OK, so I've been on the road for almost three weeks straight now, staying at my usual collection of luxury hotels around the world. On this trip, most of those have been in Asia, but I would think I've had a fair sampling of luxury hotel rooms in all continents.

Since I need to get actual work done in between meetings, and this work involves my laptop, I spend a lot of time at the desks in hotel rooms typing and mousing away. Broadband is a godsend, but the desks are terrible.

In even spanking new hotels, like the FS HK where I am writing this from, the desks are made for writing (you may recall quaint antiquities like pens and paper that once upon a time seemed to be popular) rather than for computer work. As a consequence, they're too high, the chairs are not adjustable, the surfaces can be awkward and materials unpleasant to the touch. Case in point here at the FS HK: the table is oval and has an ice-cold sheet of glass covering the wood. (I know, it only feels ice-cold, but the point remains...)

In short, extended typing and mousing are a painful activity in luxury hotels, even the ones catering to business types like me.

Why haven't luxury hotels figured this out yet? I want a functional desk in my hotel room, not a decorative one.

(OK, rant over... time to sample HK at night )