I once stayed at a very boutiquey, avant-garde hotel with a platonic friend. We had booked a twin room with separate beds, but what I did not expect was that the shower cubicle, with clear glass on all three sides, would be placed between the beds.
Not the Platonic ideal of a hotel room
The world makes full circle. A 4-toilet (2 facing the other 2 for lively conversation) bathroom per floor, no walls whatsoever between the toilets, "open layout" so to speak, in our dormitory in high school (regional school for advanced science studies) in USSR in 80-ies come to mind. Looks like we were living the boutiquey avant-garde way of the future :)
Please tell my that you have pictures of this to show!
Was it a "love hotel" because...that doesn't sound like a regular hotel?
Huh.. I've stayed in over 1,000 hotels and Airbnbs over the last 15 years and not once saw a bathroom with no door. Lots of bathroom windows, but always some kind of door.
Was it made of glass?<p>I've stayed in a hotel where the toilet door was made of glass, and had big gaps. I was staying with an acquaintance, so things were really awkward. It didn't help that the shower was right in front of this frosted glass, so the person's entire silhouette was very visible when showering.<p>Another time, in Amsterdam, I stayed at an AirBnB where the toilet was on the balcony, and had a glass door (non-frosted) in the kitchen. Yep, if you needed to go, and someone was cooking, or was a neighbour, they were looking right at you.
Review and vote with your wallet and your feet
This strategy is so successful, it brought down Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Philip Morris, Frito-Lay, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Monsanto, and Boeing.
People voting with their wallet are why Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Philip Morris, Frito-Lay, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Monsanto and Boeing are still in business.<p>And people voting with their wallet have led to literally hundreds of thousands of companies going out of business.<p>So yeah, it is successful.
I think Boeings bring themselves down on their own.<p><i>ba-dum-tish!</i>
I did indeed.
In <i>Hyperion</i>, the character Martin Silenus is rich enough that he lives in a novelty palace where all the rooms are connected by teleporters. As a joke, the bathroom is a wallless raft on an ocean world.<p>Outside of the realm of science fiction, my sister followed a TV show for a while that was basically a set of advertisements for a modular home company. One episode featured the installation of a small home on a remote British island; the shower was a pipe outside the house itself.
A lot of them are becoming barn style sliding doors, with large gaps. So if you’re making some noise, everyone will hear you.
This erosion of privacy is being taken to extremes.<p>One of my short stories takes place in a not-to-distant future, where there is absolutely no privacy. In one chapter a child goes to a bathroom in an old building, and he sees that there is not only a door, but there is a contraption on it. A lock! The child runs out of the bathroom in fright. The audience learns only a little later that the child is frightened about what human-eating animals might stalk prey in that area, that anybody would ever think to lock themselves in there.
The worst aspect of the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport was the sliding bathroom door. Almost everything else about the place was really great but the bathroom door wae 1/2" from the face of the wall and bounced off the end of the slider track.
Yes! I was just recently traveling for work in a decent hotel but not a suite, just one with two queen beds but by myself. It had a glass barn door and the top half was frosted glass with "painted" glass on the bottom. Irritating but at least it was just me.
Lowes hotels at Universal Orlando has them. Worse is they sometimes just slide open on their own.
People make noise when they piss and shit. It’s not scandalous.
Well, I still don't wanna make everybody in the room have to listen to my grunts as I push out an unhealthy binge-drinking hangover turd followed by a liter of flatulent gas and and liquid spraying into the bowl. I like my privacy, kthx.
If it's not scandalous, can I shit in the lobby trashcan? If the hotel wants me to have an audience, might as well...
It's not, but I prefer not being heard and not hearing over being heard or hearing.
Some people make noise when they eat with their mouth open. It's not scandalous, it's just ignorant and gross. It's always an utter clod that is so unaware of themselves just smucking and squelching away on their open mouth full of gloopy donut muck.<p>It's not a virtue to be so unselfcounscious. It's not about being ashamed or inhibited or in pathological denial of biological realities. It's about being fucking minimally considerate and just the tiniest bit self-aware.
Tell that to my asshole. I’ve tried training it to be silent on the shitter for near 40 years but it fails more often than not.
It would be virtuous to not judge others based on some small thing they do that annoys you, just as you do things that annoy others.
I had a friend growing up who ate with his mouth open. I fucking hated it. But he had problems breathing through his nose due to something with his soft tissue in his throat. So, you learn to ignore it.
I agree but only because that's the standard for our culture so somebody not doing it is probably being disrespectful which means it becomes offensive to others because it normally only comes from people with some sort of negative feeling or inconsiderateness for those around them. In some cultures, noisy eating is the proper way and shows you're enjoying the food. Same goes for clothes, toilet sounds, etc. It's a lot more repulsive seeing a human poo on the street than a dog even though it's not fundamentally very different.
> Same goes for clothes, toilet sounds, etc.<p>What do you mean "same goes"? Are you saying there are cultures in which being loud on the toilet is considered proper?
> even though it's not fundamentally very different.<p>There's a pretty significant difference; human diseases are much more likely to spread to other humans.
But it is a good argument for privacy.
I recently stayed at a hotel in San Francisco that had no bathroom door. I'd even upgraded to the queen size room specifically because their layout map showed a door while the smaller rooms did not. I was pretty annoyed by that. (Edit: Despite being a single traveller. I think doors are important for hygiene).<p>Happy to see someone is trying to fix this trend.
I've stayed in probably 15 hotels in the US in the past 15 years and at least one of them had either no bathroom door, or a glass door, or a bathroom door and a shower that had a glass door.<p>My sister shared with me a home listing that had a bedroom and basically a toilet in a closet, and no door — just a curtain for privacy. That was weird.
Me neither, but I remember that when searching for hotels and Airbnbs, I only filter for hotels that are 8+/10 domestically and 9+/10 internationally, which filters out many of the hotels that have those kinds of issues (and score doesn't affect budget much).
Booking.com has this grade inflation issue. if something is shit but you rate everything else fairly (things like location, staff friendliness, etc), the final score will be 7 or 8.. in summary: I had a lousy experience, 7/10!<p>It takes some experience to realize that a place graded 7.x probably has serious issues.
The problem here is that "mean" is a poor average. For hotels, if you're rating in 10 different categories, you really want a single 0/10 to bring the overall score down by way more than one point.<p>The opposite situation can also occur. At my university, entrance scholarships were decided a few years ago based on students' aggregate score across 25ish dimensions (I can't remember the exact number) where students were each rated 1-4. Consequently a student who was absolutely exceptional in one area would be beaten out by a student who was marginally above average in all the other areas. I suggested that rather than scoring 1-4 the scores should be 1/2/5/25 instead.
You've never seen a sliding door rather than a fully closing one? That's one of the types of doors that the author is complaining about
The author of TFA doesn’t really mention sliders at all - just harps on about “no doors”.
Ah yes, quite a few. Not great, but definitely better than literally no door.
Reading this thread, it seems like it's a trend with very fancy hotels?<p>I usually stay at chain hotels and this is never really a problem.
Ditto. I've never seen this before. They always have at least those sliding doors.
ALoft London Excel hotel. Fancy as hell, no bathroom doors.<p>You shit behind your bed, I kid you not
Post-Sheraton acquisition, I find the Marriott branding can be a bit random. Still stay in them a lot, but I've had a couple of relatively mediocre Aloft stays of late.
Well that explains why I've never seen this trend.<p>I stick to rooms with two digits in front of the decimal.
Uhh, Aloft is in Marriott's "Select" bucket along with Fairfield and Courtyard. They have some shiny touches that let them claim the "Distinctive" label, but are basically just motels.<p><a href="https://www.hotel-development.marriott.com/brands" rel="nofollow">https://www.hotel-development.marriott.com/brands</a>
$200+ a night and it doesn't come with a bathroom door?<p>This is why I just stay home.
I see it all the time. I actually don’t have an issue with it though. I’m usually alone in the room, or with my family and we all know that we poop. Not that we don’t respect privacy but when circumstance arise, we can bunk together in close quarters without it being super weird.
