"Staying in a hotel with a romantic partner and/or family" is at least as primary a use case for hotels as "staying in a hotel with a platonic friend" and is still a scenario where you want a door but is NOT a scenario where "just get separate rooms" is a logical conclusion. "Get the hell out of that hotel and complain about it to everyone you know," on the other hand, is.
The much more specific way to target platonic buddies/coworkers from sharing a room would be eliminating rooms with two beds since the "couple" scenario would generally be perfectly happy with that still.
Not to mention no door doesn't bother me with another person because I can easily avoid "seeing them do their business" by being in the main room. I've never been in a hotel room where the bathroom door faces the beds. It's always in the hall just after entering the room. I'm sure there's exceptions but that's the standard setup.
It had some other interesting problems.
It could have been worse. They could have put the toilet there and you could be smelling the sewer all night...
Why don’t you just turn on the heat in the room?
I also don't mean to be snarky here, because I'm not sure how to say this in a way that can't be interpreted that way and feel like I'm just explaining being human...
The answer is really just physics. The feeling of comfort is generally about differential in temperature, not absolute. (That's also a logarithmic relationship too) So to have that nice feeling of stepping out of a hot shower then the room needs to be a decently high temperature. Mind you, you're also wet. This makes the temperature differential more influential. So two things happen when you dry off. You no longer have that water to transfer and maintain heat and you've also cooled down a bit. Now when you walk into the normal room temperature the differential isn't so bad.
If I turn the temperature up in the whole hotel room I will then have to turn it down. Now that introduced AC and we have the opposite problem... Plus both get rid of humidity.
To be snarky and try to be a bit humorous:
Haven't you ever noticed that 100F/38C is "hotter" and more uncomfortable in a humid environment than in a dry environment? Haven't you ever noticed that 15F/-10C is "colder" in a humid environment? Haven't you noticed that being in a hot tub or sauna is comfortable but if it was that temperature outside you'd be cursing the gods? Haven't you noticed that in the summer 50F/10C is cold and most people won't wear a short sleeve shirt yet if it was the winter that's a nice day to go out and wear shorts? Haven't you... lived in a body?
It's winter man, here's a trivial experiment for you:
- Heat up your house:
- Shower with door open
- Shower with door closed
- Don't heat up your house:
- Shower with door open
- Shower with door closed
Quick tip I discovered when traveling with my teenage daughter: a lot of hotel sites are now unclear on whether a booking is for a room with one or two beds. I found that listing "occupants" as 3 would usually force such sites to sort for rooms with two beds (even though there would only be two of us). Assuming there's no breakfast included, the price is usually the same for 2 or 3.
You now play games with per person occupancy fees/taxes upon arrival, instead of screening available information.
Sort of. I'll take a King by choice but if a Queen is the only option I don't really have an issue with that. And I'm not a short person.
https://www.marriott.com/loyalty/member-benefits/guarantee.m...
^ you have to have Platinum status to get the type "guaranteed"... and, even then, they might just give you $25-100 and say "sorry" (it is more of an SLA with a penalty; though, this is also true of the reservation itself... FWIW, getting a random room type is MUCH more common than getting bumped).
Too true. If you have a normal reservation (vs some kind of pre-paid room), they oversell their capacity based on a statistical model. This means if everyone with a reservation shows up, some of the last to check in won't have a room (which tends to occur during statistically unusual events like a large trade show, where every reservation is more likely to show up). The hotel will basically just say "sorry" and suggest another hotel which may have rooms. I think they try to recommend hotels that are nearby and similar but sometimes that either doesn't exist or is also sold-out.
One of the benefits of having platinum status at Marriott is they'll actually guarantee your room but platinum status isn't easy to get. I used to frequently drive into the bay area late at night to avoid traffic, arriving at the hotel at midnight or later. Being platinum at the time, I'd sometimes get a call on my mobile from the manager after 9p to find out if I was showing up for sure and I'd tell them "Yep, I'm driving now." That's how I knew they were sold out and bouncing people with reservations. They didn't want to keep holding my room if I wasn't going to show up (being platinum there was no penalty for no-showing on a reservation).
