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.
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 :)
Sounds like the various RAF bases I did stints at as a cadet - the ablutions were just a great big room full of loos, showers, and bathtubs, all with dark brown water, and absolutely zero privacy of any variety.
The exposed loos were a novelty for me, at school we at least had shoulder height partitions - but we had communal showers and baths so it wasn’t a huge leap.
I also spent a year or so living in a studio where the loo was in the kitchen area - we at least installed a curtain.
On a trip I took with my father-in-law, the first morning he waltzed right into the little hotel room bathroom while I was showering (in a glass shower) and proceeded to sit on the throne and take a crap. I was confused at his lack of basic respect for privacy, and then remembered he'd been a US Navy guy for many years. Military folks just get used to no privacy in such matters.
Growing up in West Virginia, I was in a moderately sized city (40k people) but when traveling to smaller high schools for football games, you'd often find a shared latrine as the bathroom, and everyone who needed to pee would just crowd around a long sink thing and just let 'er rip. No idea what it was like in the ladies'
I would suspect that this is highly jurisdiction-dependent. Around here (random EU country), it would instantly make all studio flats unrentable, so I don’t think that’s the case. Most of them have a bathroom door, though.
Seeing it was advanced science, authorities wanted to add venues to encourage constant communication and collaboration. Always working for the people and the state! No time wasted.
This is similar to the arrangements of public toilets in ancient Rome, except for them the seats are arrangemed in a circle.
Everything old is new again.
In London's Shard, the gent's toilets of the observation deck (on approx the 70th floor) have glass walls behind the urinals so if you look straight ahead while using them it is as if you are peeing on the city of London from a great height.
The old Warner stand at Lord's cricket ground used to be where the press watched from (before the new Media Centre was built). The urinals in old stand used to have windows above them looking out over the pitch so that the journalists wouldn't miss anything whilst they urinated.
I always enjoy a "loo with a view", including that one at the Shard. I also enjoyed the outdoor one I utilized in Botswana that had the toilet isolated from camp behind a small wooden fence, but while sitting on the throne you are facing out from a slight elevation onto a sweeping 180 degree view of the savanna, with antelopes, giraffes, and elephants roaming around.
The W in Santiago, Chile, has a full-length floor-to-ceiling glass window in the shower, with the morning sun shining right in. Your other option is a bathtub set in the middle of the bedroom itself. Mercifully the WC has a door.
"Back in my day," Lake Helen (~10,000 ft) on Mt. Shasta had a pit toilet without walls that faced the valley. Depending on the weather, it could even be above the clouds/fog and IIRC on a clear day you could see the ocean.
I've been on something similar in Washington State. Forget where. Maybe below Shuksan someplace. While wilderness experiences are obviously a different matter, I suspect that people here freaking out about lack of doors or whatever wouldn't necessarily be comfortable with how many deal with climbing/camping/canoeing/etc. People just look the other way.
At a road stop somewhere at 5000 meters on a mountain somewhere in Sichuan (a day out of Chengdu?), the latrine was two slippery 2-by-4s over an open pit. I’m really glad I just had to pee, because that was terrifying.
Pretty sure I went to a bar in NYC that still had a urinal trough running directly below the bar as you were standing there... so one wouldn't need to leave the bar to take a leak. This was 30 years ago. McSorleys maybe?
There's a hotel in Edinburgh with boutique pretensions I stayed in that had smoked glass (only) around the toilet. That was a pretty annoying arrangement for me and my wife. Luckily they had regular loos in reception.
wow, it is actually the one me and my SO stayed at! specifically this[0] kind of room. when reading your description i immediately thought about this one. we did have a gentleman's agreement, "can you please put on your noise cancelling headphones and don't look back, i gotta..."
only stayed there for one or two nights, it says a lot when a campervan gives more comfort than a hotel room :)
In between the beds?? Does that mean the shower was right in the middle of the room ? So that it would be impossible to place a double bed ? This is the weirdest part to me
But what's the logic? I have never seen it but it doesn't sound good even aesthetically (which is usually the justification for all kinds of violations of common sense). So what are they thinking?
A number of hotels that were built with this lack of privacy (including one I love - but its been fixed there though - more subtle worse as you could see in from the stairs) were all designed by the same architect who is said to have had a kink about looking into toilets.
Maybe he started it, and as his hotels are (otherwise) lovely it made it part of a cool aesthetic and was therefore copied?
I've only really encountered glass walls for the shower room in Asia, and in almost every case there's been a curtain that could be drawn across the glass if required.
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.
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.
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.
In Hyperion, 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.
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.
We installed an outdoor shower at our house. There's nothing as nice as a cold shower outdoors on a really hot day. It feels so luxurious that I can pretend I'm a rich person instead of lower- to mid-middle class.
We once stayed in a beach house with an outdoor shower in South Africa. One morning I got up, took a shower (without my glasses, I am very short sighted) and went in for breakfast. About 20 minutes later my sister-in-law comes running into the house shouting that "there is a huge snake in the outside shower"
I've seen this. Sometimes, they have curtains. I don't really understand what the point is though. It's definitely not price. I would imagine that it's costlier to add a window to a wall than just to brick it. I thought it was to allow one to watch the TV while taking a shower or a bath. It's the most reasonable thing I could come up with.