Really? I stayed in far fewer and maybe 10% have no doors. And then another 30% have no locks or doors that don’t close all the way (barn doors)
While we’re at it, bring back shower doors/curtains. It’s such a pain having this huge puddle outside the shower just because they decided it shouldn’t have one. It’s not so common to be missing one in US hotels, but it’s common internationally.<p>Edit: apparently the virus has spread, and some US hotels now don’t have them
I was talking about this with my wife the other day: Newer hotel showers are "Hostile Architecture" disguised as modern design. They add those little annoying details with the intention of lowering their water bill. They want showering to be slightly discomfort, so you shower faster without noticing. It's a feature, not a bug.
I’ve never understood this - it’s maddening. I grew up in the US and the bare minimum was always at least a shower curtain (inner and outer), and if not that, a proper door.<p>Why on earth did this half-pane of glass become standard in so many places. It’s completely ineffective and ends up with water everywhere.
The bathroom needs to be destined properly.<p>My shower in Denmark has no door, and no curtain, but the splashes don't reach very far away, and aren't in the way of anywhere I'd want to walk after showering anyway.<p>I've often seen hotel bathrooms in other countries that get this wrong. In the worst case, splashed water from the open shower runs all across the bathroom, and in one case (a Grand Hyatt!) into the main room carpet.<p>Did the designers not know water flows down?
The half pane of glass is appropriate in warm parts of the world where you want the heat to be removed as quickly as possible. I suspect some hotel executive thought it looked cool in Miami, then made it the standard for the whole chain.
It's not even appropriate there. Ventilation should be determined by the fan, not the aperture.<p>Even in Miami, I don't want the entire bathroom floor flooded, and I want to be able to close the curtain/door and increase the humidity in the shower.
i hate it when the set up the half-pane in such a way that you can't adjust the water temp/pressure without being directly under the shower head.<p>when dealing with a new set of shower controls, i like to stand to the side and figure out what's happening and whether i need to let it warm up rather than stepping into the firing lane and taking whatever it throws at me
Every single place I’ve stayed in Europe had no shower door, and nothing to prevent the water from spilling out. Occasionally I get lucky and the floor is constructed sufficiently concave so at least the water flows into the drain
Denmark loves their 'wet' bathrooms in hotels, no shower door and a drain in the center of the room. I spent a lot of time in CPH and would stay at the Marriott because it was one of the few with American style bathrooms.
Europeans are good at building a lot of things, but I will <i>never</i> understand the "cosplay a small flood" style bathrooms.<p>It's just... inefficient? Why wouldn't we want to catch the water closest to where it comes out?
It's to save money and labor time so housekeeping can just mop it all down easier and faster without having to clean a separate bathtub and no having to clean any shower doors.
See also: washing machines. If you have three pairs of underwear and all day, Europe’s washing machines have you covered. Otherwise, you’re SOL.
The drain should be within the shower area, with all the bathroom floor draining that way.<p>If it's in the centre of the room it's been done very badly. I've never seen this in Denmark, even in some very old apartment buildings.
> Denmark loves their 'wet' bathrooms in hotels, no shower door and a drain in the center of the room.<p>If you're renting an apartment in Shanghai, a cheap one will have a door to the bathroom, but the shower won't be a separate fixture. The entire bathroom functions as the shower (the hose or fixed piping is mounted on a wall), and there's a drain in the floor.<p>A more recent apartment will have a shower installation that is, say, separate from the toilet.
Higher end apartments will. Even newer apartments in Beijing will have wet rooms at some price point. Remember that the apartments are built in China unrenovated, and even new owners of second-hand properties are expected to redo everything from a concrete box, so it is 100% up to the landlord/owner on how the bathroom is done, and I’ve seen it done many many different ways.
it has become unfortunately common in marriott hotels in the (western) US, specifically the current generation of residence inn; and i think i've seen it in new towneplace suites as well. it's entirely a form over function decision: you end up with cool air wafting in while you shower, and you end up with a wet bathroom floor (including a soaked floormat).<p>the same hotels have a kitchen sink tap which has hot/cold selected on the vertical axis, with no indication of which direction is hot/cold.<p>form over function. so annoying.
This is one reason I'm staying at more Hilton hotels than Marriott brands these days. Having a wet bathroom floor is high on my list of pet peeves, enough so that I'll abandon lifetime elite status with Marriott to stay at hotels with doors on the showers.
Shower curtains are very much a North American thing (well, US and Canada at least). It's a cultural difference you're seeing not a weird hotel trend.
But before that, for the love of god, solve the automatic slamming door problem. I understand we need heavy doors for fire safety but please implement soft close with dampers.
Wait.. there are hotels which don't have a door on the bathroom? I have literally <i>never</i> seen that. Is this degeneracy uncommon in the US or have I just gotten lucky?
It's becoming trendy, so people book larger suites instead and also so the hotels can save money on doors and easier for housekeeping. They're getting rid of shower doors too.<p>Nate Barzgate does a good bit on it:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgtgjA_UiAo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgtgjA_UiAo</a><p>I stayed at a super fancy hotel in Napa for a work event that didn't even have a WALL separating off the bathroom it was just a half-partition sheer panel thing.
The author of the site considers sliding barn doors 'not real doors'
The hotel industry is bizarre. I feel like we hit this maxima circa 2005 where prefabrication made for the shockingly cheap/nice Hampton Inn style hotels in the US.<p>Now those places anre on the wrong side of the depreciation curve, and every chain hotel is a little worse every day. They bill upfront since COVID, don’t clean the room, shrink the towels and deliver a shittier level of service. I was at a Marriott recently where the room had no linens - no towels, sheets, pillows, nothing.<p>I called and was instructed to do everything myself, and the hotel GM’s attitude was that “shit happens”.
I've traveled more recently for a new job and the downgrade in hotels has been the same. I've stayed at a la quinta that was no better than a motel 6 with a barely cleaned room and towels that were more like old wash cloths, a Marriot down the road from raven's stadium in Baltimore that had the stupid open shower thing and room stank like mold, and the surprising belle of the ball has been a best western "plus" which has essentially been what a midrange Hilton/Marriot was just a few years ago.
I’d assume that was a franchise hotel, and calling Marriott corporate would have got you some compensation at minimum.
WSJ did a good explainer on hotel room design anti-patterns: <a href="https://youtu.be/116cwKs2XQs" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/116cwKs2XQs</a>
Kendra Gaylord released a video on the topic yesterday too.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFPGUTyo9Yk" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFPGUTyo9Yk</a>
I watched this and it doesn't seem like anti-patterns to me? I spend more time in hotels than most and ironing boards, closets, minibars, and "bigger rooms" are not things I care about. I don't hang out in the room; it's a box I enter to shower and sleep.
It depends on the market you're aiming for.<p>A younger, lone traveller staying 2-3 nights is probably going to be out doing things in the day, and in the evening. And they won't have much luggage either.<p>Elderly travellers might not have the same level of energy; they might prefer to spend a few hours quietly relaxing with a book. And they might want an armchair per person, rather than sitting on the bed to read.<p>Business travellers might need somewhere to set up a laptop and work from, power, decent internet connectivity, and someplace they can iron some shirts.<p>Longer-term travellers (e.g. someone visiting a city to supervise like the building of a warehouse) will have more luggage, and they'll want to make themselves a bit more at home - they won't be out on the town every night for a month. They're more likely to use the hotel gym.<p>For some people, holidays are all about relaxing and doing things at a leisurely pace. Perhaps they want to spend the morning sitting on a balcony reading the newspaper - if you have a balcony.<p>For couples on honeymoon, they might want a nice room with a great bed.<p>Families might have two children and two adults sharing a room, with the children going to bed earlier and the adults sorta hanging out nearby; in this market, the hotel room sofa might fold out into two beds suitable for under-10s.<p>And of course, if you want to target all of these markets <i>at the same time</i> you end up with the classic cluttered hotel room with wardrobe, desk, desk chair, armchair, bedside tables, reading lamp, ironing board, TV, etc etc etc
For me, in addition to a clean comfortable bed, and a good shower (I don't like a deep bathtub I need to step into), I like having a desk and at least a comfortable chair (ideally a sofa).<p>Of course, now we're getting into a fair fit of space in a dense city.
