Over the course of our 7 year, 50 state road trip (and a total of six months either side of that), Shae and I lived in hotels and Airbnbs. Considering this amounted to hundreds of different accommodations, we were fortunate that we had very few notable issues with the places where we stayed.
That’s not to say there weren’t frustrations along the way. When you do anything consistently for that many years, there’ll be things that happen again and again that end up irrationally annoying you that you probably wouldn’t even notice if they were a one-off.
I therefore thought it’d be fun to have a little whine in this post by sharing what my biggest pet peeves were that arose while living in hotels. Do you have any of your own? Let us know in the comments below.
In no particular order, here are my 20 biggest hotel pet peeves.
1) People who leave empty luggage carts in hallways
OK, so this is definitely one of my biggest pet peeves – if not the biggest. There were many, many hotel stays where we’d see empty luggage carts left in hallways outside people’s rooms after they’d unloaded their suitcases, because they were too lazy to take them back down to the lobby.
A significant part of the reason why I found this annoying is because we always needed one – if not two – carts because we were traveling with pretty much everything we owned. It was extremely frustrating to arrive at a hotel after a long drive, then have to go exploring each level of a hotel hoping to find a luggage cart because other guests couldn’t be bothered to return them.
2) Having to log on to the internet every 24 hours (or more frequently)
This was another big source of frustration for me throughout the road trip, especially as someone who was working online each day. When logging on to the internet at many hotels, you remain connected throughout your stay. However, there was a significant number of hotels where this wasn’t the case.
Instead, it would log you out after 24 hours automatically. This would often happen at the most inopportune times (e.g. in the middle of a Zoom call, just before hitting publish on a blog post, etc.) and it never made any sense. I could understand it a little more if a hotel had a different password to connect to the internet each day, but that wasn’t the case. I’ve therefore never understood why they can’t just allow you to remain connected until you check out.
There were some hotels with additional frustrations. For example, there were probably half a dozen different hotels where we had to manually reconnect whenever we left the vicinity of the hotel building. That was the case if we’d gone out for the day and returned that evening, but it also sometimes happened when we took our dog Truffles out to go to the bathroom right outside the hotel. That meant we’d have to reconnect our phones many times a day which got tedious.
3) Truck drivers who park like jerks
I lost count of the number of times there were guests who backed in their precious trucks at the front of a hotel, reversing so far back that their trailer hitch didn’t leave enough space to get past it. This is irritating enough for me as an able-bodied person, but it’s a particular jerk move for those with mobility issues who can’t get past or around it.
4) Housekeeping not leaving a trash can liner
Shae and I tend to decline housekeeping as we don’t need someone coming in each day to make the bed, replace towels, etc., so we usually hang the Do Not Disturb sign on our door.
Seeing as we’d often stay places for 5-10 days, we did however often need our trash emptied several times during a stay. We’d leave our trash cans outside our door to be emptied, then bring them back in once that had been done. What was frequently a little annoying is that while the trash cans had liners in them when we checked in, when our trash was emptied they never put a new one in. We didn’t want to be jerks, so it meant we always had to be extra careful with uneaten food, teabags, etc., that would cause a mess inside the trash can, using grocery bags instead if we had them. Seeing as housekeeping staff would’ve had liners to put in trash cans when actually cleaning rooms, it was a shame that all too frequently they never left them for us when emptying our trash.
5) Teenie-tiny trash cans
Speaking of trash cans, the size of some of them was ludicrous. We had a few stays where we could barely fit a chip packet inside before it was full! For example, the already small trash can below was a trash/recycling combo which reduced even further the amount of stuff you could fit in there.
6) Slow Elevators
I can be an impatient person (I can already imagine Shae nodding her head as she reads this 😉 ), so it would sometimes bother me more than it should when there were slow elevators. I’m not referring to having to wait a long time for an elevator per se, although that’s not ideal either. It’s more when the elevators are simply physically slow all round.
