The wisdom of never leaving your hotel room

When I'm rich enough to afford it, I want to live in a hotel. A beautiful, luxurious hotel, where I don't have to worry about interior decorating - other than switching out the bland art for more tasteful pieces. Or cleaning. Or, keeping the fridge stocked. Or scrounging up healthy food in the morning. Or getting a good meal at any hour. Or paying the utility bills. Or worrying about the electrical wiring of my house. Or dealing with water storage in a drought. Or dealing with water at all. Or dealing with the home owner's association. Or thinking about home security. Or procuring the subtle furnishings that make a home a home. Or dealing with hiring the occasional cleaning lady or service. Or doing home repairs etc etc.

No, I want to outsource all of that.

I want to be able to wake up. Get to work on a dedicated high-speed internet connection. Yawn a bit. Go down to the lobby in my pajamas. Grab a good healthy breakfast buffet. Sit down next to the pool. Pull out my Kindle or iPad, read a textbook or Iain M Banks. Get a work out in by swimming around after I'm bored. Go back to my workstation in my suite. Do a few emails. Shower in the gorgeous bathroom. Dress in something comfy. Sit down, get some serious hours in. Have a keto snack or two brought to me for when I'm peckish. Go down for dinner. Enjoy the hub hub of people. Go behind the bar (something no one else can do). Pour myself a small drink. Talk to the chef about what he's into that night. Have a tiny portion of that for dinner. Go to swim in the pool again. Go back up, read a book, and then fall asleep.

It's a seamless frictionless lifestyle. And when I have enough money that I don't have to worry about money. That's what I want. I don't want fancy cars or planes and stuff — just a life where I can think about the better things in life.

Having your own house is overrated. I would settle for a good suite at the Ritz.

Some people are saying that this sounds like a parody. It's not. I totally understand where the author is coming from. Also, bear in mind that he is a writer, and writers need very specific things to function. Many writers do great work in hotel rooms. JK Rowling famously checked into a hotel room to finish Harry Potter. Maya Angelou used to check into hotel rooms for weeks at a time to finish her books. There is something very helpful about removing all of the known objects of your life, each with its own history in your brain, and replacing the functions (bed, desk, bathroom) while clearing out the connotations. Now you can focus on your interior story without having it compete with the running to-do list that, say, seeing your drippy faucet might spark.

I actually do this once a years. Inspired by John Carmack. I leave my kids and wife at home—or wherever they want to spend that particular weekend—and lock myself into a hotel room. I bring food, my own coffee grinder and a laptop and just spend the whole weekend programming, playing chess, read or write.

It’s the best weekend of the year and I spend the rest of the year looking forward to it.

It seems to me that the person who wrote this article might be too much tired and not in a good healthy environment in their everyday life: that would explain why they enjoy the calm and order of an hotel room, they don't have "free" space in their mind to discover new stuff, they just need to rest and quietness... This is a bit sad.

On the opposite side, I wish there was an efficient hotel market for people like me who don't care at all about the aesthetics or size of the hotel room, room service or amenities but do care about having a single room, pitch black and silent during the day, and with a comfortable bed.

I guess the author and I are polar opposites. I detest light drenched streets and much prefer controlled spats of nature that you see in cities.

I also prefer things being dimly lit, with many low luminance lights scattered around.

However I do prefer sticking around my hotel room rather than spending a lot of energy being in public. Navigating crowds drains me emotionally and I usually need time to recover from a vacation.

Conversely I don’t like being the “lazy” type of tourist that just stays on the beach and eats. But that’s my personal prejudice. :/

„I find this city too full of nature and open spaces“

I feel kinda sad for the author. How can one come up with a concept line that?

I enjoyed this! It's the first time I recall reading an article about travel that obsessed over the local neighborhood of the hotel (including the hotel itself) rather than jetting here and there across the wider city.

I find so many delights in becoming familiar with a single building and its surrounding mere few blocks, with their quirks, people, shops, and eateries, than to hop around all of the busy "top" attractions. This has huge benefits if you tend to visit smaller cities too, as you are less likely to get bored if you engage in tourism "in the small" and don't need or want large attractions or spectaculars to satisfy you.