When I use to travel for work, I exclusively stayed in Embassy Suites because it didn’t feel like a shoebox and it gave me space to decompress after a full day of active like I like people.<p>Even now that I work remotely, my wife and I might spend a week back home in Atlanta where our adult children and friends live. We “live” in the hotel like we live at home. I’m usually working during the day, she might hang out with other friends who don’t work during the day and we plan things at night.<p>It’s really nice to have the space of a Hyatt House/Homewood Suites.<p>Even when we go on vacation we don’t have a jam packed scheduled where we have to be doing something every minute.
I don't hang out in my hotel rooms either, but an iron, ironing board, and closet with hangars help me not look like a slob when I want to put on some nice clothes and go out for the evening.
Things I want, Socket next to bed, light switch next to bed, decent mattress and pillow, blackout blinds, no noise from next door/corridor<p>I do like a good shower too, rather than those stupid bath things like it’s the 1980s, and get rid of American hotels which seem to be allergic to providing shower gel
It blows my mind that sockets on the nightstand aren’t standard by now.<p>I just stayed at the Westin in Rome, supposedly a 5 star place, but I don’t think it’s been updated in 30 years. I had to move the nightstand and unplug a lamp, so I could plug my phone in next to the bed. So go get my phone socket I had to lose the lamp. It didn’t even have an alarm clock on the nightstand; there would have been nowhere to plug it in. Maybe they expect everyone to get a wake up call, but the phone was across the room too.<p>I used to travel with a little power strip, but stopped since I never actually used it. That place needed one badly.<p>It did have bathroom door though, so it had that going for it.
> I just stayed at the Westin in Rome, supposedly a 5 star place, but I don’t think it’s been updated in 30 years<p>Nobody comes and takes your stars away. They earned them once and they're still using them.
> Maybe they expect everyone to get a wake up call, but the phone was across the room too.<p>For a wakeup call, that's an advantage.
A way to force people to buy separate rooms?
It's not about saving a few bucks on a door. It's about discouraging you and your friends from sharing a single room. Hotel sees the money they're leaving on the table and will trade you for it for the low price of watching your buddies do their business.
I don't think that adds up.<p>"Staying in a hotel with a romantic partner and/or family" is <i>at least</i> as primary a use case for hotels as "staying in a hotel with a platonic friend" and is still a scenario where you want a door but is NOT a scenario where "just get separate rooms" is a logical conclusion. "Get the hell out of that hotel and complain about it to everyone you know," on the other hand, is.<p>The much more specific way to target platonic buddies/coworkers from sharing a room would be <i>eliminating rooms with two beds</i> since the "couple" scenario would generally be perfectly happy with that still.
Also even in the single person case I want to have the bathroom door closed when I take a shower because it keeps the heat in. Which is why I also dislike (most of) the barn door style doors. I can't be the only one that likes to step out of the shower and into a nice and steamy room. Like what, you want to step out and be cold? That's masochistic.<p>Not to mention no door doesn't bother me with another person because I can easily avoid "seeing them do their business" by being in the main room. I've never been in a hotel room where the bathroom door faces the beds. It's always in the hall just after entering the room. I'm sure there's exceptions but that's the standard setup.
I stayed in this place where the shower was directly adjacent to the bed, and the commode had its own separate room.<p><a href="https://hunters.com.co/" rel="nofollow">https://hunters.com.co/</a><p>It had some other interesting problems.
For the same reason, I hate the showers without a door in a bathroom with a door. I've never understood the reason for that.
I can't book my grown up kids into the same room because of this reason. Utter stupidity or callousness, can't tell which.
I don’t know how to ask this without it seeming like snark, but as genuinely as I can ask (and with the assumption that we otherwise agree there should just be a door):<p>Why don’t you just turn on the heat in the room?
Locality and humidity.<p>I also don't mean to be snarky here, because I'm not sure how to say this in a way that can't be interpreted that way and feel like I'm just explaining being human...<p>The answer is really just physics. The feeling of comfort is generally about differential in temperature, not absolute. (That's also a logarithmic relationship too) So to have that nice feeling of stepping out of a hot shower then the room needs to be a decently high temperature. Mind you, you're also wet. This makes the temperature differential more influential. So two things happen when you dry off. You no longer have that water to transfer and maintain heat and you've also cooled down a bit. Now when you walk into the normal room temperature the differential isn't so bad.<p>If I turn the temperature up in the whole hotel room I will then have to turn it down. Now that introduced AC and we have the opposite problem... Plus both get rid of humidity.<p>To be snarky and try to be a bit humorous:<p>Haven't you ever noticed that 100F/38C is "hotter" and more uncomfortable in a humid environment than in a dry environment? Haven't you ever noticed that 15F/-10C is "colder" in a humid environment? Haven't you noticed that being in a hot tub or sauna is comfortable but if it was that temperature outside you'd be cursing the gods? Haven't you noticed that in the summer 50F/10C is cold and most people won't wear a short sleeve shirt yet if it was the winter that's a nice day to go out and wear shorts? Haven't you... lived in a body?<p>It's winter man, here's a trivial experiment for you:<p><pre><code> - Heat up your house:
- Shower with door open
- Shower with door closed
- Don't heat up your house:
- Shower with door open
- Shower with door closed
</code></pre>
Tell me the results. Which is the most comfortable? Also tell me your power bill for each day... You can figure this out in 4 days with essentially no cost of time or effort?
> eliminating rooms with two beds<p>Quick tip I discovered when traveling with my teenage daughter: a lot of hotel sites are now unclear on whether a booking is for a room with one or two beds. I found that listing "occupants" as 3 would usually force such sites to sort for rooms with two beds (even though there would only be two of us). Assuming there's no breakfast included, the price is usually the same for 2 or 3.
Not a good tip.<p>You now play games with per person occupancy fees/taxes upon arrival, instead of screening available information.
What country is this? I've never seen a hotel site that didn't sell rooms as either 2 Queen or 1 King. If I didn't know it was a king bed I wouldn't book it. Does that now make me a spoiled first world rich person?
This particular trip was in Europe but I also encountered it on a different trip to Las Vegas. It occurred on some hotel sites but quite a few hotel aggregator sites.
>Does that now make me a spoiled first world rich person?<p>Sort of. I'll take a King by choice but if a Queen is the only option I don't really have an issue with that. And I'm not a short person.
So like, in the United States, if you book directly via Marriott, the number of beds isn't guaranteed unless you have some reasonable status at the hotel.
Generally, what I’ve seen is on travel sites like Priceline, sometimes they list a room as like “standard room” and they don’t specify and (in the fine print) explicitly do <i>not</i> guarantee how many beds - with some cheaper rates. Basically trying to discourage people from booking them. The thinking being if you don’t wanna end up in 1 King bed with your bro, you’ll pay the extra $13 for the explicitly 2-bed room, which is always listed as well.
Heeey clever. I really struggled with this while travelling with my brother in Japan. None of the aggregation sites filtered on number of beds even though they had that data in the listing.
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I think it’s at least partly right (few things are simple enough to have one cause).<p>A lot of businesses ask co-workers to share a room on trips. Business travel is a large share of reservations.
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.<p>Marriot,Hilton,IGT,Hyatt own almost all hotels in any area you want to go to.<p>Enshittification is not just for apps anymore.
> Marriot,Hilton,IGT,Hyatt own almost all hotels in any area you want to go to.<p>Best Western, Choice, Wyndham, IHG (typo?), Accor, Blackstone (Motel6), Radisson, Red Lion, Red Roof. Etc. There's lots of choices.<p>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.
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.
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).<p>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.<p>I personally prefer on-demand.
What's the explanation for housekeeping? I actually prefer very little to no housekeeping, especially for short stays.
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?
> don't stay there, go somewhere else, and tell everyone you know<p>You might be very comfortable sharing the story about the situation, but I hope you can appreciate that not everyone else would be.
Regulation is when individual action isn’t enough.<p>Regulation is a form of collective action.
And it doesn't even need to be <i>government</i> regulation.<p>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.
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 mistake is assuming we have to act as individuals.
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.
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.
