortable in your own home.
However hotels should make every effort to make their rooms clean, odourless, warm, and inviting if they want any of us to return.
So from those weeks away and our various other trips throughout the world I have come up with my
1. NO SMELL
One evening we walked into our allotted room and immediately lifted the phone to get moved to another room.
Someone had obviously been smoking in a non-smoking room.
I am not going to be happy & comfortable in a room that has any type of smell.
2. ACCESSIBLE TOILET ROLL
How many times have you not felt like you almost needed to be a contortionist to be able to sit on a toilet and also reach the toilet roll holder?
Even a taller person with longer arms than me would have a problem in many hotels.
3. COMFORTABLE BED
Ok some of us like a firmer bed and some prefer a softer bed but I think we will all agree that none of us like to feel the springs!
Yes one of the beds in our last trip was guilty of that.
4. BEDSIDE LIGHTS
Every room should have a bedside light and I am not sure that I can remember a room that did not have one and when it is a single bed only one is required but when it is a double or larger bed then TWO are needed.
Also please, please, please let me be able to switch mine off at a different time to Fred and also not have to walk round to his side of the bed to do that.
5. CLEAN WINDOWS
On different occasions I have opened the heavy curtains to find net curtains and then when I have opened these there are dirty windows. So dirty they have no need for the nets, but maybe the hotels think that the nets will deter us from finding the dirty windows.
In one room in this Eire trip the rod holding the net curtains fell down as I opened the outer curtains.
Dirty Windows makes you wonder what else is dirty!
hotels should make every effort to make their rooms clean, odourless, warm, and inviting if they want us to return
6. COMFORTABLE CHAIR
I am not JUST saying that there should be A chair in the room - oh how I hated the number of times that the only place to sit was on the bed - but I am talking about a comfortable chair not just a hard backed one by the desk/dressing table/TV stand.
In this one room this is what happened
A. Even though there were two chairs in the room there was not enough room between the bottom of the bed and the desk to put a chair
B. I had to pull the bed down to the desk so that I had something to sit on while I worked on my laptop and yes I know it is a LAPtop but when you are working on it for any length of time you like to have it on a table or desk.
Can you see the gap left at the top of the bed?
C. Dirty windows.
D. Curtain rail fell off.
E. Only one light over the double bed.
Oh yes and this was the room we were moved to after the room with the smell!
7. AIR CONDITIONING THAT WORKS
Repeatedly we have found that rooms have air-conditioning which is great in any country.
Mostly the little boxes on the wall will appear to give the choice of what temperature the room can be set at but how often do they actually work properly or it is obvious for us to know how to set them?
8. TABLE AS WELL AS A DRESSING TABLE/DESK
For anyone staying more than one night in a room you can expect that they will have something they want to do other than just sit on the bed and flick through TV channels.
I often wonder why they want us to have room service (and they do because they can charge more money) but yet there is no table at which they can set the tray for us to eat.
9. PEN & NOTEPAD
It used to be the thing we would notice immediately sitting beside the bed. Not any longer. The majority of rooms I now see are devoid of the pen and notepad.
No matter how long I am in a room I am bound to want to jot something down.
Like when you suddenly want to make a note of something that you have just remembered you need to do the next day or a blog idea has just flitted into your head but you are just falling asleep.
Or perhaps when you have to ring reception to find out all the simple details that should have been in the information booklet that they have removed from the room because they are putting in a new one the following week - so my question is: Why remove one before the other is there to replace it???
(True Story)
10. QUIET WATER SYSTEMS
No-one and I mean no-one wants to be woken up by the sound of a flushing toilet in another room but sometimes that is understandable. However we definitely do not want to be constantly hearing ever single toilet on the same floor flushing or in fact the cistern filling up again or water flowing through all the pipes on the floor.
In one hotel room it was so loud that I kept running into the bathroom because I thought our toilet was making the noise and it wasn't.
PLUS - MY PET PEEVE!
A Gideon Bible.
So often now as we travel we find that hotels are not allowing the Gideons to come and leave bibles in all the rooms or they are now removing them.
If you feel that there should still be a Gideon bible in your hotel room please ring reception and let them know because the local branch of the Gideons would be delighted to be asked to provide more bibles.
