The One Thing About Hotels Outside the USA That Drives me Nuts – Do You Hate This Too?

I shudder to think about how many nights, over my lifetime, that I have spent in hotel rooms. About half of all the nights have been state side and the bulk of those in modest priced rooms. Unlike many bloggers a hotel room upgrade is of minor importance to me. Even so, many of the nights outside the USA have been in suites or at least premium rooms.

I don’t expect much in a hotel room other than a clean room, a clean and hopefully soft bed, climate control that works and is not too noisy and a clean and functional bathroom. The latter, when traveling abroad, is often the source of my greatest frustration.

As you can see from the featured photo at the top of this post I simply do not understand hotels that choose, and it is a choice, to use half glass in the shower. From my research I have found the suggested reasons for this setup are:

• Aesthetics (looks modern)
• Cost savings (during install)
• Faster cleaning (saving the hotel money)

Now keep in mind this modern look is rather recent in history and I guess I kinda sorta can see the idea of a designer trying to stand out by showing off something no one else has. Also, this is more feasible outside the USA when many bathrooms are in effect “wet rooms” already and can handle water everywhere – but still – why?

It is also not hard to understand, in a hotel with possibly hundreds of rooms, the simple math savings of a single pane of glass vs. two and/or a door including all the hardware required.

Lastly we have the obvious focus for all hotels in 2025 and that is cutting as much staff costs as possible. Again if you multiply so many bathrooms in a hotel by the time savings to clean them over a year the net result must be huge.

But is it really worth it?

For me, if at all possible, I will go as far as to review photos of the hotel room bathrooms to see if they have these cursed half walls and then consider another hotel nearby at a similar cost or points. Yeah, it matters that much to me. Why?

My shower at home is huge. It is enclosed. It is warm and I love to linger for a long time in the warm shower. There are few things as nice as lingering, day dreaming, planning the day and enjoying a long shower. The key part is a WARM shower.

That brings us around to the faux half wall showers. They are 100% the opposite of what I love. The result is this and none of it is good:

1. You are always cold! Well call it half cold. The side of you toward the water is warm and the other side is freezing and no spinning can make this better.
2. You can not linger! See the above and there is simply no joy in being a Neapolitan half cold half warm being trying to focus on anything but not being half cold.
3. You make a mess! If you take a “normal” shower then soap, water, shampoo and shaving cream go everywhere. Tell me how this can make cleaning quicker? Even if I ignore the mess I am making it does not make it an enjoyable experience.

I really could go on and on but I think I have made my point and maybe you too are both empathizing and feeling the same way as me.

I doubt there is anything we can do about this shower abomination other than try to avoid hotels with them but maybe if enough of us voice our displeasure it could have some impact? Yeah, maybe not.

You tell me. Is this as big of a deal to you as it is to me? Are there other hotel issues that make you as nuts as this does me? – Rene