I've stayed at a lot of hotels. I have almost never been in one that didn't have a proper bathroom door.
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.
> Marriot,Hilton,IGT,Hyatt own almost all hotels in any area you want to go to.<p>Technically, they own almost none of the hotels. The hotel owners buy the franchises, and hence follow the brand standards.
This doesn't make any sense.<p>In what way would it discourage you and your friend(s) from booking a standard twin room, <i>if they don't tell you there's no bathroom door?</i><p><pre><code> Dr. Strangelove: Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you *keep* it a *secret*! Why didn't you tell the world, eh?
</code></pre>
Here are the options:<p>1. You offer double, twin and single rooms. Friends book twin rooms.<p>2. You offer only double and single rooms, in the hope that non-romantically engaged pairs of people will book two single rooms. Friends book some other hotel's twin rooms.<p>3. You offer double, twin and single rooms and you tell people before booking there's no toilet door. Friends book some other hotel's twin rooms.<p>4. You offer double, twin and single rooms but surprise! there are no toilet doors. Friends who've booked a twin room either demand a cancellation immediately upon seeing the room, demand a room with a toilet door, or they demand you offer some kind of ersatz privacy screen, and no matter what you do they're going to rain fury on every review site they can think of, tanking your reputation.<p>In which of these situations does the hotel get extra money?
> In what way would it discourage you and your friend(s) from booking a standard twin room, if they don't tell you there's no bathroom door?<p>(They regard it as cheapskating/cheating.)<p>Very simple: by making it the status quo that bathroom doors aren't there they discourage you to rent a single room. So instead, you rent two single rooms with full privacy for each of you. Because a double room is only for couples, in their (I concur: twisted) world.<p>You mean you want to go to the competition? What if the competition does it as well? What if it is the norm?<p>As for your #4. People don't have time to put effort into such. Outliers do, they're the ones who make noisy drama at the reception. But they're the exception, not the rule.
This continues to not make any sense.<p>In most hotel pricings I've seen, twin rooms and double rooms cost the same. In fact, in the cheaper hotels, double rooms are just twin rooms with the beds bolted together (very annoying if you're a couple seeking romance). The hotel can reconfigure the rooms to match demand, as the only difference is whether the beds are joined.<p>As a random example (I don't endorse it, I just picked a random London hotel) <a href="https://www.booking.com/hotel/gb/crowne-plaza-london-ealing.en-gb.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.booking.com/hotel/gb/crowne-plaza-london-ealing....</a> has "Standard Room" (choice of twin or double bed), "Standard Twin Room", "Standard Queen Room with Bathtub" and "Standard Queen Room with Walk-In Shower" options all at exactly the same price. Each option makes abundantly clear what type of bed(s) you get, and how many people can use the room.<p>Hotels that want to rent rooms to couples simply remove twin rooms from the list of rooms available. Only offer the double-bed option. People looking for a twin room go to the next hotel in the list. They don't need some secret plan to disappoint twin-room guests by not having a bathroom door so their <i>next</i> booking is two single rooms.<p>You and the OP both said "single" rooms. Is this key to unlocking the mystery? In my experience, single rooms literally have one single bed. Why are multiple people hoping to stay in one? Also from what I've seen, "single" rooms are more expensive than twin/double rooms, not just because you can't share the costs but because they literally cost more, because there are so few such rooms in the hotel. The hotel couldn't accomodate people if it compelled twin room guests to get two single rooms, it'd run out of single rooms in a jiffy and be left with a lot of twin/double room capacity. Most of the rooms are double/twin.<p>Why would any group of people book a single room? Is there some secret trick where multiple people turn up and bring their own beds with them, only to be foiled by a missing toilet door?
> Why would any group of people book a single room?<p>To save money.<p>> Is there some secret trick where multiple people turn up and bring their own beds with them, only to be foiled by a missing toilet door?<p>Beds? Probably not. But, people (especially younger people, can sleep on the floor with climate appropriate (which, depending on the season and available heating, can be "none") coverings for warmth; I did this happily a fair amount in various groups aroun high school age, but I certainly wouldn't want to now in middle age.
> To save money.<p>If they want to save money, hostels are usually half the price of hotels. Why would they even choose a hotel in the first place?<p>Plus, my experience is that hotels will simply <i>cancel</i> your booking, or force you to upgrade, if multiple people turn up to check in for a single room. They don't need some passive-aggressive doorless bathroom, they have the right to tell you to book a 2-person room (whether twin or double bed) for 2 people.
They want two adults (for example dad and daughter, or grandma and dad) to rent separate single bedrooms, yes with their own private space, own TV, etc. The price of two of such single rooms is higher than one double. The room for two people (bed together) is meant for couples, not F&F. Why, I think because they sell better. Maybe also to discourage teens, who'd rather go to a hostel with bunk bed, besides those are way more affordable. You'd think they wouldn't be able to afford a proper hotel, but what I've seen is spoiled brats and what not.<p>In your first message you wrote at #2: "[...] Friends book some other hotel's twin rooms." I wrote: what if all hotels follow this same manual? You could only end up in a hostel, or perhaps a cheap hotel.<p>Honestly, it doesn't bother me at all seeing my mother naked (my father is passé), or my daughter or son naked (but they're still children). It only ever did till my mid teenager years. After that, I overcame it. So while it doesn't bother me, it may bother my children, and important to note: <i>I'll respect that</i>. It already started with my daughter (nearly eight y.o.) when going to the swimming pool. Kind of normal. But these hotels wouldn't accommodate for that.<p>FWIW, just my theories. I'm not saying I know all about this market.
> They want two adults [...] to rent separate single bedrooms<p>Then why do they even <i>offer</i> twin rooms?<p>Doorless bathrooms are not explained by saying hotels (<i>that offer twin rooms</i>) secretly want all twin room guests to pay double and use two single rooms. Most hotels don't even have very many single rooms!<p>It may be different in small places where there's only one or two hotels. But most cities have dozens to hundreds of hotels, not all owned by the same conglomerates. There is <i>no way</i> they'd miss out the <i>entire</i> twin-room market by pretending not to have them. And they certainly wouldn't take the reputational damage by pretending you'll get a normal twin room when you book, but hit you with a doorless bathroom twin room when you arrive. The booking website will have photos showing the typical room layout, in order to give prospective customers clarity about what they'd be booking, so they choose to book <i>there</i>.<p>I'm no hotel tycoon either, but the idea that it's a secret ruse to get people to pay double doesn't make any sense to me. The idea that they're blindly following some design trend, or that it lets them make the rooms physically smaller by giving the impression of a bigger room, are much more plausible ideas.
Think based on bathroom rather than bed count here.<p>Before: sell two business travelers one room with two separate beds and one dignified bathroom.<p>Now: sell two business travelers two separate rooms just so they can each use the bathroom with dignity.<p>Profit Now ($x2) > Profit Before ($x1)
This still makes no sense.<p>The business travelers are looking at a website with hundreds of hotels in the city they're going to. If you don't offer a twin room option, they don't think "well shucks, let's just get two single rooms". They go to the next hotel, out of hundreds, which has a twin room option. It may cost more, but it won't cost <i>double</i>. They'd be complete idiots to pick two single rooms if what they wanted as a twin room.<p>You can't <i>compel</i> them to book your single rooms, and you definitely can't compel them by springing a surprise doorless bathroom on them <i>in your twin room option</i> after they've paid and arrived. That's when they expense a taxi to some other hotel and report their findings to their entire company, who never book from you again.<p>Simply <i>offering</i> a twin room option means you expect unrelated or distantly-related people will book it. If you don't want that, <i>take away the twin room option.</i> Business travellers will not share a double bed. You get all that benefit of double-profit (if for some reason the travellers are morons or they're going to bumfuck nowhere and you're the only hotel), without going to the expense of removing bathroom doors.
Mr. President, we cannot allow a bathroom door gap!
But how would you know until it's too late and you've already checked in? Doesn't seem to be a very effective way of achieving this... Just means my mate and I wouldn't go back to that hotel again.
Ask forithe manager and tell them you want a different room or a refund.
For big chains, quirks like that become known.<p>...like, the building adjacent your La Quinta is a diner, period. "La Quinta, Spanish for 'next to Denny's'"
There are photos online and video tours of every hotel room on the planet. Check before booking.