A tip: if you have a non-guaranteed reservation and you think the hotel is likely to be full but you're arriving later in the evening - call the actual hotel front desk before 5p (not the reservation center), ask to speak to the manager on duty and ask them to check you into your room over the phone. Ask for the actual room # and then have them actually print out your card key and put it in an envelope under your name at the front desk. Once your reservation has been checked in, a room assigned and a key printed, it can't be given away by the late shift.
No, although that is pretty common for business hotels in the US.
Fortunately Japanese bedding naming is quite standardized: search for twin/ツイン and you'll get rooms with two beds.
A lot of businesses ask co-workers to share a room on trips. Business travel is a large share of reservations.
So they want to save a few bucks for which I am expected to trade not just my privacy but also my good night rest (who knows if one of us snores) against a few dollars of profit margin for my employer?
If they cannot afford sending me on a business trip they probably shouldn’t do so.
What kind of company are doing so?
I think part of it is the idea that getting to travel for work (site visit, conference, convention, etc) is a perk. It’s madness.
Marriot,Hilton,IGT,Hyatt own almost all hotels in any area you want to go to.
Enshittification is not just for apps anymore.
Regulation is a form of collective action.
The hospitality industry has self-imposed standards as to what kind of amenities a facility should have in order to rate as a two-star hotel, three-star hotel, etc. Things like TV, shampoo, and hair dryer are on that list. If customers make enough noise about bathroom doors, the rating organizations might actually add that as a requirement.
That doesn't make it "not collective action", just collective action through an intermediary. Sometimes that's very clearly willed by people, sometimes (often) not. Doesn't mean we should throw out the baby with the bathwater though.
You might be very comfortable sharing the story about the situation, but I hope you can appreciate that not everyone else would be.
Best Western, Choice, Wyndham, IHG (typo?), Accor, Blackstone (Motel6), Radisson, Red Lion, Red Roof. Etc. There's lots of choices.
Many (most?) hotels are franchises and the name on the hotel can change. I haven't run into a hotel with no bathroom door yet, but I only have 2-3 stays a year and one is usually in the same hotel every year. I have noticed housekeeping creeping back up to mostly every day though.
You have to request it special and some properties still won’t make the bed daily even with a request. They’ll just bring extra towels.
I personally prefer on-demand.
These days, some people see scaled-back housekeeping as sort of a ripoff while others of us are fine without the sometimes interruptions.
The "do not disturb" card is always there. You can always decline housekeeping, but it's nice to have it available (and it's not like prices went lower to compensate for the lack of it anyway).
Technically, they own almost none of the hotels. The hotel owners buy the franchises, and hence follow the brand standards.
In what way would it discourage you and your friend(s) from booking a standard twin room, if they don't tell you there's no bathroom door?
Dr. Strangelove: Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you *keep* it a *secret*! Why didn't you tell the world, eh?
1. You offer double, twin and single rooms. Friends book twin rooms.
2. You offer only double and single rooms, in the hope that non-romantically engaged pairs of people will book two single rooms. Friends book some other hotel's twin rooms.
3. You offer double, twin and single rooms and you tell people before booking there's no toilet door. Friends book some other hotel's twin rooms.
4. You offer double, twin and single rooms but surprise! there are no toilet doors. Friends who've booked a twin room either demand a cancellation immediately upon seeing the room, demand a room with a toilet door, or they demand you offer some kind of ersatz privacy screen, and no matter what you do they're going to rain fury on every review site they can think of, tanking your reputation.
In which of these situations does the hotel get extra money?
(They regard it as cheapskating/cheating.)
Very simple: by making it the status quo that bathroom doors aren't there they discourage you to rent a single room. So instead, you rent two single rooms with full privacy for each of you. Because a double room is only for couples, in their (I concur: twisted) world.