It's to encourage e.g. two coworkers to get separate rooms instead of one room with separate beds. The increase in revenue is more than the construction cost.
People voting with their wallet are why Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Philip Morris, Frito-Lay, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Monsanto and Boeing are still in business.
And people voting with their wallet have led to literally hundreds of thousands of companies going out of business.
Or perhaps the individual's dollar is not really that effective. It's like plastic recycling -- it is a way to make the consumer feel like it is their job to fix things that they really have no responsibility for or control over.
The individuals isnt, but as soon as you attempt to organise a widespread boycott they will come for you. BDS type movements are sucessful, that's why they often get so much push back.
This erosion of privacy is being taken to extremes.
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.
It was quite shocking for me as somebody from eastern Europe to see ie Danish or Dutch homes having no curtains whatsoever, so me walking on sidewalk looking at them 3m from me behind the windows having breakfast, in pyjamas, kids doing early morning nasal cavities treasure hunt with finger etc.
Same for living rooms and bedrooms (those I would expect to at least have some curtains aside).
Still not used to it, i like my privacy and ability to shamelessly say scratch my butt when alone if needed.
Haha dutch guy here... Who cares? Our bedrooms have curtains! Actually living rooms usually as well, but we are reluctant in closing them I guess. Also, you'll often find patches of intransparant glass to prevent directly looking in.
But then the horror to go to the US and find toilets in i.e. hospitals that don't have doors closing all the way. You can literally stare someone in the eye through the crack in the door, or over the door, while he's taking a dump. Holy cow. Imagine the sounds echoing through the collective toilet room. My god. I'm still recovering from my visit to the prestigious Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Having a s* together with someone in the next stall is a whole new level of intimacy I was not ready for.
When I lived in NL, it was explained to me that closing the curtains would imply, in some sort of weird Calvinistic belief, that the occupants were engaged in some nefarious activities; therefore the curtains are left open to show that the occupants have nothing to hide and are engaged only in wholesome activities.
The other side of the social contract obliges passers-by to not look inside.
The other strange thing that I found is that some apartments have little spy mirrors mounted on the exterior wall to allow the occupants to monitor what's going on in the street.
> the occupants were engaged in some nefarious activities; therefore the curtains are left open to show that the occupants have nothing to hide and are engaged only in wholesome activities.
That sounds utterly dystopian. Whose business is it if we want to shag in the morning?
It’s also completely self-defeating. Nobody can prove that they never did anything that someone else would disapprove. There are solid reasons behind the "innocent until proven guilty" principle.
I’m sorry, do you mean Orwell’s “1984”? Because all I can find for “1948” is an Israeli autobiographical novel, that, as far as I can tell, doesn’t resemble “We”. (Although, imho, “1984” is quite different from “We” as well.)
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.
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.
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.
There was a time, over a year ago now, when I was working on a project that required some very raunchy, dirty, absolute gutter language.
ChatGPT would only get about 30% of the way there, and never further. It stayed restrained, always.
But ChatGPT + image gen? This produced unfiltered amazement.
It played out like this: Tell the bot to generate an image involving some ludicrously filthy text backstory, and it would generate and display a prompt for Dall-E. But that generated prompt seemed to bypass the filters and could be absolute trash -- plain, no nonsense, dirt-nasty holy-fuckballs craptacularity.
Dall-E would refuse the prompt, of course, but it remained in the chat log for perusal.
Later, they made the generated prompt disappear when Dall-E refused. (This may in fact be my fault. I sent it on some pretty deep dives.)
And nowadays, it seems that we don't get to see the generated prompt at all, even when Dall-E accepts a (very normal, not pushing boundaries at all) prompt and generates an image.
But for a minute there: I did get to peer into depths of the wildly creative foulness that the bot can concoct. What we see above (in GP comment) isn't even scratching the surface.
(I didn't write about this little "jailbreak" anywhere at that time because I'm selfish, and I wanted to keep using it myself.)
You're joking, but my wife got us a box emitting bird sounds when the motion sensor is triggered. Suffice to say that it does absolutely nothing to mask the sounds that are produced on a toilet, it's just another ridiculous layer on top of it.
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.
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.
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.
> It's so common that the only logical explanation is that it is encouraged. It appears to be the norm and the non-slurper is the exception. I'm glad that your parents taught you to not slurp. You are an exceptional individual.
Anyway I’ve asked enough Chinese people about it to get the same answer. Not all do it, but some do it for these reasons.
They are saying it is normal to slurp noodles, which is what I said in my first reply to you. They did not say that they make 'loud mouth noises' as a sign of respect.
Ask this specific question: "Do you make loud mouth noises while you eat as a sign of respect, or is it just normal to slurp noodles?" and see what answer you get.
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).
In my part of the US, a lot of our "old" houses were built before indoor plumbing.
So when the plumbing was installed, obviously some went to the kitchen. And the bathroom, which previously didn't exist, was often an addition to (or a division from) the kitchen -- with a doorway [with a door] betwixt the kitchen and the bathroom -- because that made the plumbing easier.
IIRC, that particular feature disqualifies the home for financing with both the VA and with HUD for reasons of hygiene.