I saw an interview with this person. Often the photos of rooms will be taken from the door-frame of the bathroom looking in or out. So not obvious if there is an actual door.
There will be photos of an example room, with zero guarantee the room you get will be the same.
Literally false.
How would not having doors prevent people from sharing a room, unless it was highlighted prominently on the website? If that was the case, this person wouldn’t be making a website to catalog this information.
It's far more likely to discourage me and my friends from staying at that hotel entirely.
How many people consider what a bathroom looks like before booking a hotel room? I can't say I've ever done so.
Actively? Almost no one.<p>But I absolutely check out google maps reviews, and a single review saying that the hotel did not have a proper door on the bathroom would guarantee I would not stay there.<p>Even traveling alone it's a clear indication they have no respect for their guests, and it's a significant hygiene issue.
> Even traveling alone it's a clear indication they have no respect for their guests, and it's a significant hygiene issue.<p>I feel like if you consider lack of a door a significant hygiene issue, you probably just shouldn’t be staying in hotels. These rooms aren’t being sanitized between guests, they are pretty dirty.
All the more reason not to add mold from the shower and excess feces from every toilet flush to the list of things I have to worry about being on the mattress.<p>There are good reasons to keep bathrooms physically separated from where you sleep and hygiene is one of them, along with not wanting the bed to be a front row seat to the sights, smells, and sounds of whatever is going on in there and not wanting an expensive hotel room I'm paying for to be like a prison cell.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good and all that, just because things aren't perfect isn't a good reason for the hotel to make things worse and doesn't mean I shouldn't avoid worse hotels on the basis that they are worse.
> [...] it's a significant hygiene issue.<p>How so?
Shit particles are literally blown into the surrounding air when flushing; closing the door and running the fan contains the mess.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_plume" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_plume</a>
It feels like that wikipedia article was written by a motivated individual and hasn't received significant review...<p>> viruses & bacteria many of which are known to survive on surfaces for days<p>> Toilets are scientifically proven<p>> There is 70 plus years
Have you considered closing the toilet lid?
There was a study which showed closing the lid reduces the acute problem but actually increases dwell time.<p><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339650907_Real-time_Monitoring_of_Aerosols_Generated_from_Toilet_Flushing" rel="nofollow">https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339650907_Real-time...</a>
The larger conclusion is that the health consequences of this alleged horror seem to be, in fact, fuck-all
Well, as long as the closed toilet bowl has time in between to settle, it's all fine. And your hotel toilet isn't exactly a high traffic area.
Generally you would need everyone else to do that for it to help you, which isn't something you control.<p>Doors are nice from the public health perspective in that people actually do usually close them without even being asked.
who wants to sleep in a room full of shower steam?
If there is adequate ventilation in the bathroom, most of the steam/moisture will go there. If there isn't, a door won't save you much, since as soon as you open it all the built-up steam is going to escape in the room anyway. Air conditioning generally takes care of it if it does happen though.
The extra humidity is bound to add to mold issues too. It's not a huge issue when it's largely contained to the bathroom where you can wipe stuff down, but mold in mattresses, upholstered furniture, curtains, and carpet make filling the entire hotel room with steam every day (if not multiple times a day) a very bad idea.
That's a comfort issue. Comfort is important, but it's distinct from hygiene.
<p><pre><code> > it's distinct from hygiene.
</code></pre>
Mold<p>Not to mention that any bacteria thrives in more humid environments. They aren't so good at keeping moist. This is true for a lot of things, especially the smaller the thing is, including bugs. Higher humidity definitely makes good hygiene more difficult.<p>Why do you think bathrooms have fans? That'd be a lot of effort to deal with farts.
If the increased humidity promotes mold growth, then yes, it's a hygiene issue.
Until recently, you never had to think about it. But as it becomes more common it will become something you might want to consider.
And until then they will milk as much money as possible. If there is outrage or they see sales dropping, a few thousand dollars per hotel will replace those rooms with doors leaving with net profit and steady shareholder growth. Some statistical analysis ppt made by some mid level MBA must have proposed this and got a promotion.
This is why it falls on us to not simply put up with what little they expect us to settle for. Ask about their privacy and bathroom doors when booking and if caught by surprise by a lack of an actual door or inadequate privacy demand a new room, or go elsewhere taking a refund if necessary.<p>I have to admit that I'm getting very tired of the unsustainable push for endless growth driving companies everywhere to jack up prices as high as people will tolerate and then also delivering the least and worst product/service they can possibly get away with on top of it. It means that everything is getting shittier unless you're willing to spend insane amounts of money to get what used to be standard and more affordable.<p>It's becoming exhausting maintaining a list of businesses I no longer want to give money to and products/services I won't pay for. This is especially true as companies change names, redesign products, and buy up one another. the list just grows and grows all the time.
> Some statistical analysis ppt made by some mid level MBA must have proposed this and got a promotion.<p>Not necessarily. Just like natural evolution doesn't requite its participants to understand themselves, neither does the market require anyone at a business to understand why they are successful.
> Until recently, you never had to think about it. But as it becomes more common it will become something you might want to consider.<p>This is closely related to a phenomenon I don't understand.<p>Pretty much <i>every</i> proposed regulatory change (for example: letting drivers pump their own gas at gas stations) meets a fierce counterargument that says "currently, no one considers this situation at all because only one state of affairs is legal. If that thoughtlessness continues after we legalize other possibilities, TERRIBLE THINGS COULD HAPPEN!".<p>But obviously this protasis† can never occur and so it doesn't matter what's in the apodosis.<p>† <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/protasis#English" rel="nofollow">https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/protasis#English</a> (2)
I definitely do not return to a hotel where the bathroom was sub-par...<p>And likewise I absolutely return to a hotel where the bathroom was good when going back to a city.<p>I'm mostly talking about the water pressure for the shower here, but you get the idea.
I want a hot bath after a long day. I don't have one at home so you best believe I'm having one when I'm travelling.
It could discourage repeat customers?<p>There is a website dedicated to it. It would take someone posting that to a few social media accounts and for hotel search sites to put "has an almost see through glass bathroom door" result category, and I think it could turn from a sneaky money maker into a reason people avoid the place.
My wife is keenly interested in whether or not there is a bathtub. Keenly.
Mine is as well. So far the only way I have found to locate such increasingly-rare rooms is booking.com followed by calling the hotel. For all their sins, Booking at least lets you search for hotels that have bathtubs in any rooms at all.<p>Aside from rinsing off after a pool or ocean swim, or when she is actually <i>dirty</i> (e.g., after yard work), I think I have known her to voluntarily take three or four showers in 25 years together.
Really? It's one of my main discriminators. The quality of the bathroom is the highest signal indicator of the quality of the hotel. I look for a stone shower basin, a rainhead, a bath tub, or at a least glass shower door... if it looks bolted onto a plastic box, I'm not staying there.<p>If they're cheaping out on the shower then I'm not going to trust the mattress is clean or the linens are soft.
You don't, because you expect there to be a toilet, a sink, a shower, towels, a mirror etc. there. There's nothing to consider, it's just expected to be there. Same for the bathroom door.<p>But if i got burned once or twice by a room without a bathroom door, i'd start checking that too and avoiding places that don't have them.
I do. Most of my travel is alone for work so I don’t care about a door, but I always call ahead and refuse to book hotels with shower curtains.
It sometimes feels like hotels are taunting us: <i>"we're behaving like a cartel, whaddaya gonna do? Regulate us!? We've already tricked you into thinking that's socialism!"</i>
It's a weird flex for a time when airbnb and vrbo have options all over the place.
With hotels you're playing the lottery but there is generally a baseline consistent with the brand of the hotel.<p>With those two you're also playing the lottery but there is no baseline.<p>With a hotel, you're also generally paying when you check-in and can thus refuse a subpar room and argue with a real, mostly-reasonable person.<p>With those two, you get charged before you even enter the place and any arguments will be with a bot or a call center drone in a third-world country pretending to be one.