You mean you want to go to the competition? What if the competition does it as well? What if it is the norm?
As for your #4. People don't have time to put effort into such. Outliers do, they're the ones who make noisy drama at the reception. But they're the exception, not the rule.
In most hotel pricings I've seen, twin rooms and double rooms cost the same. In fact, in the cheaper hotels, double rooms are just twin rooms with the beds bolted together (very annoying if you're a couple seeking romance). The hotel can reconfigure the rooms to match demand, as the only difference is whether the beds are joined.
As a random example (I don't endorse it, I just picked a random London hotel) https://www.booking.com/hotel/gb/crowne-plaza-london-ealing.... has "Standard Room" (choice of twin or double bed), "Standard Twin Room", "Standard Queen Room with Bathtub" and "Standard Queen Room with Walk-In Shower" options all at exactly the same price. Each option makes abundantly clear what type of bed(s) you get, and how many people can use the room.
Hotels that want to rent rooms to couples simply remove twin rooms from the list of rooms available. Only offer the double-bed option. People looking for a twin room go to the next hotel in the list. They don't need some secret plan to disappoint twin-room guests by not having a bathroom door so their next booking is two single rooms.
You and the OP both said "single" rooms. Is this key to unlocking the mystery? In my experience, single rooms literally have one single bed. Why are multiple people hoping to stay in one? Also from what I've seen, "single" rooms are more expensive than twin/double rooms, not just because you can't share the costs but because they literally cost more, because there are so few such rooms in the hotel. The hotel couldn't accomodate people if it compelled twin room guests to get two single rooms, it'd run out of single rooms in a jiffy and be left with a lot of twin/double room capacity. Most of the rooms are double/twin.
Why would any group of people book a single room? Is there some secret trick where multiple people turn up and bring their own beds with them, only to be foiled by a missing toilet door?
To save money.
> Is there some secret trick where multiple people turn up and bring their own beds with them, only to be foiled by a missing toilet door?
Beds? Probably not. But, people (especially younger people, can sleep on the floor with climate appropriate (which, depending on the season and available heating, can be "none") coverings for warmth; I did this happily a fair amount in various groups aroun high school age, but I certainly wouldn't want to now in middle age.
If they want to save money, hostels are usually half the price of hotels. Why would they even choose a hotel in the first place?
Plus, my experience is that hotels will simply cancel your booking, or force you to upgrade, if multiple people turn up to check in for a single room. They don't need some passive-aggressive doorless bathroom, they have the right to tell you to book a 2-person room (whether twin or double bed) for 2 people.
Before: sell two business travelers one room with two separate beds and one dignified bathroom.
Now: sell two business travelers two separate rooms just so they can each use the bathroom with dignity.
Profit Now ($x2) > Profit Before ($x1)
The business travelers are looking at a website with hundreds of hotels in the city they're going to. If you don't offer a twin room option, they don't think "well shucks, let's just get two single rooms". They go to the next hotel, out of hundreds, which has a twin room option. It may cost more, but it won't cost double. They'd be complete idiots to pick two single rooms if what they wanted as a twin room.
You can't compel them to book your single rooms, and you definitely can't compel them by springing a surprise doorless bathroom on them in your twin room option after they've paid and arrived. That's when they expense a taxi to some other hotel and report their findings to their entire company, who never book from you again.
Simply offering a twin room option means you expect unrelated or distantly-related people will book it. If you don't want that, take away the twin room option. Business travellers will not share a double bed. You get all that benefit of double-profit (if for some reason the travellers are morons or they're going to bumfuck nowhere and you're the only hotel), without going to the expense of removing bathroom doors.
In your first message you wrote at #2: "[...] Friends book some other hotel's twin rooms." I wrote: what if all hotels follow this same manual? You could only end up in a hostel, or perhaps a cheap hotel.
