Spectator by Seema Goswami: Hitting that suite spot
Most hotels go all-out with extravagant frills. But to truly shine, all they need to do is pay attention to the everyday details
I write this column while travelling through Egypt and living in a succession of hotels. Both the St Regis in Cairo and the Oberoi resort in Sahl Hasheesh (on the shores of the Red Sea) were amazing properties, with high levels of service and an attention to detail that many other high-end properties get very wrong.
So here, in the hope that some of them may be reading and paying heed, are just some instances of when hotels get it completely wrong.
The placement of the in-room safe. This is one thing that every guest will use. And it astonishes me that more hotels don’t pay attention to their placement. Sometimes they are near the floor so you have to crouch down to access them. At others they are so high that you have to stand on a stool to use them. And in my favourite hotel in Bangkok the safe is placed in such a way against the wall that the only way you can take things out is by contorting your whole body.
Light controls. I have written earlier about how, no matter how hard you try, there will always be one light for which the switch will be completely elusive. I have sometimes, in total frustration, unscrewed the bulb so that I could sleep in peace. Nowadays hotels have tried to make amends by putting a master switch by the bedside. There is just one problem. This switch also turns off all the lights in the bathroom. So God help you if you want to go to the loo in the middle of the night. You either put on all the lights and risk waking up your partner or you risk stubbing your toe — or worse — as you blindly grope your way to the loo. How hard can it be to make a different master switch for the bathroom lights? And yet, rare is the hotel which has done so.
Moving your things around. Sometimes I feel that housekeeping staff gets special training to hide your things in the unlikeliest of places. I have lost count of the times I have failed to find my spectacles because some vigilant housekeeper has placed them inside a drawer. And there have been instances when I have actually left things behind in hotels because housekeeping has arranged them in a cabinet that I chose not to use. I have now taken to giving special instructions when I leave the room that my things should be left exactly as they are. Sometimes it works. At others it doesn’t. It really is the luck of the draw.
Farewell gifts. Don’t get me wrong. I truly appreciate the sentiment and the effort that a hotel has gone to find me a memento. But here’s a thought. How about you place it in my room the night before so that I can pack it in my suitcase? Handing a bulky package to me as I am getting into my car to go the airport is really the worst idea. I now have two choices. Either I open my bags and repack to find a place for this farewell gift. Or I hand carry it through the airport along with my hand luggage. Neither option is ideal. And yet, nobody in hotels seems to realise that what they have given me is not a gift but a problem.
From HT Brunch, November 30, 2024
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