>whaddaya gonna do? Regulate us!? We've already tricked you into thinking that's socialism!"<p>More like "I dare you, regulation will only further increase our moat"
One way to get hotels to bring back the bathroom doors and other amenities from yesteryear is through cultural warfare of sorts. When all your customers consider and talk off these not as hotel rooms but cheap motel rooms or even brothel rooms:) Hotels aren't going to like it and eventually it'll catch up with them.<p>With the rise in AIRBNB and other similar competing services I expected hotels to compete back by lowering costs and improving conditions. Was I wrong, oh boy..
Maybe, and also 100% guarantees I’ll never stay there with my family.
But do you check if the hotel has bathroom doors? If yes, where? You call up and ask? And trust the person on the phone is honest?<p>Most people would assume bathrooms have doors. It is just exhausting to have to check for every small, commonsensical, super basic detail
The more I travel with my family the more things I add to my list of things to ask about.
It's extremely exhausting, welcome to modern America. Where you can't trust shit from anyone. Everyone is lying, everything is a scam, everything is stupid just cuz, and it feels more and more like the world around you is being specifically designed to piss you off as much as possible.<p>I just want to give businesses my money in exchange for goods and services. Is that asking too much?
"Buyer beware! You are responsible for checking for X!" is a lame excuse, and just enables the worst possible behavior from vendors and service providers. I shouldn't have to check 500 things every time I choose to do business with someone! This is madness.<p>Imagine some future hotel service trend where, right after the customer checks in, the checkin agent punches the customer in the face, by policy. I shouldn't have to check beforehand whether this is a "face punch" hotel or a "non face punch" hotel.<p>We shouldn't all have to live our lives with Caveat Emptor as some sort of horrible default societal moral framework.
Perhaps not, but I'd definitely check Yelp, and I'd also definitely pass word to the next Yelper or travel website viewer who comes along. That's not perfect, obviously, but those poor reviews really do start to take money out of the scummy owners' pockets.
New business idea... set up a truck with automated lockers on it next to the hotel and rent folding doors to the occupants for $20/night.
The logical conclusion here would be to have no door for the bathroom, but to have specifically the toilet in a separate subroom.<p>But I don’t think this makes much sense anyways. The hotel industry is not one that thrives from repeat patronage, and “the bathroom has no doors” features rarely in marketing.
I honestly think it's more about "things that look better on instagram" that has infected virtually every hospitality related experience I've had in the last few years. A room that photographs well or a meal that looks ridiculous are more important than a room that's actually comfortable or a meal that tastes good.
Oh wow, I actually never realized this was the motivation. I thought there was just a hotel convention somewhere and they decided bathroom doors don't look good on social media so they're not gonna do them anymore.<p>This makes much more sense.
The Standard in NYC has a straight up clear glass wall between the shower and the bed. Very sexy. Very not good for platonic friends sharing a room :)
How does a family of 3 or 4 use this room according to this logic?
Too bad, what have they done!!
Of course, you could just upgrade to a suite, at three times the price. Hey where are you going? btw the minibar water is only $7 but if you prepay, you can get it discounted to $6! for a bottle of water!
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I applaud this effort. Now I wish someone would do one for hotels where the shower controls seem designed for maximum confusion. I'm pretty sure there are conventions for hotel shower designers where they compete to make showers that spray you with freezing or scalding water or simply make it impossible for water to come out at all, while the controls look maximally pretty.
A toilet door is a basic no brainer. Unless you want any others to watch or - if travelling alone - you want your bedroom area to smell the same as your freshly shat-in toilet...<p>But then hotel do dumb things like fully enclose a barfridge in a cupboard too.
It’s also a hygiene issue. Bathrooms are notoriously covered in fecal particles, one of the reason why flushing with the lid up is not a great idea. Having a door at least provides some protection against your bed also being covered in them.
I hate to say it, but lowkey airflow is not stopped by doors.
There’s a big difference between a ocasional whiff and a massive stinker.
Bathroom should have extractor fan. I havent smelt a shit outside of my home bathroom for this reason.
It probably is.<p>Door closed + extractor makes gaps have negative pressure, no way anything goes into the room.
Extractor, what I’d call a bathroom fan, fair that effectively stops airflow, I’ll go with “close enough to negative pressure for civvies that they fool themselves” (I.e. ain’t actual negative pressure like a cdc lab)<p>A door stops airflow? No.
>A door stops airflow? No.<p>I mean, it literally does. Put something that smokes in a bathroom, open the window, close the door, and caulk the gaps. See how much smoke phases through the door.
This trend is the absolute bane of early-stage startups.<p>When you are bootstrapping and flying a team to a conference, sharing twin rooms is standard procedure to stretch the runway. There is nothing that kills the vibe of a "strategic roadmap discussion" faster than realizing you have zero acoustic privacy from your co-founder using the toilet 3 feet away.<p>It feels like hostile architecture specifically designed to break the "business frugality" use case. We ended up switching to Airbnbs solely because of this.
When I stayed in the Dubai airport hotel not only was it $550 a night for a basic tiny room and there were there no bathroom doors but there was a GIANT painting of the king of dubai both in the bathroom and the bedroom! The one in the bedroom was almost floor to ceiling size. I hung a towel over him. It was super creepy and felt like his eyes were watching you as you walked around the room.
Impossible to sex near that painting as the speaker will begin talking at you half way through!
> I hung a towel over him.<p>Be careful, that's probably a felony.
In <i>The Good Soldier Svejk</i>, the tavern keeper Pavilec is arrested for taking down his portrait of Emperor Franz Josef, because the flies were shitting on it.
Seems like it. Randy from Cupertino should probably avoid visiting UAE again.<p><a href="https://uaelegislation.gov.ae/en/legislations/2131" rel="nofollow">https://uaelegislation.gov.ae/en/legislations/2131</a><p>> Section Two: Crimes and Penalties; 2. Slander, challenge, or insult <i>the Divine Essence</i>:<p>> Anyone who commits one of the acts stipulated in Clauses (2, 3, and 5) of Article (4) of this Decree by Law, by any means of expression or other forms or by using any means, shall be punished by imprisonment for a period of not less than one year and a fine of not less than (AED 250,000) two hundred and fifty thousand UAE Dirhams and not exceeding (AED 1,000,000) one million UAE Dirhams, or by one of these two penalties.<p>While this is obviously grotesque, it's both funny, sad and telling that the overarching name for the legislation is <i>Federal Law by Decree Concerning Combating Discrimination, Hatred and Extremism</i>. UAE learned this from the US/Europe.
Just returned from Malaga in Spain. The EasyHotel we stayed in had frosted glass cubicle for the toilet and shower. But there were huge gaps in between. Haha!
More than 200 hotels already on this website. Wouldn't this be much more useful as an OpenStreetMap tag so people can find and share these good/bad hotels in whatever front-end they like?<p>There does not seem to be a tag for it yet. That there are apparently hundreds of instances, and it being definitely something you'd want to select for, makes me think it's a good fit for OSM. Currently, hotels can already have tags like phone number, reception opening hours, WiFi fees, etc. It might even be a good fit for the toilets:* namespace, since this has overlap with toilets in (semi-)public spaces offering different levels of privacy
The purpose of no bathroom doors is to limit their use to single people or couples. They want business travelers to get a separate rooms or upgrade.
No, it is because doors take up a lot of space. A typical door is 3 feet wide, and requires 7-14 feet of empty space to operate [0]. You can't place any furniture, toiletries, or luggage racks in this space. For a typical hotel room of 300sq feet, this "dead space" represents 3-5% of the room. Removing the door allows hotels to decrease the size of each room, and fit more rooms on each floor, increasing profit.<p>This is why many newer hotels choose to sliding doors, which barely take up any space, or just remove doors entirely.<p>[0] For a door of r=3 feet, A door swings a minimum of 90 degrees, which takes 3.14 * 3*2 / 4 = 7.065 sq feet at a minimum to 14.1 sq feet to operate.
I can assure you not even single people nor couples want doorless bathrooms.
Single people or couples don't <i>want</i> doorless bathrooms, but they will probably <i>tolerate</i> them if forced into a room with that setup. Other types of travelers might not be so open-minded, and that's the point that OP is arguing about. Provide the bare minimum tolerable experience to your target audience and punish the customers you don't want.