So by extension: According to VA and HUD, hygiene requires at least one door and at least one additional room of separation between the place where you shit and the place where you eat.
I assume my house in the Northeast didn't originally have indoor plumbing. The bathroom is upstairs; I assume it was carved off from one of the upstairs bedrooms or it was a closet/storage area of some sort. It's been redone a couple times since I moved in and it does have a door.
My present house (in Ohio) also has its singular bathroom upstairs. The bathroom is on top of the kitchen. Neither room is an addition -- as far as I can tell, it has always used this basic layout.
According to aerial photos, it was built in the 1950s. It resides within a small but very industrialized city that was positively booming at the time the home was constructed; it definitely included plumbing from the beginning.
A previous house in the same city was definitely built before indoor plumbing. It was even built before separate kitchens were considered normal or necessary. It originally had only two rooms downstairs, and two rooms upstairs. Heating and cooking would have been provided by a central stove (probably wood-fired, and with no ductwork).
While it was stick-built, it was initially only a step or two above a fairly primitive log cabin in function.
By the time I lived there, it also had a kitchen, laundry, downstairs bathroom, another upstairs bedroom, and subgrade basement added. The bathroom was part of the kitchen addition, and one entered the bathroom through the kitchen.
I've actually lived in three houses so far that were initially constructed like that -- with two rooms downstairs, and two upstairs.
Only one of those 3 had a bathroom that was separated from the kitchen by a room, and that one was perhaps the oldest: The floor joists for the first level were made from logs that were hewn flat[ish] on the top by hand, and that still hard bark on them. For that house, the bathroom was its own small separate single-story addition that jutted off of the side of [what had become] the dining room.
The house I grew up in was larger and much more-nicely finished in terms of things like woodworking and trim, but was also very old by US norms. It was built before both plumbing and electricity, though it included gas lighting (!) in every room. The partial basement, kitchen and downstairs bathroom were additions, but the bathroom connected to two different common rooms even though it was physically adjacent to the kitchen. There also was an upstairs bathroom, and which was created by taking part of the master bedroom and making it into a hallway while the the original bedroom closet became the bathroom (with a small and somewhat haphazard roof extension where the bathtub was).
Anyway: The point, other than that old houses present interesting evolutions, is that old houses often (but not always) had bathrooms attached to the kitchen -- and that we usually seek to keep them separated these days in newer construction, at least in the US.
I've also lived in a few different apartment buildings (many of which were "old", but all of which were initially intended to be apartment buildings), and all of those bathrooms were separated from the kitchen by a hallway.
And all of these bathrooms had doors. I don't understand the questioning of bathroom doors that I see here in some comments -- at all.
(I shall spare at this time the details of the house I once owned that had been an old farmhouse (with no gas, no lights, and no plumbing), and which had subsequently been divided into a triplex that contained a total of 17 distinct rooms. I could probably write a whole book about that place.)
My house is early 1800s (old farmhouse). Yes, the bathroom is pretty much right above the kitchen/pantry presumably because that was the most straightforward way to pipe it. Not even sure what is original and what was probably installed/built around 1900 or so.
No real opportunity to put in another bathroom and I've talked with contractors. You could squeeze a really minimalist half bath in the pantry but then you lose the pantry and the washer/dryer need to go somewhere and the basement isn't really a good idea for various reasons.
It helps. Know what also helps more? A second barrier after that one.
I’m sure a third would also help even more (front door of the house?) but most people consider that a bit excessive for daily use within their own domicile.
How much does the door help? I think generally people don't follow hygiene to the point that particles anywhere in the bathroom won't get tracked out of the bathroom. Don't get me started on people who touch their phones while eating...
tbh if I start worrying about poop particles in my day to day, I fear I'm one step closer to becoming a germaphobe. plus I feel if that's something that truly worries you, you'd start taking showers after each poop because clearly you will bring some poop particles with you when you leave anyway.
maybe this thread will end up being some kind of revelation, but I very much agree with the person you replied to. If I'm alone, I'm not bothered and the door may as well stay open
Sure, you can't get rid of everything. But you can mitigate a few things, and closing the door is such an easy fix... There's worrying too much, and there's not worrying enough
>A 2024 study showed evidence that even closing the lid may still lead to small viral particles escaping through gaps under the lid, resulting in viral cross contamination of the air and surfaces in a washroom
You can't get covid from contact infection. Or at least it's really, really hard. We could dig up studies for that, but you can also look at how food delivery which exploded in popularity all over the world during the lockdowns apparently did not transmit Covid.
You're moving the goal posts. Your assertion was that viruses don't last long outside the body. GP shot down that argument. You have not refuted their argument.
Even without being that strict about the discussion, I think GP was making the point that viruses can survive for many days, so stating that "you'd only be exposed to viruses from people you already share a room (or even bed) with." is an argument that requires some elaboration.
Have you just been trolling this thread for a few hours posting this copypasta to anyone who thinks not having bathroom doors is gross? This is the third or fourth one of these I've seen, and that's a pretty weird battle to fight, is all I'm saying.
Little pieces of shit can fly through the air quite far when the wc is flushed. As a former British person I had no idea about this, but was brought up to speed by US family members..