Being autistic and generally obsessed about the details of things rather than the big picture may have a huge role in my thinking, though. Clearly the majority do want to hit all of the attractions, and that's okay! :-)

Only vaguely related, John Carmack also seemed to make a habit of going on work-trips to hotels. You can read about it in his famous .plan files. He would drag a workstation to a hotel a reasonable distance from home and work for a weekend or an entire week without distraction.

It is a bit extreme but it is a valid counterpoint to vacations where people plan to visit 65535 places per day

It's always interesting how people differ.

I pretty much have this experience. I mean, I don't indulge in most of the luxuries, I usually go for lower end places like Airbnb, but I don't really have to, at least not in the medium term, it's just a personal preference because I don't like having servants.

I've discovered, over the last few years, that I need some sort of struggle to get out of bed in the morning. Yeah, there are programming projects, I can learn a new (spoken) language, etc, but ultimately, because it's kind of 'unforced', it doesn't give me the same level of drive.

What I actually want, and am working towards, is a stable home, on a bit of land that's mine, that I have dominion over. Gardening, building small structures, working on the house, learning how to provide shelter for myself basically.

I actively don't want everything to be done for me. I think the ultimate limiting case of that is basically to be wired in to an IV drip, with a VR headset or something, and just wither away into nothing.

In the grand scheme of things it's no more or less pointless than anything we do, but it doesn't sit right with me.

>Like any great invention, I stumbled upon the idea of the hotel-room vacation by accident, nine years ago, after Toony and I arrived in Chania, Crete, for our honeymoon. The “magical Venetian town” I’d read of in a British travel magazine turned out to be a maze of souvenir shops, Irish pubs, and “authentic” Greek tavernas, so described on the doors and menus. Our hotel room, though, was amazing.

Souvenir shops and Irish pubs aside, Chania is indeed a "magical Venetian town", that can enchant even Greeks (who're used to all the tourist hoopla). There are also plenty of really authentic Greek tavernas if one looks beyond the tourist strip. And there's a whole island, of great beauty, and tons of places untouched by tourism all around.

The rest of the article (which has its merits) aside, that the author preferred their hotel room tells us more about them, than about the place...

Some people can find authentic places even in Las Vegas or Times square, and some people wouldn't know authentic if they were hit on the head with it...

This reminds an article I read years ago about airport blues, explaining that you are baby-sat the minute you step in the airport (more so back then when you had to to talk to humans to check in), guide to your gate, have restaurants and shops right there, welcomed on the plane, served food, told where you are and when you'll arrive regularly, etc... But the minute you land, they want you out of the plane and there's nobody anywhere to even answer basic questions, your all alone and better hope there are signs to the luggage carousel.

The little charms of everyday life are what I find most interesting about staying in a different country. I would find a hotel room too anonymous though, too stifling. I'd recommend Airbnb instead, which forces one to participate in the local neighborhood a bit more. This past summer I spent a couple weeks working out of an Airbnb in Paris. The room had a modest collection of art selected by the local owners, and I quickly acquainted myself with a local patisserie for a daily almond croissant and cappuccino.

My partner and I have went on several trips where we spent a good chunk of time in the hotel room. For those skeptical, I recommend trying it before knocking it too hard.

We decided to try it when we realized that whenever we traveled, we’d sometimes stay in a hotel that offered so much but we’d completely ignore all of that in order to be outside in the city. We thought it would be interesting to take a trip where we planned nothing and didn’t even particularly care about the destination except the hotel. It turned out to be incredibly relaxing. It’s not really a replacement for a normal trip, but a new variation that I totally recommend on occasion.

It’s actually great for working some too, which obviously goes against the norm for vacations.

Cgp grey does this, he talks about it occasionally on the Cortex podcast.

I've frequently done a version of travel working. I find it best for writing, though it could serve to work on a single project as well.

I usually choose an airbnb though, and while I do get outside a lot, it's often more the neighbourhood trips the author mentions. I find it deeply satisfying to get a brief glimpse of daily life in a foreign country that way.