Honestly, it doesn't bother me at all seeing my mother naked (my father is passé), or my daughter or son naked (but they're still children). It only ever did till my mid teenager years. After that, I overcame it. So while it doesn't bother me, it may bother my children, and important to note: I'll respect that. It already started with my daughter (nearly eight y.o.) when going to the swimming pool. Kind of normal. But these hotels wouldn't accommodate for that.
FWIW, just my theories. I'm not saying I know all about this market.
Then why do they even offer twin rooms?
Doorless bathrooms are not explained by saying hotels (that offer twin rooms) secretly want all twin room guests to pay double and use two single rooms. Most hotels don't even have very many single rooms!
It may be different in small places where there's only one or two hotels. But most cities have dozens to hundreds of hotels, not all owned by the same conglomerates. There is no way they'd miss out the entire twin-room market by pretending not to have them. And they certainly wouldn't take the reputational damage by pretending you'll get a normal twin room when you book, but hit you with a doorless bathroom twin room when you arrive. The booking website will have photos showing the typical room layout, in order to give prospective customers clarity about what they'd be booking, so they choose to book there.
I'm no hotel tycoon either, but the idea that it's a secret ruse to get people to pay double doesn't make any sense to me. The idea that they're blindly following some design trend, or that it lets them make the rooms physically smaller by giving the impression of a bigger room, are much more plausible ideas.
...like, the building adjacent your La Quinta is a diner, period. "La Quinta, Spanish for 'next to Denny's'"
Jabs aside, you don’t need to be rich to use a travel agent or Rick Steves guidebook instead of blindly booking hotels on Internet sites. If there’s an issue like this you’ll easily find it on review sites and most of those are searchable.
The same thing applies to other experiences like restaurants and museums. For example, it’s always smart to jump on Google/Trip Advisor reviews and type in “kids” or “stroller” into various attractions to make sure you are prepared if you’re bringing kids along.
Travel is never perfect. I’ve been in weird rooms with actual glass walls with a perfect framed view of the shitter facing the bed. I have no idea why they did this, maybe this culture values natural light in bathrooms? I witnessed it more than once so it wasn’t just one creepy place. Individual privacy especially within the same family is something of a recent and western concept from my understanding.
Either way it was hilarious and a minor inconvenience considering it was a lot minute hotel. It’s just peeing and pooping, we all do it. My traveling friend and I took turns averting our eyes. We had warm clean beds and a story to tell.
Often this does mean that the pictures are lacking.
But I absolutely check out google maps reviews, and a single review saying that the hotel did not have a proper door on the bathroom would guarantee I would not stay there.
Even traveling alone it's a clear indication they have no respect for their guests, and it's a significant hygiene issue.
I feel like if you consider lack of a door a significant hygiene issue, you probably just shouldn’t be staying in hotels. These rooms aren’t being sanitized between guests, they are pretty dirty.
There are good reasons to keep bathrooms physically separated from where you sleep and hygiene is one of them, along with not wanting the bed to be a front row seat to the sights, smells, and sounds of whatever is going on in there and not wanting an expensive hotel room I'm paying for to be like a prison cell.
How so?
> it's distinct from hygiene.
Not to mention that any bacteria thrives in more humid environments. They aren't so good at keeping moist. This is true for a lot of things, especially the smaller the thing is, including bugs. Higher humidity definitely makes good hygiene more difficult.
Why do you think bathrooms have fans? That'd be a lot of effort to deal with farts.
Nothing bad happened.
> Nothing bad happened.
> viruses & bacteria many of which are known to survive on surfaces for days
> Toilets are scientifically proven
> There is 70 plus years
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339650907_Real-time...
Doors are nice from the public health perspective in that people actually do usually close them without even being asked.
I have to admit that I'm getting very tired of the unsustainable push for endless growth driving companies everywhere to jack up prices as high as people will tolerate and then also delivering the least and worst product/service they can possibly get away with on top of it. It means that everything is getting shittier unless you're willing to spend insane amounts of money to get what used to be standard and more affordable.