Update: this is why you should put the lid down to flush. But put it back up again after because <reasons>
So, would you state that you generally advocate for hinged surfaces in bathrooms, and being able to use them to adequately close/shield a larger space from a smaller space? ;)
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!
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.
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.
The problem here begins even before the mathematical issue - it's that web sites that live from listing bookings have an incentive to offer a way to delete reviews that are not in line with what the owner wants to see.
Honestly, the ratings on those sites are essentially useless anyway, because people are bad at reviewing.
I generally sample the lowest rating written reviews, to check if people are complaining about real stuff, or are just confused. For instance, if a hotel doesn't have a bar, some of the negative reviews will usually be about how the hotel doesn't have a bar; these can be safely ignored as having been written by idiots (it is not like the hotel is hiding the fact that it doesn't have a bar).
Occasionally some of the positive reviews are similarly baffling. Was recently booking a hotel in Berlin in January, and the top review's main positive comment about the hotel was that it had heating. Well, yeah, I mean, you'd hope so. I can only assume that the reviewer was a visitor from the 19th century.
The worst thing I’ve found with positive reviews is ones that are obviously fake/incentivized. I looked up reviews recently for a hotel that I used to stay at a lot for work, and had gone way downhill with many issues (broken ACs, mold, leaking ceilings, etc.). I was curious if they ever fixed their problems. I was at first surprised that they had a fairly positive overall review rating. But looking deeper, the many negative reviews were just crowded out by obviously fake reviews. Dead giveaways: every single one named multiple people by name. “Dave at the front desk was just so friendly and welcoming! Barbara the housecleaner did a fantastic job cleaning. And Steve the bartender just made my day! I love this hotel! 5 stars!” (Almost) nobody reviewing a hotel for real does that.
I've been in hotels with no bathroom door, but it has pretty much always been in tiny one-person rooms, where realistically there are not going to be two people in the room because they _would not fit_. I don't have a particular problem with it there.
(In that case, the reason it's done is fairly clearly that to accommodate a door they'd have to make the room bigger.)
Wow I've only stayed in about 100 but have seen several.
There are several variations:
- bathrooms with glass walls but with (glass) door
- bathrooms with walls but without door
- bathrooms with partially open walls, sometimes even with door :P
The worst was when I was once sharing a room with my daughter and the bathroom was one with glass walls and no shower curtain.
We decided to schedule our toilet visits and showers so the other one would not be in the room.
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.
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.
I run into this barn door style decently often at run of the mill Marriotts and Hiltons across the US. It seems like the chances are higher the newer the construction.
I've seen it at cheap hotels (EasyHotel and similar) but generally only in tiny single-person rooms (of the "single bed and just enough space to walk past it to the bathroom, which is the size of an airplane toilet" variety), where it's basically _fine_.
The weirdest one I stayed at so far was a hotel with tiny rooms in central London which had the upper half of the wall separating the bathroom made out of the kind of glass that becomes opaque with electricity. The switch to control that was outside of the bathroom, of course.
And I don't even travel that much, around once a year on average.
My most recent encounter with no-bathroom-door was in a hotel in London that was under 100 pounds a night. Though the room was so tiny that I'd honestly be happy enough to give them a pass on it.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, not one. I just googled for pictures of hotel bathrooms without doors out of curiosity and mostly see sliding and frosted glass doors. Is that what people are talking about?
I remember hotel in China several years ago where the bathroom had a door, but the wall between bathroom and sleeping area was unfrosted glass with no blind. Idiotic design trend.
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.
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.
Some years ago I stayed in a hotel outside London, and they apparently had a policy of saving as much as possible on soap bars.. so they used some horrible high-pH soap, very cheap looking. But it was nearly impossible to rinse it off.. took me fifteen minutes of hot water usage after I was, or should have been done with the shower. Whatever they saved in soap they lost many times over in water and even more in energy use.
And in a tourist place on an island farther south the room had an information binder which also asked that you shouldn't waste water as there weren't many natural resources for water there. However, the hot water came from the far end of the narrow, rectangular-shaped long hotel, and the pipes were outside and weren't insulated, they were completely bare. Whenever you turned off the hot water for a few minutes it would take some five minutes to get it back, water running, as the pipes got cold right away (there are many other usages for hot water than just using the shower - the rooms had kitchens). So of course all the guests used many times more water than they would have needed, not to mention the wasted heat. Totally baffling.
A more widespread piece of hostile hotel shower architecture is unlabelled controls. You need trial and error to work out which way is more water, and more heat.
I first thought this is nonsense, but then it made a lot sense. It might be an exception to the rule "never attribute to malice, that which can be explained by stupidity."
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.
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.
I've never really run into capacity problems with European washing machines, but the run times are definitely real. Most of them have a well-hidden faster mode. Still not as fast as a US machine on fast mode, but not the mandatory-default-by-law three-hour program.
Which would be even longer than 3h if some EU bureaucrat didn't realize that making the default unacceptably long for everyone will result in nobody using it.
My shiny new (2025) Bosch washing machine has a big button on the front which switches from the default 3 hour programme (for 40 degree wash) to 1hr 30m. Like, it's not very _well_ hidden :)
Interestingly, the 3 hour programme isn't really a 3 hour programme. If you use it, the timer will generally start at 3 hours and drop to an hour or so after 20 minutes. I have no idea what the heuristic is, and the manual is silent on the matter.
