Why can't hotels make showers easier?
wsj.com
wsj.com
Accessibility: a hobbed shower - the small ridge, step, plinth, etc., around the edge of the shower base, that keeps water in the shower - is quite simply a huge dealbreaker for guests with mobility issues. Tripping over a toe-height ledge and trying to regain your balance on wet tiles is dangerous. Most accessibility-friendly non-hob solutions are going to let water out of the shower and onto the rest of the bathroom floor somehow, which pushes you towards a single joined floor for the whole bathroom to avoid water damage.
Cleaning: Complicated surfaces, little pokey panels, extra seals, moving parts. All of it means cleaning takes longer (cleaning is by far the main cost for a given booking), and it also means cleaning is done less thoroughly (leading to poor reviews on cleanliness due to accumulating mould, grime, etc). Shower curtains in particular are brutal on your review score: they are hard to clean, so the cleaners don't do a great job, so they get mouldy quickly, and your guests hate this and give poor reviews for it.
Maintenance: The median guest is fine, but one in twenty guests is just a hurricane of destruction. Want a shower door? That means hinges, which will snap and drop the door when this guest slams the door open or shut. Want shower curtains? This guest will grab them like they're handles and tear down the curtain rod. They will twist off tap handles and somehow lose them, they will pull those shower mixer taps out of the wall trying to get more water pressure - just about anything you can think of, plus many things you can't. (If you don't have a "one joined floor" setup, you're relying on the shower door being closed to prevent water damage, and this guest will definitely shower with the door open.)
In the end, the main reason hotels can't make showers easier is fairly prosaic: they have to make showers robust towards all sorts of guests.
When I was building my house I very specifically did not want a door in my shower. I wanted a fixed glass wall that kind of looks like the first picture in the article.
We paid tremendous attention to make sure that the floor in the shower is sloped at a sufficient angle to provide drainage. We measured and did splash experiments to make sure that the fixed glass wall extended far enough to keep the rest of the bathroom dry.
The result is an elegant bathroom that is functional.
If someone just superficially copies the look without paying attention to the functional aspects, the result is a wet bathroom.
Cargo culting is everywhere.
The floor slopes, but sometimes we do manage to flood the bathroom because the drain gets clogged with hair fairly easily. And my oldest son always manages to get everything wet anyway.
I also can't figure out how to actually soap myself up with a bunch of water on me. Do you actually step out of the stream and leave the water running, wasting it all?
Hard to use controls probably also sold poorly and so were heavily discounted. What a deal! Again, no one would buy it for themselves.
One joined floor for the shower and rest of the bathroom is a weird non-North American thing that is absolutely wrong and I sure hope isn't catching on here.
Hah, funnily enough every time I’m in the US I reflect about what a weird design those low faux-bathtubs are. To each his own I guess
If your bidet is just a hose attached to the toilet instead of a washelet, there's something to be said for it, but I still don't enjoy the single common wet zone.
A split zone design that separates the wet zone (like the shower or the tub) from the dry zone (toilet plus sink) is nice.
It is easier to clean and doesn't get mold.
They should at least put the tiniest of ridges though if that's the goal, or a gutter if that's better.
If I had the budget, I'd install one in my home.
It would be the hotel equivalent of dog-fooding. You shouldn't be willing to sell a stay in a room that you wouldn't be willing to stay in yourself.
Dogfood your social media, the food you produce, the enterprise software you write etc.
Alas its not that easy
I live in Berlin. One of the two bathrooms in my new apartment (designed in 2016, completed in 2019) has that. It was designed for the half-door thing. I did a few experiments with it with a couple shower heads to see where the water ended up going, and decided you'd need a very large space for it to be workable without getting wet everywhere. My bathroom is only 150 cm wide, and allowing 50-60 cm for a space to walk out of the shower didn't leave enough space to keep water in the showering area. I put in a sliding glass door, and all's good.
I think the reason it works sometimes in North America is you more often have redonkulous sized bathrooms where you can have two meters of space behind your showering area.
- carpets,
- centrally controlled AC,
- checkout lines.
It baffles me how a cheap motel can get this right whereas the expensive chain hotel across the street can't.
There’s also a lot of people that set the A/C to 18 degrees and leave, which is terrible.
Edit to add: and also keeps the outlets on (charging your phone, ...) and the lights if you so desire...
AC I understand, but I would bet carpets and human service are part of the perceived added value (especially when the expensive hotel crowd would be older).
Also, most high end hotels I have been at have a key drop box at the front desk if you want to just go.
I much prefer hotels with hard surface floors for that reason.
> Also, most high end hotels I have been at have a key drop box at the front desk if you want to just go.
Interestingly, I associate the key drop box mostly with cheap hotels.
There’s a correlation between popular states and low flow regulation too.
If you are European and go on a regular trip to Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York like so very many do you will literally be in low flow states the entire time. Isn’t that something?
I have no objective data but there are lots of unintended consequences to well meaning regulation.
Lots of good examples in the Law of Unintended Concequences:
https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/2381/economics/law-of-uni...
There are a lot of hotel issues that make it difficult for customers requiring accessibility. They can be fully in compliance with the ADA and the like, and consider themselves “accessible,” but the reality is far different. Lends some credence to the question of unintended side effects because they are meeting or exceeding the law’s standard but still not serving accessibility adequately.
https://destinationsinternational.org/blog/seven-unintended-...
The problem is not new. The study of human factors is fascinating. Don Norman is something of an authority on this subject.
While the book is largely about faucets and doorhandles, it helped fuel my passion for building functional software.
Any hotel that lets me have the option of a nice comfortable bucket bath is a winner in the bathing department.
It was... not my favorite thing.
Wait, who pays for a hotel to not stay overnight? 100% of the use I make of a hotel room is for sleeping in.
I would like some privacy in the bathroom please.
It costs more, but a much better experience, and better temperature control "set and forget".
They're just downright better than anything else.
And don't forget the fixed shower heads
But here in Finland, most showers at homes and in hotels have traditionally used a Finnish brand which had a nice, simple design with two controls: one for both temperature and water volume (up and down is water volume, left and right is the temperature), and another for choosing the shower head (over the head or the hand held one), if the shower had two heads.
But apparently that is changing now as well, and even the showers from that company are becoming more complex. The biggest change is that the now the control for choosing the shower head has been combined with water volume control. Temperature has another control. Also, instead of red and blue colors, plus and minus are used as symbol. They are often not as visible as red and blue. I guess that is "innovation".
My 7 year old daughter sometimes has problems with these newer showers, as they work slightly differently depending on the model.
Sounds inferior to having two controls. IMO the best designs have them separate. If you live alone, you set the temperature once and from then on only use the volume one.
The magic that allows that is the thermostatic mixing valve (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermostatic_mixing_valve)
They don't deal well with hard water, high levels of lime in the water. Technically you're suppose to let cold water run through them after each shower to avoid it, but that means adjusting the knob every time you use it, and most of them are plastic, gripping a brass valve and that breaks the plastic over time (like 6 months to a year).
I've given up and just buy the cheapest single control fitting I can find. The ones I've installed last have lasted 5 years so far without issue. You can't beat simplicity, $500 fixture breaks within a year, a $40 one will last a lifetime.
But the one thermostatic mixing valve that has been very common in Finland (link below) works really well in my experience. I am just surprised that inferior products are becoming more common. Maybe people think that the good design is too common.
https://www.talotarvike.com/media/catalog/product/o/r/oras_1...
This guarantees you get blasted with freezing water every time, and the shower head has to be set low enough so everyone can reach it. If you’re over 178cm / 5’10 (I think, I don’t do feetses) you’ll have to bend down to wash your hair.