It's becoming exhausting maintaining a list of businesses I no longer want to give money to and products/services I won't pay for. This is especially true as companies change names, redesign products, and buy up one another. the list just grows and grows all the time.
Not necessarily. Just like natural evolution doesn't requite its participants to understand themselves, neither does the market require anyone at a business to understand why they are successful.
This is closely related to a phenomenon I don't understand.
Pretty much every proposed regulatory change (for example: letting drivers pump their own gas at gas stations) meets a fierce counterargument that says "currently, no one considers this situation at all because only one state of affairs is legal. If that thoughtlessness continues after we legalize other possibilities, TERRIBLE THINGS COULD HAPPEN!".
But obviously this protasis† can never occur and so it doesn't matter what's in the apodosis.
And likewise I absolutely return to a hotel where the bathroom was good when going back to a city.
I'm mostly talking about the water pressure for the shower here, but you get the idea.
But if i got burned once or twice by a room without a bathroom door, i'd start checking that too and avoiding places that don't have them.
For a city trip I basically accept anything with a bed and running water.
There is a website dedicated to it. It would take someone posting that to a few social media accounts and for hotel search sites to put "has an almost see through glass bathroom door" result category, and I think it could turn from a sneaky money maker into a reason people avoid the place.
If they're cheaping out on the shower then I'm not going to trust the mattress is clean or the linens are soft.
Aside from rinsing off after a pool or ocean swim, or when she is actually dirty (e.g., after yard work), I think I have known her to voluntarily take three or four showers in 25 years together.
With those two you're also playing the lottery but there is no baseline.
With a hotel, you're also generally paying when you check-in and can thus refuse a subpar room and argue with a real, mostly-reasonable person.
With those two, you get charged before you even enter the place and any arguments will be with a bot or a call center drone in a third-world country pretending to be one.
Not having a bathroom with a door is an incredibly low baseline. I can only think of a single Airbnb that I’ve stayed in that’s been worse than that
(The key to the Airbnb was missing and the host was inaccessible)
More like "I dare you, regulation will only further increase our moat"
And almost any regulation gives a (relative) advantage to the people who can afford the lawyers and bureaucrats to furnish the documentation to show that they are in compliance.
Going from no regulation to one does carry some of what you suggest, but there are already regulations about tons of things here (fire alarms, exits, building codes, etc) adding one more does not increase the need for lawyers and documentation.
Which, as I think you're hinting, is largely distinct from anybody's actual health
I'm all in favour of opaque bathroom doors (and none of these stupid vertical slits American have between their public bathroom doors and the walls). But I wouldn't want to pretend it's about hygiene or health.
This makes much more sense.
Most people would assume bathrooms have doors. It is just exhausting to have to check for every small, commonsensical, super basic detail
I just want to give businesses my money in exchange for goods and services. Is that asking too much?
Imagine some future hotel service trend where, right after the customer checks in, the checkin agent punches the customer in the face, by policy. I shouldn't have to check beforehand whether this is a "face punch" hotel or a "non face punch" hotel.
We shouldn't all have to live our lives with Caveat Emptor as some sort of horrible default societal moral framework.
Reminds me of that Burkiss Way sketch where somebody wants to book tickets to a West End show, but they all involve the spectators being poked in the eye with a pencil:
https://www.buttercookie.de/The%20Burkiss%20Way/Transcripts/...
But I don’t think this makes much sense anyways. The hotel industry is not one that thrives from repeat patronage, and “the bathroom has no doors” features rarely in marketing.
Not sure how common sharing a room with a work colleague--especially of the opposite sex--or a family member who is a teen is. But traveling with friends, activity partners (hiking, etc.), so much of what's being discussed on this thread just isn't a real issue in my experience at least in most Western culture.
With the rise in AIRBNB and other similar competing services I expected hotels to compete back by lowering costs and improving conditions. Was I wrong, oh boy..