Couples that poop together stay together.
Why? I'd prefer a doorless bathroom.<p>One of my bedrooms at home opens into an open concept bathroom. No doors, vaulted ceilings, open.<p>I really don't get this.<p>I don't want to feel claustrophobic.<p>Edit: Like these -<p><a href="https://34stjohn.com/blogs/inspiration/how-to-pull-off-an-open-plan-bedroom-bathroom-design" rel="nofollow">https://34stjohn.com/blogs/inspiration/how-to-pull-off-an-op...</a>
You have the choice to open the door if you wish. This choice has been removed from those who prefer privacy if the door doesn't exist.
From your link:<p>Making Privacy Work<p>Make sure to address the elephant in the room - privacy. Consider installing electrochromic glass panels that switch from clear to opaque. Or take inspiration from Japanese architecture with sliding wooden screens that double as art pieces.
Your sample link's examples seem conspicuously toilet-free to me.<p>But even without talking about toilets, I don't like airy/drafty feelings when I'm wet, so I'd hate most of those designs, myself.
I love pooping and having my dog visit. A little someone to talk to rather than scroll.
So you can take a dump with some privacy, obviously.
I don't want a room to smell literally like shit.
You live alone?
Whether the room has a door on the bathroom or not, business travellers should be getting separate rooms... Over dozens of trips, the only time I've ever shared was a two-bedroom apartment when I went with a colleague for a conference (one had an ensuite so we had separate bathrooms as well as separate bedrooms with doors).<p>I wouldn't be OK with going on trips (or sending people I manage on trips) where two people had to sleep in the same room, I wouldn't consider that acceptable...
I agree, it's a huge HR risk. It used to be common with British companies sending people abroad. I can't imagine they still do it today.
20 years ago a shared room was kinda the go-to for conferences and business meetings seemed like at companies I worked at. It was normal to share a 2 bed room with another guy, but all the hotels we ever stayed at had a bathroom with door that closed and didn't open straight to the bedroom. It also had a curtain or at least a frosted door if someone happened to open the door.
I'd imagine that most couples would still want to be able to close a door when they're on the toilet.<p>I'd rather sleep in a shared room at a hostel and use a toilet in a stall in a communal bathroom than in a hotel room without a proper door on the bathroom.
> I'd imagine that most couples would still want to be able to close a door when they're on the toilet.<p>Right?<p>My wife and I don't use the toilet in front of each other. Even when we lived in an apartment with only 1 bathroom. You gotta use the toilet while one is showering? You can hold it.<p>Even when I'm home alone and don't expect her to come home any time soon, I close the door. I just feel so exposed with the door open. <i>Even when I lived alone</i>, I'm pretty sure I would close the door.
Unlikely, given that you don't know it has no door until after you get there.<p>And also, when I travel with my kids, I still want to close the door.
I'm in a committed long term relationship. I absolutely do not want to shit in front of my partner (nor do they have any desire to watch).
Not to mention these modern showers that have a slab of glass on the 1st 3rd but then open door for the rest such that water leaks all over the place. Looks great on insta but sucks at being a shower.
This is a huge theme (for lack of a better word) in Bangkok... I have seen countless condos with glass box bathrooms. My wife and I love each other deeply but we have 0 desire to make eye contact while pooping. Our daughter is another case but we both hope she will grow out of it.
Only once have I seen anything like this. The room had a bathroom door, but also a giant hole cut out in the wall so that everyone in the room could peer into the bathroom for some reason. We demanded a different room with a complete wall separating the bathroom and got one (a nicer one at their expense too).
The Brookstreet Hotel in Kanata (just outside Ottawa), Ontario has bathrooms with windows in them.<p>There's a shade inside the glass, but still... did I really need to open the blinds to my <i>bathroom?</i><p><a href="https://www.brookstreethotel.com/rooms/double-queen" rel="nofollow">https://www.brookstreethotel.com/rooms/double-queen</a>
On the topic of hotel baths & showers, Dave Barry has this hilarious piece. Innovation in hotel shower controls has lead to UI/UX getting messed up.<p><a href="https://davebarry.substack.com/p/hotel-showers" rel="nofollow">https://davebarry.substack.com/p/hotel-showers</a>
I’m glad that someone has built this and made it their personal crusade, but this is a problem that I can’t relate to having. I find it far more uncomfortable/intimate to sleep next to someone (even if in separate beds) than to shower or use the toilet in front off someone. Snoring, farting, dream talking, morning erections, etc.<p>Somehow I seem to be in the minority with this opinion. But if we’re sharing a room we’re probably pretty comfortable with each other.
This is a thing? I've only stayed at Premier Inns (a budget UK hotel chain) and have never heard of anything like this happening.
High end hotels are more likely to follow the fads in my experience. The cheap ones have a door but it might be damaged
I've seen it in the US in smaller dense urban rooms and it's honestly something I've never thought about.<p>It's honestly something it would never occur to me to write a blog post about. But I guess it's one of those things that some people are sensitive about.
I first encountered it at a Hotel du Vin (UK) about 10 years ago.
On insta I'm seeing more stories about people reviewing/mocking OPS (Open plan shi.tters) on rental websites like rightmove.<p>Boldest choice thus far was the one with the OPS next to the kitchenette.<p>There are some very strange people out there...
Possibly even more important than a door is an extractor fan. Sometimes two people gotta do their business and get out in rapid succession.
Glass box bathrooms are common in lower end Chinese hotels. So they don’t really have a door, and you are separated from the rest of the room by a glass pane. Weird, but not the worst I’ve experienced. The worst is when the shower straddles the squat toilet.<p>I really prefer bathrooms with a separate door for the separate toilet from the rest of it. And the shower has to be a walk in, but bathtubs are really only common in North America outside of higher end resorts that have both a separate walk in shower and a bathtub.
Basically, just like the airlines, the hotels are saying if you are such a broke destitute to be able to upgrade to our premium tier, then go suffer in the smell of your own shit.
Perhaps I say at all the wrong (right?) hotels but... I stay in close to two dozen North American hotels a year and I haven't noticed this trend? Many have pocket doors but I can't think of a hotel in recent memory that was missing it completely. I usually partially close them so it's not as cold getting out of a shower so I hope I would have taken note if it wasn't there.
I am a frequent traveller(literally have the star alliance card).<p>Although I’ve never stayed in a hotel without bathroom doors, they frequently have sliding doors which don’t seal properly. So that’s the first thing I look out for nowadays.
Take a dump in the lobby bathroom, and crap on the seat and clog the toilet with paper, maybe they will learn
I wonder if this is because hotels are in a race to seem "cool" and "edgy." Will this trend get to the point where they cut a hole on the middle of the mattress and tell you to just lie down and shit right there?
Just when you think you’ve seen all the corporate/business fuckery in this world. I already ask stuff like — is it a non-smoking room or not, do not use a strong room freshener when prepping the room (or better save money and skip freshener), etc. Now do I have to ask — whether your room has a bathroom door or not? Fucking hell! Hopefully, such fucked-up trends don’t reach this corner of the world at the speed and efficiency with which COVID did.
Nice Collection! Glass box are good for couples and all. But if you're traveling with group friends, it could be awkward.
I noticed in East Asia, they also have some tendency to have floor to ceiling windows through the whole bathroom to the bedroom, sometimes with no curtain either. I am not sure who this is for
The legend is that if you invite a lady for the night, it's so you and she can keep an eye on each other, in case either is worried about one going through their stuff/wallet while the other is in the bathroom.<p>I stayed in such a hotel, and getting up to go the bathroom I noticed someone had flicked a business-card-sized advertisement under the door, for said companionship...
I've seen that in japan, but they had a switch that would electronically switch off the window (it would become opaque white).
I've been talking about making a site like this for years! It is easily the number two criteria I have when looking for hotels after location.
Wait, are hotels now taking bathroom doors away? It’s awful enough when they don’t let you lock the door.
Ok so it's not just me. I keep staying in hotels where there's a bathroom door, but it's partially see-through. Clearly they were ok spending the money for a door but decided they don't want to give privacy. Didn't bother me, but it stuck out.