Isn’t this mostly drying time and the fact that hardly any driers in Europe are vented (so either heat pump based or condensation)? Or is this the uses less water type washing machines? Europe tends to have higher rates on water and electricity to make efficiency worth while.
My Bosch dishwasher takes 3 hours I guess due to efficiency, it seems reasonable. I didn’t go with a European washer dryer combo though (my laundry room has a vent and I’ve heard that heat pump tech still isn’t good enough).
> my laundry room has a vent and I’ve heard that heat pump tech still isn’t good enough
Heat pump dryers are in a slightly weird place in that they're boring old tech in Europe (they've been common for over a decade), and exciting new tech in the US. This means that dryers made for US preferences (physically larger, either three phase or <1500W, etc) are generally first or second models (and thus unreliable) while those made for European preferences are mature designs (and thus reliable).
I thought Europe used condensation and heat pump tech was still a new thing? Ok, 1997 with wide adoption around 2007 according to Google. I really wanted to give it a try, but with a vent right there it just didn’t seem worth it.
Really depends on how expensive your electricity is; a modern heat pump dryer consumes about 1kWh to dry an 8kg load, vs 2-3kWh for either vented or conventional condenser. Though, also depends on what's available to you and at what cost; my impression is that decent heat pump dryers are still very expensive in the US. My fairly high end Bosch one cost about 550eur this year; looking at Bosch's US website the roughly equivalent US model seems to cost $1500, somehow. That's around what they cost here 10-15 years ago.
The other advantage of heat pump dryers is that they operate at lower temperatures than the other types (so damage clothes less); on the negative side, they're slower.
Electricity is cheap here, 12 cents/KwH. I more liked the not ruining clothes aspect and not using the vent means I can get the unit closer to the wall. But I was worried about the smell complaints, my wife is really strict on that, also we have a combo so we can’t pipeline loads anymore. The drawback is that only Samsung makes a vented combo, an Samsung doesn’t have the best reputation. Heat pump was cheaper than vented in a combo at least, but only by 1-2 hundred bucks.
Ah, right. After having had a washer-dryer for about 15 years (they're very common in apartments and small houses in Ireland), would never have one again; when the existing one finally died I replaced with a separate washer and dryer.
I'm somewhat surprised anyone makes a vented washer-dryer at all.
I really like the extra space and not needing to transfer clothes when drying. To each their own though. Only Samsung is making a vented combo so far, and it’s a beast to install and drag up three stories of stairs.
Enough space for me, but you are right stacking would provide similar benefits. Don’t undervalue not needing to transfer clothes to your drier, and you never have to worry about mold and mildew in your washer.
No, this is just about washing machines, not washer-dryers or doing both in sequence.
Due to ecodesign legislation, I would assume that all machines that can be legally sold in the EU would count as "uses less water" in the US.
The dishwashers are another can of worms. My last one had an EU and a non-EU program, and you quickly learned to pick the "non-efficient" one if you actually wanted clean dishes.
My experience with dishwashers is that there are bad and good ones regardless of country. I had terrible and great dishwashers in the US, Australia, and Europe (basically in all countries there). The same with washing machines.
EU ecodesign rules require washing machines to meet certain low energy/water consumption standards in the "default" program. Washing machine designers implement this by making these programs ridiculously long. The EU has now capped them at 3h because they realized that if these programs grow even longer nobody will use them.
Even regular programs in front-loading machines (at least in the European countries I've been to, these make up the absolute vast majority of machines) are longer than typical top loaders. Top loaders are faster but put more wear on the clothes and use more energy and water. A regular, "non-EU" cycle will typically take around 2h. The EU one will typically max out the 3h limit.
> Denmark loves their 'wet' bathrooms in hotels, no shower door and a drain in the center of the room.
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.
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.
I’ve lived in a newish apartment where the wet room drain was in the center. It didn’t seem weird at all. There wasn’t much separation between the shower and toilet and sink, though.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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).
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.
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.
That's an overly broad generalization. Shower curtains are pretty common in Norway, and I've found them in hotels all over Europe and even one in Japan.
I assume curtains are just far more labor to keep clean? They build up soap scum on a daily basis, and you can't just quickly wipe them down like tile or glass. A glass shower door just feels so much more hygienic.
But I'm with you about the confusion around showers that don't even have a door. Never seen that in the US. But abroad, I truly don't get it.
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.
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.
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.
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 did. They told me to go pound it and talk to the GM. I ended up getting 15,000 points.
I probably have ~100 hotel nights a year, that’s only happened once. But the experience is dramatically worse since Covid. They used it as an excuse and then re-baselined the service. Worse product, worse services, higher prices.
The change in baseline provision is certainly true. I did a similar number of nights to you this year, but have certainly never encountered a lack of linens and would consider a credit card chargeback if I ever did.
The bottom quintiles saw their wages rise a lot corresponding to every other group. You’re just seeing the results of the fact that people are too costly to spend on this.
Wait.. there are hotels which don't have a door on the bathroom? I have literally never 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Business travellers might need somewhere to set up a laptop and work from, power, decent internet connectivity, and someplace they can iron some shirts.
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.
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.
