One thing I noticed when staying in some cheap hotels in Italy was that they had non-carpeted floors. Although less "luxurious" (though one was fairly new with nice hardwood floors), the lack of carpet meant that a previous occupant who smoked in the room did not leave the smoke smell there for subsequent non-smokers to be annoyed with. On the other hand, smoked-in rooms with carpet always smelled like secondhand smoke.

Of course, all midrange and high end hotels that I have seen had carpet. But then you have to be very sure to get a never-smoked-in room if you prefer not to smell the smoke.

As a guest, would you prefer carpeted floors, but dealing with smoking versus non-smoking rooms (which means that both smokers and non-smokers might not get the preferred type of room in a full hotel), or non-carpeted floors where it matters less whether someone smokes in the room?

Most (if not all) of the beach hotels in Cancun have tile floors (due to the sand and water that inevitably gets tracked in). I like it.

The club level at the Buenos Aires InterContinental have hardwood floors. I really liked them -- found it a rather classy touch!

I don't mind the smoke. I mind yucky carpets much more. I'd prefer a beautiful wood floor or nice tile or stone floor to a carpet. Much more hygienic in my opinion.

The problem is that it can indeed be not so cozy and that it is louder because the foot steps will be louder both in initial attack and in the sound transmitted through the floor and ceiling to the other rooms. Also the sounds made in the rooms will be louder. So if your neighbor has the TV on it will resonate much more in a room with a hard floor, all other things equal.

Till

Stayed at a decent 3.5-4* hotel in Luzern, CH that didn't have carpet. I agree re:wood...

Noncarpeted floors. Hate hearing that crunch sound when you step on dirty unclean sticky carpets.

No carpet definitely feels cleaner. I suspect it probably makes anti-bedbug treatment easier too, which should be a major concern for hotels nowadays.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.1; U; en-us) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413 es61i)

Ideally without, but it should be well dampened and insulated.



The number of times I've been woken up in a wood/tile floored hotel that appears to unleash a herd of elephants above my room early in the morning...

I prefer carpetless if the sound insulation is good. Carpet can hide so much dirt and other icky things.