For example, you’d be waiting for an elevator and you hear it reach your floor, but it takes 5-10 seconds for the door to open, then the doors open extremely slowly. You get inside and press the button for the floor you need and nothing. The doors eventually close, but do so very slowly. There’s another wait of a few seconds before the elevator actually starts moving, then it starts ascending or descending at a glacial pace. Someone needs to get on or off, so on their floor it comes to a slow stop, before slowly opening its doors, then slowly closing them, then slowly getting moving again as it slowly makes its way once again towards the floor you need. I’m sure you get the idea!
This isn’t a big issue if you’re only staying a night or two, but if you’re staying 5-10 nights at a time and frequently coming and going (such as to take your dog out to the bathroom), it gets old very quickly!
7) Mediocre mini fridges
When possible, we booked extended stay hotel brands as those have kitchens in your room with, among other appliances, a full-sized fridge-freezer. That wasn’t always possible though, so in regular hotel rooms we had to rely on mini fridges to keep perishable items cold.
I am grateful that in the US having a mini fridge in your hotel room is at least the norm, as that’s not always the case elsewhere in the world (I’m looking at you UK!). However, there were all too many mini fridges we had that were mediocre for one reason or another. Sometimes they were minier-than-mini fridges which meant there was very little space inside them for anything other than a couple of cans of soda.
The biggest problem of all is that many mini fridges didn’t offer a temperature control, so we couldn’t adjust how cool they stayed. That was problematic because at one extreme it led many salad bags to get completely frozen, while at the other extreme we had to throw away milk bottles I used for my cups of tea as it wasn’t keeping the milk cold enough.
8) Luggage carts with broken wheels
As you saw earlier, we’d often check in with quite a lot of stuff. While we appreciated having large luggage carts to help transport our stuff to the room, sometimes it was far more arduous than it needed to be.
That’s because a surprising number of hotels had luggage carts where the tires were flat. Trying to push a loaded down cart with one or more wheels that didn’t really move on carpet took a lot more effort as a result. What unfortunately seemed to happen is that the hotels that had carts with broken wheels inevitably put us at the far end of the hallway, meaning we had to push it all even farther.
9) Airport-style luggage carts
OK, this is the last luggage cart-themed rant, I promise! An increasing number of hotels are doing away with the traditional luggage carts that are tall and can hold many suitcases, in favor of airport-style luggage carts that hold far fewer suitcases.
On the one hand I can understand why they’ve gone this route as they’re probably cheaper, last longer, take up less space, and most people can make do with their limited carrying capacity. For those who travel with a lot more than just a couple of suitcases though, it would be helpful to at least have a mix of both traditional and airport-style luggage carts.
10) Breakfast cleared away early
I’m a night owl, so I like to get up as late as possible in the morning. When living in hotels, my wake up time would often be dictated by what time breakfast would finish in the morning.
That meant we’d usually head down for breakfast about 10-15 minutes before it was scheduled to end. That way we’d have plenty of time to grab anything we wanted before it started getting cleared away.
Well, that was the plan anyway. At some hotels that wasn’t always possible because the staff in charge of breakfast would start clearing everything away much earlier than the scheduled end of breakfast time. Sometimes that would just be a couple of minutes early, but one time they’d emptied everything out 15 minutes before breakfast was meant to end.
While I wouldn’t go into a restaurant 15 minutes before they close at night and order a freshly-made meal, that shouldn’t be a concern with a breakfast buffet at a hotel.
11) Too many lights in a room at night
This is something that tended to affect Shae a little more than me. We appreciated how most hotels had decent blackout curtains, but sometimes that was undone by the sheer number of other lights that were shining within the room at night.
TVs. Microwaves. Smoke detectors. Alarm clocks. Landline phones. Modems. Thermostats. We’d often have some – or all – of these things lighting up the room at night. It was sometimes possible to mitigate some of the lights (washcloth over the microwave light, turning the alarm clock over, putting something in front of the TV light, etc.), but not always. That wasn’t all though, as there were other particularly egregious offenders.