For couples on honeymoon, they might want a nice room with a great bed.
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.
And of course, if you want to target all of these markets at the same time 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).
Of course, now we're getting into a fair fit of space in a dense city.
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
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.
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.
I used to travel with a little power strip, but stopped since I never actually used it. That place needed one badly.
It did have bathroom door though, so it had that going for it.
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.
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.
It’s really nice to have the space of a Hyatt House/Homewood Suites.
Even when we go on vacation we don’t have a jam packed scheduled where we have to be doing something every minute.
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...
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.
Hotel beds are covered in far worse, a few more floating poo particles coming round the corner from the loo (after all, even if there is a door, it isn't always closed by prior guests, and they may get into bed without washing hands or worse) is the least of your worries.
That’s not remotely true. There are plenty of health conditions that affect this. Alcohol consumption can affect it. Completely normal diets with specific foods can affect how stinky your poop is. Non standard but healthy diets also can do the same. There’s a lot more to it.
While yes to a certain extent cutting some processed food and adjusting your diet may help with it, eating a few boiled eggs would set you back massively. It’s not that straightforward.
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)
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.
I forgot HN isn’t exactly the demographic that tries this and finds out exactly how well it works. I guess for this demographic, I’d suggest telling your tenants it’s okay to smoke in the bathroom as long as the door is closed and the fan is on.
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.
We're buying mice and we want 2 or 3 females. So yesterday I was searching "how to check mouse gender". Imagine my confusion when search engine recommended me a bunch of "how to sex mice" youtube videos!
> Section Two: Crimes and Penalties; 2. Slander, challenge, or insult the Divine Essence:
> 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.
While this is obviously grotesque, it's both funny, sad and telling that the overarching name for the legislation is Federal Law by Decree Concerning Combating Discrimination, Hatred and Extremism. UAE learned this from the US/Europe.
Surely this refers to God/Allah though. I would expect using such a monkier to refer to the king would be shirk (associating/comparing something with God), one of the worst sins in Islam.
Looking over the linked legal page (with the caveat that I spent ten seconds and I am not a lawyer although I did use to watch Law and Order every week), I didn’t see anything that would make the portrait of the king subject to the law.
In The Good Soldier Svejk, the tavern keeper Pavilec is arrested for taking down his portrait of Emperor Franz Josef, because the flies were shitting on it.
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.
"Staying in a hotel with a romantic partner and/or family" is at least 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.
The much more specific way to target platonic buddies/coworkers from sharing a room would be eliminating rooms with two beds 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.
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.
The master bath in my parents' old place had a massive bathroom and gigantic shower that seems to be all the rage now in more "luxurious" bathroom designs - often with a bathtub in the shower as well. I had to use their shower once while I was there, and it was terrible - it was cold and drafty in the shower, even with the shower on its highest setting. Luxury shouldn't be uncomfortable.
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):
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...
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.
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.
To be snarky and try to be a bit humorous:
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?
It's winter man, here's a trivial experiment for you:
- 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
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?
The temperature that's comfortable when stepping out of the shower is not the same as the temperature that's comfortable after you have dried off and put something on.
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.
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?
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 not 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.
Which is odd, since I feel like I always end up paying $13 extra for one king bed with my girlfriend to make sure we're not sleeping in a queen next to an empty one
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.
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.
If you book a queen room isn't it always 2 beds? A king room is usually 1 bed. Is there some option where it's just totally random what room you get? I don't have any Marriott status but going on their site I can clearly see a choice of rooms, and each one says what amenities it has.
The point is that you aren't guaranteed the room type you select: you'll show up at the Marriott and they'll give you a room with one king instead of the room with two queens you thought you booked; your selection is just a preference, not a lock.
^ you have to have Platinum status to get the type "guaranteed"... and, even then, they might just give you $25-100 and say "sorry" (it is more of an SLA with a penalty; though, this is also true of the reservation itself... FWIW, getting a random room type is MUCH more common than getting bumped).
Too true. If you have a normal reservation (vs some kind of pre-paid room), they oversell their capacity based on a statistical model. This means if everyone with a reservation shows up, some of the last to check in won't have a room (which tends to occur during statistically unusual events like a large trade show, where every reservation is more likely to show up). The hotel will basically just say "sorry" and suggest another hotel which may have rooms. I think they try to recommend hotels that are nearby and similar but sometimes that either doesn't exist or is also sold-out.
One of the benefits of having platinum status at Marriott is they'll actually guarantee your room but platinum status isn't easy to get. I used to frequently drive into the bay area late at night to avoid traffic, arriving at the hotel at midnight or later. Being platinum at the time, I'd sometimes get a call on my mobile from the manager after 9p to find out if I was showing up for sure and I'd tell them "Yep, I'm driving now." That's how I knew they were sold out and bouncing people with reservations. They didn't want to keep holding my room if I wasn't going to show up (being platinum there was no penalty for no-showing on a reservation).
A tip: if you have a non-guaranteed reservation and you think the hotel is likely to be full but you're arriving later in the evening - call the actual hotel front desk before 5p (not the reservation center), ask to speak to the manager on duty and ask them to check you into your room over the phone. Ask for the actual room # and then have them actually print out your card key and put it in an envelope under your name at the front desk. Once your reservation has been checked in, a room assigned and a key printed, it can't be given away by the late shift.
