krca11

One big - simple known room service offerings - sometimes I have no choice but to order but being able to order a simple protein, veg & a glass of wine shouldn't take an act of Congress.

One small - please no more mint shampoo, conditioner or body wash! There are scents out there that are unisex - I don't want to smell like an Altoid all day!

BuildingMyBento

It might as well be included in this thread (too?), but I used to think that, in various hotel rooms in East Asia, the list of items in the room with values attached to them were for purchase. Instead, one of the check-in agents finally told me that those are the costs incurred should guests break something.

Hvr

I'm the other way, I hate very soft pillows and prefer the concrete blocks for pillows. Generally love mattresses in Asian hotels which are usually very hard.

davie355

+1 for hard mattresses. If a guest complains, send a mattress pad.

But a soft mattress cannot be made hard.

Reevesis

My workday begins and ends rather early in the day and consequently I'm often in my room when housekeeping is blitzing the rooms near mine (around 2 pm)... and they almost always use that little wall-mounted, metal security latch near the door as a means to keep the doors from closing behind them. I might be overly sensitive, but after thirty or so minutes of my walls shaking from the neighbouring doors bouncing off of these metal latches EVERY SINGLE TIME the cleaning person walks out to their cart and back in to the room (BOOM! Boom.. boom...) ... I'm ready to completely lose my s--t.

Exec_Plat

THis lsit of 'peeves' seems a bit confusing...some are major issues with a room, others jsut a peeve.

There are two things I need in EVERY room at which I stay (perhaps 150 nights a year)

A nights sleep

A hot shower.

Things that prevent that- AC not working, bricks for pillows, lack of shades, noise, lack of water pressure or temp, alarms that go off at 4AM, etc are not 'pet peeves'. At least IMO.

Advertising, slow elevators, morons at the front desk, outlets, internet, etc, etc all fall into peeves.

So I kinda did the list as a ranking in terms of 'does it impact sleep, can I shower and shave'

Hey, speaking of minor peeves: they have a fancy coffee maker, like nesspresso or keurig, but powdered creamer.

Oh, anohter peeve: ACs that cannot be set to "fan all the time"

Nothing worse that AC turning on and off all night- just let the fan run and the compressor will cycle. The droning fan, even if loud, is constant and can drown out the other noises.

Ive been know to disassemble, rewire or reproram as necessary. Seriously. Btween an EE back when and the internet it is pretty easy to do.

nickknock1

Wow, I have the same conversation and wait so many times :-)

muji

Yes. Same here.

w2106

truth has been spoken.

i second that. I book via gta and its all good.

Fitch

Totally agree - the difference is, for a decent night's sleep, I like a hard mattress but I need a soft pillow

TheGuy

I must admit I get really annoyed when people seem to have load conversations for ages whilst in the corridor. People just treat a hotel room corridor like a public social area and ignore the fact that people are try to rest behind all those doors.

Other irritants are going all the way up to your room with your luggage to find that your key card does not work.

Horrible hotel breakfasts with dried out or heavily salted scrambled egg.

Also tiny bedrooms where you literally cannot swing a cat. Awful places if you have to spend a few days there.

pbjag

A relatively recent pet peeve is when hotels only have the room service menu available on the television. Takes forever to scroll through the screens and on more than one occasion, either the remote battery was dead or the TV itself not working.

iwatawood

I thought of the survey from the standpoint of "what makes me request a new room." Residual cigarette smoke, absolutely, but right behind it are hotels who won't respond to noisy guests in the hall after midnight (I'd prefer an earlier time but..). If a hotel books a high school marching band on a trip or a track team etc., they should be prepared to deal with the noise issues promptly for the sake of the other guests. And don't assign your "Diamond" guest (or any other indication of a frequent business traveler) a room in the middle of all those kids! Unless you like getting calls every 15 minutes all night long.

Cheetah_SA

Oh you are so, so right with this one - it makes me incandescent when it happens!

And when I eventually storm down to the front desk and tell them through gritted teeth what I want and why I have been forced to get dressed and make my request in person, I get a totally insincere "Terribly sorry sir".

Like so many of these peeves, the part that really gets to me is that you have no real recourse. And hotels and/or their staff don't suffer any immediate negative consequences from continuing to treat guests badly.

darthbimmer

Interesting approach, though I answered the survey in terms of which problems were both most significant and most frequent. I'm allergic to cigarette smoke and will request another room without hesitation if there's a problem with it, but thankfully residual smoke is rare nowadays in the places I travel. I regard it as a problem that has been mostly solved. Lack of power outlets, OTOH, while certainly less severe than smoke in the room, is a problem I encounter more than 50% of the time.