One of those was bathroom nightlights. Some hotels have a (somewhat) dim nightlight that automatically turns on in the bathroom when it’s dark. On the one hand that can be useful if you need to go to the bathroom at night and don’t want to have to turn on the main light. It’s also not an issue if you can close the bathroom door and have that block the light at night. However, all too many bathroom doors have either clear or opaque glass, resulting in the light still shining into the bedroom area.
Even worse were floor lights triggered by motion sensors in the bedroom. The first time I encountered this I was impressed, but that quickly turned to frustration. I’m always up later than Shae at night, so if I ever moved in the general vicinity of the bed after she was asleep, the motion sensors would turn the lights on which would often be surprisingly bright at night, thereby waking her up.
12) Weird room layouts
This was only an occasional problem, but there have been times where we’ve checked into a hotel and scratched our head once we entered the room as it’s seemed like whoever designed the room layout had never stayed in a hotel before.
I’ve forgotten all the weird layouts, but for example – we’ve stayed at a few hotels where the room’s sofa was either right beneath the TV or alongside it, meaning it wasn’t possible to sit on the couch and watch TV. The photo below shows one such instance at the Hampton Inn Norfolk Chesapeake in Virginia (please excuse the stuff piled on top of the table in the photo). Such a weird layout as the couch in the photo below simply faced the opposite wall.
13) Loud housekeeping
Something else that occasionally annoyed me was when housekeeping were excessively noisy, especially in two key ways.
One is when they’d have music blaring from their phones or a speaker while cleaning rooms. I certainly don’t begrudge housekeeping staff listening to music while working, but some staff members would have music properly blaring out like they were at a party, rather than working at their job where guests might be trying to rest, work, etc.
Something that was even more irritating at times was housekeeping letting doors slam as they’d go in and out of a room. They’d leave the latch turned so that the door wouldn’t fully close and come in and out repeatedly, letting doors slam incredibly hard and loudly. I forget which hotel it was we stayed at where this was particularly bad, but those doors were so heavy and closed so fast and hard that when housekeeping did that, it shook our room each time.
14) Large toiletry bottles not being refilled
This isn’t a gripe about hotels using large refillable bottles for toiletries in the bathroom. In fact, I’m glad they do that as it helps prevent a lot of plastic waste versus the traditional small toiletry bottles.
However, if you’re going to not offer those small bottles, you need to make sure the large bottles are being refilled. We had at least a dozen stays where the shampoo and/or body wash bottle was empty when we arrived, suggesting housekeeping hadn’t refilled them in some time.
15) Dishwashers with no spray arm on the top rack
I guess my complaint here is more with the manufacturers of some dishwashers, although I’ll still blame hotel owners/chains seeing as they’re the ones picking the dishwashers.
We were fortunate enough to spend a fair bit of our road trip in extended stay hotels that had a kitchen in each room. That was awesome, especially because they always provided dishwashers so we didn’t have to wash dishes by hand.
What I didn’t like was the not-insignificant number of these hotels where the dishwasher only had a spray arm (i.e. the spinny thing that water comes out of) at the bottom, but not one on the top rack too. That meant that if we had things like pots and pans on the bottom rack, nothing on the top rack got cleaned as the cookware blocked the water spray.
Sure, we could wash those larger items by hand, but that’s not necessary if the dishwasher has a spray arm on the top rack. Candlewood Suites (one of IHG’s brands) was particularly bad for providing dishwashers with only the bottom spray arm. I know, first world problems and all that.
16) One bedroom suites with uneven heating/cooling
Other times, we were fortunate to stay in one bedroom suites where there was a separate bedroom and living room. This was fantastic for me and Shae as I was always up much later than her working at night, so I could have the light on in the living room without worrying about it keeping her awake while she was trying to sleep.
What didn’t always work out ideally was the temperature. Some hotels only had air conditioning vents in the bedroom which generally isn’t an issue during the day when the bedroom door is open. However, at nighttime it meant that the living room where I was working would get excessively warm, while the bedroom would be cold.