I’ve been to Los Angeles recently, and they wanted to give us a single bed room for 3 of us, and they told us that “some” wants the one bed option for 3 adults for whatever reason.
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.
It’s wild to me that anyone would agree to go on a work trip where they are expected to share the room where they are sleeping. What an insane thing from a company to want.
So they want to save a few bucks for which I am expected to trade not just my privacy but also my good night rest (who knows if one of us snores) against a few dollars of profit margin for my employer?
If they cannot afford sending me on a business trip they probably shouldn’t do so.
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.
Marriot,Hilton,IGT,Hyatt own almost all hotels in any area you want to go to.
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?
And it doesn't even need to be government regulation.
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 American system, for better or for worse, is a representational based political system. Unfortunately that means that our political power is not direct.
That doesn't make it "not collective action", just collective action through an intermediary. Sometimes that's very clearly willed by people, sometimes (often) not. Doesn't mean we should throw out the baby with the bathwater though.
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.
> Marriot,Hilton,IGT,Hyatt own almost all hotels in any area you want to go to.
Best Western, Choice, Wyndham, IHG (typo?), Accor, Blackstone (Motel6), Radisson, Red Lion, Red Roof. Etc. There's lots of choices.
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.
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).
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.
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.
> while others of us are fine without the sometimes interruptions
The "do not disturb" card is always there. You can always decline housekeeping, but it's nice to have it available (and it's not like prices went lower to compensate for the lack of it anyway).
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.
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.
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?
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?
Here are the options:
1. You offer double, twin and single rooms. Friends book twin rooms.
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.
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.
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.
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?
(They regard it as cheapskating/cheating.)
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.
You mean you want to go to the competition? What if the competition does it as well? What if it is the norm?
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.
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.
As a random example (I don't endorse it, I just picked a random London hotel) https://www.booking.com/hotel/gb/crowne-plaza-london-ealing.... 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.
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 next booking is two single rooms.
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.
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?
To save money.
> 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?
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.
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?
Plus, my experience is that hotels will simply cancel 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.
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 double. They'd be complete idiots to pick two single rooms if what they wanted as a twin room.
You can't compel them to book your single rooms, and you definitely can't compel them by springing a surprise doorless bathroom on them in your twin room option 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.
Simply offering a twin room option means you expect unrelated or distantly-related people will book it. If you don't want that, take away the twin room option. 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.
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.
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.
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'll respect that. 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.
FWIW, just my theories. I'm not saying I know all about this market.
> They want two adults [...] to rent separate single bedrooms
Then why do they even offer twin rooms?
Doorless bathrooms are not explained by saying hotels (that offer twin rooms) secretly want all twin room guests to pay double and use two single rooms. Most hotels don't even have very many single rooms!
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 no way they'd miss out the entire 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 there.
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.
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.
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.
I just feel like this becomes time consuming after a while. Will there be soap? Toilet paper? A bed? You don't know unless you ask! But ... c'mon ... they can just tell you on the website.
Or just don't travel if every detail becomes an issue. I make certain basic assumptions--yes I assume there will be a bed and toilet paper--but, in general, I adapt as necessary.
That is fair. I have noticed doors going missing in hotels but typically travel alone so it didn't really register as an issue. I would not want to share a room with a coworker ever, bathroom door or not.
If you’re going on so much travel that this is a burden then you’re truly privileged. Maybe your assistant or travel agent can handle this issue for you.
Jabs aside, you don’t need to be rich to use a travel agent or Rick Steves guidebook instead of blindly booking hotels on Internet sites. If there’s an issue like this you’ll easily find it on review sites and most of those are searchable.
The same thing applies to other experiences like restaurants and museums. For example, it’s always smart to jump on Google/Trip Advisor reviews and type in “kids” or “stroller” into various attractions to make sure you are prepared if you’re bringing kids along.
Travel is never perfect. I’ve been in weird rooms with actual glass walls with a perfect framed view of the shitter facing the bed. I have no idea why they did this, maybe this culture values natural light in bathrooms? I witnessed it more than once so it wasn’t just one creepy place. Individual privacy especially within the same family is something of a recent and western concept from my understanding.
Either way it was hilarious and a minor inconvenience considering it was a lot minute hotel. It’s just peeing and pooping, we all do it. My traveling friend and I took turns averting our eyes. We had warm clean beds and a story to tell.
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.
By making it enough of a nuisance such that the next time you book a hotel, any hotel, for 2 platonic friends you are strongly nudged to book two separate rooms.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Why do you think bathrooms have fans? That'd be a lot of effort to deal with farts.
Considering this and your other comments I really think you need to think a bit deeper about your answers. I believe in you, just ask "and then what happens" and I'm positive you'll figure it out.
Yes. Though trapping humidity in the bathroom doesn't make it go away, and you have to open the door to get in and out of the bathroom, and that lets the humidity escape.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is closely related to a phenomenon I don't understand.
Pretty much every 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!".
But obviously this protasis† can never occur and so it doesn't matter what's in the apodosis.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If they're cheaping out on the shower then I'm not going to trust the mattress is clean or the linens are soft.
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.
