You guys complaining about paying for internet access really need to look into a cellular broadband card. You’re money ahead after ~6 nights of paying for it in a hotel.

Another pet peeve... no handy electrical plugs! I can't tell you how many times I end up moving furniture to get access to juice.

Hotels that charge $50 pp for a breakfast buffet at the hotel. Not a special Sunday brunch with champagne, but every day!

Resort fees

Valet parking at $18.00/day, no opportunity to self-park and you will be there for two weeks

Refrigerators that don't allow you to put anything in them and if you move anything, you get charged for it

No laundry facilities for long stays

Housekeepers who turn your room into a meat locker

Showers that don't have well sealed doors and half the water ends up on the bathroom floor

Cabana chairs that cost $150.00/day

Check out time of 11am even though you didn't check in until midnight

High thresholds under the door - do they really think a bill might be 50 pgs?
Mold in the grout of the shower
Having to give my license number, car make etc

Or keep setting the temp to 62 degrees after cleaning the room; and then there's no heat to warm it back up to a normal temperature.

Poor lighting.
Internet fees.
Parking charges in non-city hotels.
Small bathrooms - not so bad if I am alone, but when with the wife, a PITA.
No safe or too small a safe.
Poor HVAC control - should have digital thermostat and a choice of fan on or auto.

I also hate not having easy access to electrical outlets. Especially in hotels with tons of business travelers, it is almost unconscionable to have only one electrical outlet (usually on the desk) reasonably available. Even after recent renovations. Who designs these rooms? Laptops, cellphones, cpap machines, etc. all need juice.

Other pet peeves:

- Non-functional, or super-slow, internet.
- When room service ignores the "do not disturb" sign.
- When you can't even find a "do not disturb" sign in the room.
- When the front desk rep says no upgrades are available because "they're sold out"...and then you find better rooms available on their booking website.
- General disregard for elite benefits.
- When the TV remote doesn't work.
- When you are surprised to learn on arrival that the hotel is undergoing major renovations.
- Safe fees.
- Nasty-tasting tap water
- When the front desk promises to fix a problem, and they don't take care of it.
- When they slip the bill under the door, and then the front desk treats you like an a-hole for requesting a paid receipt.

Big pet peeve of mine too... When my wife and I travel on business we'll each have a laptop and cell phone, plus we will bring a bunch of camera gear, and I like to keep my sony PSP charged for flights... We usually end up having to unplug most the stuff the room.

Especially at 2:00 am........

Plugs in all the wrong places and not enough of them.

Room thermostats shut off or won't go low enough to keep the room cool enough for sleep (I need that meat locker to sleep in)

The towel thing bugs me too. I hang my towels to use the next day and they still change them out.

Poor soundproofing.

Extortionate minibar prices and charges for moving fridge contents.

Internet fees aren't that bad, both because they can be avoided (you either don't use it, you travel with a mobile 3G connection or you use a nearby coffee-shop) as well as being easy to ask about (you ring the hotel and they tell you- which isn't the case with e.g. soundproofing) and factor into your decision.

I just make up a random number. Never been called on it yet, at least at Wyndham Rewards properties.

I'm probably in a minority, but I really dislike hotels that boast about their "sumptuous breakfast buffet" and don't offer a rate without breakfast. All I want in the morning is coffee and a croissant. If there's a big breakfast included in the rate and it's obligatory, I know one way or another that I'm paying for it, even if I don't take it.

Rigidly enforced check in times are a long standing problem, especially at international airport hotels where many (maybe most) of the flights arrive early in the morning. "Let's see, we've got a substantial portion of our customer base with a need for early morning check in, and our business plan for meeting this demand is take a hike, pal, that ain't our problem."

Noisy air conditioners.

Staff who respond to complaints about noisy air conditioners by looking at you as if you had two heads.

Window curtains that don't close all the way, so the room is flooded with light at dawn, and sometimes is too bright to sleep well in even at night.

Housekeeping staff who insist on cleaning your room when it's convenient for their schedule, not for yours.

And of course mini-bar prices, laundry prices, room service prices, and lack of sound proofing both for external and internal noise.

One thing I love about staying in a hotel is using my cell phone there. Ha! Ha! Ha! The days of rip-off telephone rates, carefully concealed from you until the bill comes, are gone! ^

Maybe it's a regional thing, but on a recent trip to Sao Paulo, neither hotel I went to had in-room irons or ironing board. In fact, the 4-star Mercure Grand didn't even have any at the front desk, I had to pay $45 for "rush urgent" laundering to have some clothing pressed in the morning.

They do. It's the same rate as the one with breakfast. :D
Seriously, though, there seems to be little correlation between breakfast quality/rate inclusion and room price (speaking of comparable hotels in the same city).

My pet peeve: housekeeping that doesn't dust properly (I'm allergic) and staff that don't honor do not disturb tags

This is a huge pet peeve of mine. I have taken to bring a spring-loaded clothespin and clipping the two halves of the curtains together. Overlap the two edges and then clip both together. It works!

Slamming doors is also a huge issue for me. I'm a light sleeper, slamming doors is like a gun going off to me.