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Comment by citizenpaul | Hacker News Reader

How do you complain and go to another hotel if every single hotel is owned by four companies that are colluding together to do the same thing. This ignores the very obvious fact that you may not want to search for a hotel at 2AM in a strange city when you are exhausted. Keep making excuses for your masters though, this is the world you live in.

Marriot,Hilton,IGT,Hyatt own almost all hotels in any area you want to go to.

Enshittification is not just for apps anymore.

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It's hard to understand what you want here... No one is making excuses for the hotels? Literally "don't stay there, go somewhere else, and tell everyone you know" is as much power as an individual can possibly muster in this situation. Why do you think this is "making excuses for your masters"? What is your solution?

Regulation is when individual action isn’t enough.

Regulation is a form of collective action.

And it doesn't even need to be government regulation.

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.

Yep! Government regulation is basically when the industry puts their heads way too far into the sand.

Regulation isn’t a collective action, at least not in the US. People don’t regulate hotels will ballot measures so you’re left with whatever the whims are of some representative.

The American system, for better or for worse, is a representational based political system. Unfortunately that means that our political power is not direct.

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.

Turns out, society can actually do things collectively when a bunch of people work together instead of just pulling the libertarian "move your family into the woods and suffer" lever that's so popular online.

The mistake is assuming we have to act as individuals.

> don't stay there, go somewhere else, and tell everyone you know

You might be very comfortable sharing the story about the situation, but I hope you can appreciate that not everyone else would be.

> Marriot,Hilton,IGT,Hyatt own almost all hotels in any area you want to go to.

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.

I was a bit surprised that a Marriott property I was staying in in NYC a couple weeks ago actually had daily housekeeping service. I didn't really care but hadn't seen that in a while.

Very common. Every Autograph Collection, Luxury Collection, JW Marriott, Marriott, Westin, W, St Regis, Le Meridien, etc has daily housekeeping - and many of those brands / collections have turn down service too.

I'm very surprised that you find this surprising. Do you mostly stay at Airbnb? I expect this at any traditional hotel in the US.

Have you been… not traveling since COVID? Marriott and Hilton cut daily housekeeping during that period and then kept that by default at many properties (at least in the western US).

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.

Hotels (at least the major ones) will always clean your room daily if you ask them to. The "new" part is that sometimes you have to ask because some hotels (especially since COVID) have moved to a more on-demand/personalized cleaning schedule rather than cleaning everyday by default.

I personally prefer on-demand.

I have stayed in Airbnb once in my life. I find very few hotels, including the big chains--and even leaving aside serviced apartments--do daily room service these days.

What's the explanation for housekeeping? I actually prefer very little to no housekeeping, especially for short stays.

Historically housekeeping was daily and it largely went away during COVID.

These days, some people see scaled-back housekeeping as sort of a ripoff while others of us are fine without the sometimes interruptions.

> 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).

Well, since "laws" are outside the current Overton window, we could always do a hotel startup that becomes worse than the hotels we're trying to replace within ten years or so.

Next up: "Bring bathroom doors back to AirBnBs"

I've stayed at a lot of hotels. I have almost never been in one that didn't have a proper bathroom door.

> Marriot,Hilton,IGT,Hyatt own almost all hotels in any area you want to go to.

Technically, they own almost none of the hotels. The hotel owners buy the franchises, and hence follow the brand standards.

I stay at Hilton properties whenever I can and they always seem to allow filters for number of beds. Not sure about bathroom doors though.

Eh, at 2am you ask a taxi driver for a local non-chain hotel and see where the night takes you. Honestly the endless ability of people to complain about corporate control when they're unwilling to try anything potentially sketchy is annoying. Don't like staying at the four companies? Ask a local or wander into somewhere and ask the front desk. Don't blame corporations for your lack of adventurism.

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