17) Air conditioning right next to desk or couch
Sometimes we had the opposite problem where the air conditioning worked too well. Some properties we stayed at had the air conditioning unit located right next to the work desk or couch, with it getting excessively cold when sitting there. That meant either turning into an icicle, or turning the air conditioning off while working or watching TV and getting too warm instead.
18) Not enough towel racks/hooks or none at all
Here’s another one to add to the list of “Had this hotel room designer never stayed in a hotel room before?” examples. It wasn’t a frequent issue, but it happened enough times to be noticeable where the bathroom in our hotel room didn’t have any kind of towel hooks or racks, or only had one solitary hook.
19) No microwaves at Hyatt Places
Hyatt Place was – far and away – the hotel brand we stayed at most frequently on our 7 year road trip, spending a total of 250 nights at that brand (the next closest brands – Hyatt House and Residence Inn – were 166 and 165 nights respectively).
We loved Hyatt Places for their often cheap pricing when redeeming points, comfortable beds, solid construction (meaning we didn’t hear people on the floor above us), spacious rooms that are more like junior suites, consistent experience, decent enough breakfast, and usually excellent and friendly service.
I do have one complaint about Hyatt Place hotels though. They don’t provide microwaves in rooms. Somewhat similar brands like Holiday Inn Express, Hampton Inn, Fairfield Inn, etc., pretty much all provide both a mini fridge and microwave, but Hyatt Places only have a mini fridge.
They do have a microwave available in the breakfast area but that’s inconvenient, especially when there’s more than one person needing to use it at a time. I know we’re outliers in that we spent so many nights in Hyatt Places and so this was more noticeable for us, but if other hotel brands can provide a microwave in every room, Hyatt Place is surely capable of doing that too.
20) Hangers with tiny hooks or none at all
Living in hotels meant that we usually did our laundry using a hotel’s guest laundry facilities rather than going out to a laundromat. This was something we tracked on our hotel spreadsheet, so we knew if our upcoming hotel(s) had laundry facilities or not.
We didn’t tend to use a tumble dryer for items like t-shirts, pants, sweatshirts, etc. to help ensure they didn’t shrink, didn’t fade, etc. That meant we’d hang them up to dry in our room, but that would sometimes be problematic.
Depending on how many items we were washing, hanging them all in the closet wasn’t an option as they wouldn’t have dried properly. That meant needing to hang some items elsewhere in our room, but that was sometimes made tricky because the hangers either had tiny hooks that wouldn’t stay on anywhere else, or they were hangers where the hook was attached to the railing and so couldn’t be hung anywhere else. I get that hotels do this because they don’t want guests stealing their hangers, but that didn’t make it any less irritating when we wanted to hang things elsewhere and couldn’t.
Question
I’ve had a long moan about things that annoyed me during all our hotel stays, but how about you? Do you have any hotel pet peeves? Please feel free to share them in the comments below.
You’ve got some good ones for sure. But here’s another. We don’t usually stay in hotels as high end as yours, so maybe this is a “cheap motel complaint.” But almost always, if we’re staying in a normal room, there’s only one desk chair and one lounge chair. Since we often get take out (due to traveling with dogs and pet-unfriendly policies at many restaurants), there’s no easy (or neat) way for 2 of us to eat our dinner comfortably since we can’t both sit at the desk. Since many/most travellers in these places have parties of at least 2, I just don’t get why the rooms don’t have 2 chairs suitable for eating.
Oh, we’ve had numerous hotels where we’ve encountered that too – I’d forgotten about that. Shae is happy enough to eat in the bed, but I avoid that unless I’m kneeling down by the side of the bed because I know I’ll make a mess otherwise! I therefore normally sit at the desk or whatever lone seating option there is.
It’s particularly frustrating when the room is plenty big enough for some kind of couch of another armchair and they just leave it as a blank wall instead.