Worst I've ever seen was a bathroom that didn't have walls!<p>Well, there was this hip-high divider wall, barely enough to hide my cheeks while I took a shit. Forget about masking sounds and smell.<p>I generally enjoy eye contact with my wife, but not while I'm pooping!
I only know about this because of the scene in the White Lotus.
Have had some where the shower is just glass panels for the room to see (and no, it wasn't <i>that</i> kind of hotel).<p>Another hotel in a small town here in Germany where it had shutter-style doors and where the roof of the bathroom didn't go all the way to the actual ceiling, so you can hear everything.<p>Both in the name of aesthetic, clearly.
My first no-bathroom door hotel experience was 2017 in a hotel in Vientiane. We were so baffled we asked, and they proudly explained that this was a "European bathroom". It was literally set up so that you had full view of the room (and vice versa) when taking a shit.
Forget the bathroom doors; can we at least bring back proper shower stall design that uses full-length doors instead of the 1/3-length piece of glass? More glaringly, those of you who know the Hilton MUC for instance, it's utterly mind blowing what they've done: the shower stall floor is on the same plane as the rest of the bathroom floor -- i.e., it's not sunken at all -- and it's not sloped or otherwise angled, either, to prevent water from seeping under the door and flood the whole floor. And this isn't like one-off bug in one room: we've stayed their countless times, in different rooms, and every single one suffers this problem.
Love this. I was super scared the first time i was booking travel to Europe with a newish girlfriend.
One of my favourite hotels in SE Asia has this problem. (I won't name and shame, since when we complained they said it's going to be fixed soon in a redesign.)<p>On the topic, though... I want a desk that isn't made of glass so that I can use a mouse. Optical mice have been the standard for years, and of course I don't carry a mousepad. Who thinks glass desktops are good?
We need to raise the price of our rooms. Take the doors off the hinges in half, call them 'standard', and the rest are now 'premium'.
For the rest of the world: it seems way more common in the US/americas to share rooms than it is elsewhere.<p>Rooms with two queen-sized beds sitting next to each other are pretty standard, even in mid and high range hotels, while I’ve never seen those elsewhere.<p>So yeah people share these rooms as it’s usually quite cheaper than getting two rooms. I did it with friends and my in laws.
More useful than this would be speed test results from the hotel wifi.<p>The <i>free</i> wifi in my last hotel in Tokyo was 800Mbps symmetric. I’m ruined forever.
Related:<p><i>What happened to bathroom doors? [video]</i><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFPGUTyo9Yk" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFPGUTyo9Yk</a><p>(<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46062242">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46062242</a>)
The people's champ
I wish I could upvote this multiple times.
I'm interested to see where zoning laws permit this kind of stuff.
My state does not require a door on a guest bathroom in a hotel. A bathroom serving employees and the public in a hotel is required to have a self-closing door, but the law does not say anything about doors on guest only bathrooms.<p>I couldn’t find anything in the International Building Code about bathroom doors aside from minimum opening width, but I don’t have access to the full code. I’d have to ask an architect or GC to verify.<p>> 4625.1200 TOILET REQUIREMENTS.<p>> Every hotel, motel, and lodging house shall be equipped with adequate and conveniently located water closets for the accommodation of its employees and guests. Water closets, lavatories, and bathtubs or showers shall be available on each floor when not provided in each individual room. Toilet, lavatory, and bath facilities shall be provided in the ratio of one toilet and one lavatory for every ten occupants, or fraction thereof, and one bathtub or shower for every 20 occupants, or fraction thereof. Toilet rooms shall be well ventilated by natural or mechanical methods. <i>The doors of all toilet rooms serving the public and employees shall be self-closing.</i> Toilets and bathrooms shall be kept clean and in good repair and shall be well lighted and ventilated. Hand-washing signs shall be posted in each toilet room used by employees. Every resort shall be equipped with adequate and convenient toilet facilities for its employees and guests. If privies are provided they shall be separate buildings and shall be constructed, equipped, and maintained in conformity with the standards of the commissioner and shall be kept clean.<p>> <a href="https://www.revisor.mn.gov/rules/4625.1200/" rel="nofollow">https://www.revisor.mn.gov/rules/4625.1200/</a>
Not sure why it would be a zoning thing.
Zoning does a lot of weird things. My zoning laws require me to put immediate hot water at every faucet. there is no code requiring it. There is zero safety issue.
It sounds like your local AHJ has adopted additional requirements above and beyond the Uniform Plumbing Code, this isn’t out of the ordinary but that seems excessive when a hot water recirculation pump on a time-of-day timer would be far more cost effective, it’s a $200 pump and an extra 20 feet of water supply line.<p>Does someone in local government own a plumbing contractor or plumbing supply company? That’d be my guess anyways.
Likely for the same reason that fans are often a building code requirement.
isnt the compromise usually that the stalls have fully enclosed doors if the bathroom doesnt?<p>Personally I like having both. Doors are great for a variety of reasons, not just privacy.
This is some new age Costanza shit.<p>Joking aside, I find this far more in newer European hotels for whatever reason (though I'm sure it exists stateside and elsewhere too). My wife and I at this point just agree to tell each other when we're going to occupy it because we don't feel like it getting weird. Feels like - if the conspiracy-ish theory of it being used to dissuade people sharing rooms is true - they're inadvertently throwing out the couples dynamic.<p>To borrow another Seinfeld bit: there's good naked and bad naked. The glass door problem invites the latter.
Can we have a website for these things too?<p><pre><code> - ceiling lights
- shower curtains or glass box
- 7 ft tall (minimum) shower head
- firm mattress</code></pre>
I wonder if the bathroom for the hotel staff is doorless too.
This is done, presumably, so people dont buddy up to save money on rooms. They'll be too shy or modest. So if its 4 people traveling, say 2 couples, they'll rent two rooms instead of one.
Then why offer twin beds?
There are two possibilities:<p>They find this out in advance and find a 'normal' hotel and book a room there.<p>They find this out when they get to the hotel, complain to everyone, write bad reviews, never come back.<p>Lose-lose for the hotel (unless it's some remote destination with just one hotel there, but those are rare)
No doubt this same hotel is proud of their green credentials.
I can not even imagine sharing a room with another couple under any circumstances
Along with a closing door, a nice loud exhaust fan is appreciated.
That would be weird and uncomfortable traveling with a kid. Is it geographic or is this madness taking over the world? Seems like something that would get a place destroyed in reviews and lose them business.
London, Marriot, W. Sink in the bedroom. Just No.<p><a href="https://dynamic-media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-o/2e/9a/95/bf/guest-bathroom-walk-in.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://dynamic-media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-o/2e/9...</a>
Anecdotal, but this reminded me of when I attended a conference in las vegas, booked two to a room, and unbeknownst to us or the booking agency, the hotel had a large window between the shower and the sleeping area that had no kind of shade or cover at all. It was extremely awkward - ultimately I and the other occupant agreed on being out of the room when the other showered.
This site showed me a few links, like booking.com. Booking.com took 40 seconds to load with all its weird JavaScript, popups, and blocks. Is this the norm to have extremely heavy sites like this?<p>One doorless bathroom if you are interested:<p><a href="https://cf.bstatic.com/xdata/images/hotel/max1024x768/91932332.jpg?k=e689a23450e979921b4e081c6e8395f254aa57f024560df3bcf4bdae1e4f5fc9&o=" rel="nofollow">https://cf.bstatic.com/xdata/images/hotel/max1024x768/919323...</a>
If this is a trend, I have not noticed it. Are there particular brands and/or regions where there is happening?
Also bring back brighter lighting?<p>Is it just me, or have hotel rooms gotten dimmer?<p>It seems less cheerful.
I’m in the states and haven’t seen this despite a lot of travel but I’ll be looking out for it now!
had no idea this was a 'thing' .
Well now I feel like a pretty smug 1%-er since I've never been in a hotel room with no bathroom door.
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If you're cofortable enough to share a hotel room, you should be willing to watch them poop. Lighten up.
Always interesting to see the privacy fear of americans. The rest of the world isn’t afraid of non-sexual intimacy with friend/family.