In hotel rooms around the world, there are a million ways in which hoteliers manage to disappoint, infuriate or simply amuse their clients. Whether it is because things don’t work, or if they work, they don’t work as expected, or if they work but the designer has decided to put some clever spin on the concept of an otherwise everyday item, you can be sure that you will end up scratching your head or tearing your hair out with annoyance. Here is a list of things that have ground our gears over years of hotel stays. I’m guessing you can add your own?

• Air con controls – unreadable without a light from your phone or that simply don’t work at all. Or air con that works but wheezes and groans, hums and rattles at inopportune times during the night.
• Sink plugs that don’t plug the sink, pop-ups that don’t, ones with a rod that’s too heavy and pushes the plug back up while you add the water, not to mention missing detachable plugs. (Oh, I just mentioned them.)
• Power sockets hidden behind furniture – have you ever found a hotel room with enough sockets?
• Deluxe rooms that are anything but: no tissues, no robes, no view, no tea and coffee making facilities. And then they want to charge you inordinate sums to deliver tea or coffee to your room.
• Bizarre artwork – people being murdered, indescribable blodges, industrial landscapes or someone’s clever idea of reusing recycling materials and putting them in a frame.
• Hairdryers with no mirror anywhere nearby. Also hairdryers that don’t. Hairdryers with only one setting – frazzle and fry. Hairdryers with incredibly tangled cords or dangerous looking connectors.
• Dim lighting – or even no lighting next to the bed, making reading impossible.
• Mysterious multi-function light switch systems that defy all attempts to turn on some illumination.
• Curtains that don’t join or won’t pull. Or curtains or blinds that have strings attached but that don’t work, or have been hidden in the walls and require the use of a remote control to give your room some privacy.
• Tiny televisions at the other end of a long room, only showing a selection of stations that no one in their right mind has ever chosen.
• Bedside tables that can accommodate a glass of water, a pair of spectacles, a box of medications … but not all three.
• Fridges crammed with minibar items that you don’t want, except water, which is £5 per small bottle. Or empty fridges that heat the cupboard they are in and make a din as they cut in and out, all night long.
• Luxury rooms where the available space can be described by swinging open the door.
• Hotels in the middle of nowhere with high security, multi-character passwords for the wifi that take four attempts to get right – why??
• Breakfast buffets that seem to major on children’s UPF cereals, dubious-looking cooked items and coffee that could be used as drain cleaner.
• Bath towels that barely reach round you.
• Toilets where the toilet tissue must be disposed of in a little bin – in modern hotels in some European countries. Really? Oh, and the toilet paper has been folded into a little point, so you know that it has been pre-touched for your enjoyment.
• Jazz or screechy singers at breakfast, in the lift, in reception – do people actually like this stuff?
• And invisible bottle openers – if there are crown cap bottles in the fridge there must be an opener somewhere, but where is it? In the fridge, disguised as a badge? On the wall, looking like a light switch? At the end of the desk, hidden under a lip? Play detective and find it!

You have to pay an awful lot of money to avoid most or even some of the above. And when you manage the feat of finding a place that really has no niggles, the delight is palpable – a room that works, that doesn’t annoy. 

Ultimately though, there’s a very special place in hell, reserved for the inventor of the hotel detachable coat hanger. I’m talking about those ones that have a metal rod that clips into a sliding bracket on a metal pole in the wardrobe. Not only are they fiendishly difficult to attach and remove but, when weighed down with a coat or heavy clothes, refuse to bear the weight that’s on them. Whatever happened to normal coat hangers with a question mark hook? Easy to use, easy to move and yes, ok, eminently nickable. But, seriously, how many people make a habit of stealing the hangers out of wardrobes? Ah – you do? I see. Therein lies the problem, I guess.

© 2026 Nick Evans

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