My most productive times have been in cuba, where their local airbnb equivalent ("casas particulares") includes the option to buy breakfast and dinner. So you effectively have zero daily chores or maintenance or commute and effective have 2-3 hours freed up in a day.

I'm a full-time freelancer and I travel for about 8 months every year. I can relate to the mindset of the author.

As much as we like to _think_ of working at a beach or next to a waterfall, it's not really that practical. Sometimes the wifi doesn't work in the coffee shop, the coffeeshop is busy and loud, or you don't have a power supply to work more than a couple hours.

For me, the sweet spot is staying longer in every place I go. I sometimes take multi-day hikes and forget about my work. I come back, order food delivered, and get my work done at the comfort of a hotel room with good chairs and tables. I can focus more, I am more productive, and it feels better knowing that your next adventure is just a few days away.

"Never" leaving the hotel room is a strong word, and I think everyone doing it should take some time to hit a nearby local restaurant, a pub, or take a walk at the beach for some fresh air.

https://popula.com/2018/08/08/honestly-yonatan-raz-portugali... looking through previous posts by the same author

Sounds delightful. After years of staying in Marriott chains for work trips, I wasn't even aware hotels lkke these existed.

Anyone have suggestions for locating hotels like the ones in the article? I'm not even sure how I would find one out of the hundreds that'd show up on any city hotel search query.

> Each comment costs a little ETH cryptocurrency to post

First time I’ve seen something like this. I wonder if it drastically cuts down on comments made, which could be a good thing.

"The places I find ideal to encamp at are the luxury hotels of yesteryear, built around the end of the 19th century for train travelers, shabby and dated, thinly staffed and clinging on mainly through inertia. They are easy to find, just search TripAdvisor reviews with the words “needs urgent renovation!” Another sure sign of a Once-Grand Old Hotel is that the bathroom is larger than the main room. This architectural choice encourages repeated baths, which also help in the battle to stay awake."

Exactly my "strategy"! They usually also have nice underrated views from their balconies.

Im sitting here in a hotel room in Leipzig for the past week and can totally relate.

Berlin is really spread out. I agree on that part. It's like a complex of cities rather than a city.

I can see the virtue of that as a resident but as a visitor/sightseer it's annoying.

Staying in a hotel room and not going outside... But also telling other people that you are someone else, as he mentions doing. I can understand the phase, a kind of complete isolation. Not sure it should be instead, rather that in addition to, other kinds of activities.

I can relate to room service being annoying. Though leaving "do not disturb" on the door usually works, even for 5-6 days in a row. They do not knock when they see that. Just pester you at the corridors if you pass by.

Constant snacking is also my solution to not fall asleep while driving long distances.

This article is the weirdest shit I ever read. I would rather jump off a cliff than do what’s described there- not an exaggeration. Dude!

I recommend Chelsea Hotel (nyc) for a pretty vacant vacation. It's not exactly Hotel California -- some manage to leave -- but it is pretty close.

This site reliably crashes my iOS browser. Anyone else?

> My confinement caused me to enjoy Berlin for the first time: not going out into it, I couldn’t be disappointed, frustrated or cheated. From the hotel room, the city seemed so full of potential for adventure. Through the window, everything looked so interesting!

Full of potential for adventures you'll never have. What good is potential if you never act on it? Just stay at home and replace your real window with a TV screen.

I'm clearly not the right audience for this—but I don't get it.

Sounds dreadful. I don't think I've ever heard someone complain about green spaces in a city before:

"I find this city too full of nature and open spaces, too vast for a long city walk, and way too dark at night"

I would not like to meet this person.

I believe one big benefit of the hotel is the lack of items in the room compared to the average house. I keep a room in my house completely empty (save some yoga matts and fitness balls) and it does wonders for stress relief.

I'll be downvoted for this, but this is so astoundingly tonedeaf and entitled I have trouble finding words. Fly around the world to lounge in a room all day. In a world of climate crises, most of which arise from overconsumption and CO2 emissions at all time highs, we need fewer people doing this. Please, just stay home. Or at the very least, find a hotel in your area and pretend.