This month I spent a lot of time in hotels and I am happy to be home in my own bed. I have a very soft bed at home and few, if any, hotel beds are soft enough to feel like what I am used to. But hotels are about more than just the bed. Clearly how far the bed is from the door impacts how much corridor noise impacts your sleep. In fact, to me, one of the huge perks of a suite is a set of doors between the hotel room door and the bedroom to create another noise buffer between your ZZZZZs and your fellow guests in the corridor outside.
Whenever I am walking in a hotel corridor, no matter what time of day or night it is, I try my best to be quiet. If walking with someone I try to whisper or hold what I have to say until I get to the hotel room. After all, what the Hyatt sign above says matters to me. Folks, at whatever price point (or points level) my fellow guests are expecting quiet for what they spent. The hotel can control much – but not me or my actions (or my voice).
But when you think about it, folks may be sleeping at any time of day or night. There have been times I have landed at a ridiculous time and requested a very late check out time and slept (or at least tried to) until “the crack of noon” if you will. There are few things more frustrating than hearing my fellow guests loudly talking or slamming doors on their way out to an early morning flight (when I do not have one). As a side point also a reason why I always try to close my bedroom door as quietly as I can at any time I exit.
In fact the more time I spend in hotels the more I am finding that my fellow guests have, many times, a larger impact on my stay experience than almost anything the hotel does or does not do.
Bottom line is what can hotels do to control “us” in a meaningful way (beyond a sign reminding us to be decent)? Do you agree that one of the biggest issues with hotel stays is not the hotel itself but your fellow guests? Do you do your best to be as respectable as possible in all your actions to help others? Are there other things guests do that drive you crazy? – Rene
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I love this Hyatt quiet time. If the purpose of your hotel stay is to rest, than this is enough to win my loyalty. If your purpose is something else….
Totally agree – fellow guests have ruined an otherwise nice stay at hotels. A small amount of courtesy would not hurt anyone, yet I find most people act as if they are the only people around and have no reason to show common courtesy.
Coming in late or leaving early and talking in the hallway as if,they are at home. But my #1 pet peeve is letting the doors slam! Why do hotels not have some sort of a “soft close” door? What’s funny is many have that feature on the toilet seat but not the doors.
I had an incident at a hotel last week, where I had to call the police at 1:00am to get my neighbors to pipe down. The front desk sent up security, however they could not get the guests to quite down, so i ended up calling the police. That worked!
Love this about Hyatt. Also, as a Globalists with the new WOH program I’ve really enjoyed my suite upgrades (like you mentioned it adds a layer of buffer between the noise and your bed).
Btw, my upgrade percentage has shot through the roof. I’m getting suite upgrades 90% of the time! I feel like Hyatt has the only truly “exclusive” top tier status since it’s harder to achieve compared to the other chains.
Completely agree. It amazes me sometimes how inconsiderate (or is it simply oblivious?) that fellow travelers can be. Once two people across the hall from me carried on a lengthy conversation where he was in the hallway and she was in the room. They were talking loudly because they were having trouble hearing each other. I had to laugh it was that bad. The woman must have finally realized what they were doing as she suddenly said something like “Oh. Maybe we’re talking too loudly”. Ya think?!?
This is exactly whey I always try to get a room as far away from the elevator and at the end of the hallway as possible. This decreases the traffic and noise coming in from outside.
A few hotels have great sealed doors that block most of the noise and a few have nice insulated walls that do the same. Unfortunately many hotels have a 1/2 gap under the door so someone even whispering outside your door can be heard because there’s no seal on the door. There are also even fancy expensive hotels that have paper walls and you can hear conversations going on in the next room.
Usually the disruptive people are groups that just don’t think about how their very loud conversation and laughing can be quite disruptive to someone trying to sleep at 1am or 2am.
Yes. I stay frequently in hotels and this has the biggest impact on whether the stay is unpleasant or not.
I’m surprised to see no mention of the horror that is a connecting door, which is a pretty good way to guarantee problems if the connecting room is occupied. Leaving aside voices, hotels seem to have the default TV volume turned quite far up and that sound carries through many walls, let alone the gaps created by a connecting door.
I wish hotels would treat a connecting door as a room characteristic, like bed type, elevator proximity, etc – instead, they normally have to look at a map and sometimes get it wrong.
Last night I was at a Hilton and there was some kind of a domestic dispute where the lady locked the guy out of the room. He wasn’t listed as a guest on the room so the front desk wouldn’t give him a key (which they told me when I called). He decided to bang and yell at the door at 2am for over 15 min. The hotel wouldn’t call the police, so I did. You never know what’s really going on, so best they work it out.
My co-worker and I were in DC in November (in an upscale hotel) and about 2 a.m. she her neighbor next to her comes in and 15 minutes later sh hears someone trying to get in through the connecting door. When the individual puts his/her shoulder into it trying to open it, she finally yells in her toughest voice, “knock it off, buddy, you’re trying to get in MY room”. Silence. Then she hears their connecting door quietly shut. Guess the person thought they had a suite or something? Needless to say, she was awake most of the night, hearing every sound. Why is it when you actually want to book a connecting room they’re not available, and when you don’t want to, you get one?
I’m at a Hyatt right now. Hot breakfast in both hands, rush to the table then rush back to the door to keep it from slamming……but no: too late. BANG!!! Woke up my wife. In the hall, a man with arms loaded with two suitcases was leaving his room and, like you and me, he did not have a third arm to softly close the door…BANG!!! It’s not really the guest’s fault that Hyatt corporation chooses to be unaware of this problem.
Corporate management has heard this concern from guests for decades and decades yet, do nothing about it. If a new hotel is under construction, does the architect have an order to specify soft-closing doors? I think I’ll just write to corporate at Hyatt and demand an answer. Or maybe I can simply inquire, “Can you recommend a hotel chain which doesn’t have doors which SLAM like yours?