Aside from rinsing off after a pool or ocean swim, or when she is actually dirty (e.g., after yard work), I think I have known her to voluntarily take three or four showers in 25 years together.
It sometimes feels like hotels are taunting us: "we're behaving like a cartel, whaddaya gonna do? Regulate us!? We've already tricked you into thinking that's socialism!"
With hotels you're playing the lottery but there is generally a baseline consistent with the brand of the hotel.
With those two you're also playing the lottery but there is no baseline.
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.
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.
How does this have anything to do with 'public health'?
And almost any regulation gives a (relative) advantage to the people who can afford the lawyers and bureaucrats to furnish the documentation to show that they are in compliance.
Fecal particles are well documented as a vector for disease transmission, particularly an issue when travelling with someone who is sick but also just from the long term distribution of them into the room.
Going from no regulation to one does carry some of what you suggest, but there are already regulations about tons of things here (fire alarms, exits, building codes, etc) adding one more does not increase the need for lawyers and documentation.
I'm all in favour of opaque bathroom doors (and none of these stupid vertical slits American have between their public bathroom doors and the walls). But I wouldn't want to pretend it's about hygiene or health.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And a lot of people just don't care about many of those details (and others may deeply care about things that don't matter to you). Bathroom doors are mostly something that wouldn't appear on my radar screen in general. While I might notice things that wouldn't be on yours.
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.
The logical conclusion here would be to have no door for the bathroom, but to have specifically the toilet in a separate subroom.
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.
Not sure how uncommon that is. Certainly a sink is often in an open alcove. The toilet and probably often the shower is in a subroom with a door.
Not sure how common sharing a room with a work colleague--especially of the opposite sex--or a family member who is a teen is. But traveling with friends, activity partners (hiking, etc.), so much of what's being discussed on this thread just isn't a real issue in my experience at least in most Western culture.
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!
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.
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..
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.
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?
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 list doesn't seem to be accurate. I looked at a few and found zero evidence of missing bathroom doors in reviews or photos. One even had a review complaining the bathroom door was broken and not closing fully... indicating it is actually there.
The website has no open data license so this isn't usable for OSM, even if we wanted to. I just meant to propose collaborating on an existing platform where we already have a lot of data about physical features, rather than erecting an ephemeral platform for this special purpose
Single people or couples don't want doorless bathrooms, but they will probably tolerate 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.
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.
And a third type, people who have had children so have gone through the toddler stage where a toddler would literally chainsaw and burn down a locked door before they let you have 3 seconds of peace to take a shit.
That's actually a very valid point I hadn't taken into consideration.
If you're single or have a partner that you're comfortable with, open concept bathrooms feel luxurious. But if you need sanctity and salvation from the kids, I can get it.
The real issue is when they're old enough to reach the lock, but not old enough to trust not to destroy things or injure themselves if left unsupervised.
I’ve actually ended otherwise decent relationships early because the other person was way too coy/upset with bodily functions like farting and pooping. If we’er sleeping together I expect us to be farting together. And if we are living together I expect us to be using the toilet in front of each other. Anything less is both inconvenient and reflective of deep personality conflicts that will never be resolved.
I have never in my life imagined that someone might break up with another person for the sole reason that the person refused to poop in front of them. That is honestly wild to me, but I appreciate your perspective, thanks for sharing.
Similarly, married ten years and my wife and I have never seen each other use the bathroom. And barring dire emergencies I can't actually envision, we never will.
It's stories like these (and poor parenting I guess) that causes things like my cousin standing up to wipe for close to 30 years until his gf filled him in one day.
If you flush the toilet at precisely the moment after you take a shit, the vacuum force of the toilet venting down the waste line will pretty much keep that from happening. That's basically prison rules.
I'd imagine that most couples would still want to be able to close a door when they're on the toilet.
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.
Right?
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.
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. Even when I lived alone, I'm pretty sure I would close the door.
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).
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...
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.
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.
This is why many newer hotels choose to sliding doors, which barely take up any space, or just remove doors entirely.
[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.
This trend is the absolute bane of early-stage startups.
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.
It feels like hostile architecture specifically designed to break the "business frugality" use case. We ended up switching to Airbnbs solely because of this.
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).
If you want to share a room get a bed in a hostel. Is sharing a room with strangers - or worse work colleagues - really that common in the US?
What do you do with the bed? Or are you happy lying asleep next to a stranger , but not having a shower in sight (even if the shower was really open to the room which I can’t think I’ve ever seen)
In my view, a hotel's primary function is to provide a comfortable bathroom and a comfortable night's sleep. Both should be simple. If is has failed in either, it has failed as a hotel altogether.
I now need extra wide space in the bathroom, so before booking I always check images on hotel-booking web sites, read reviews and look up video reviews of the hotel on YouTube.
There are surprisingly many video reviews of hotel rooms out there.
Videos can also sometimes reveal whether a hotel bathroom has a particularly noisy fan, which is important to avoid for sleep.
The weirdest hotel bathroom I've encountered was in a top-floor suite. It had a door, but... multiple toilet seats and showers with no individual doors in-between them, nor to the multiple washbasins. There was no shortage of space for doors or partitions.
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.
At least in the US, the design choice of barn door or no door might also be driven by ADA compliance. You have to provide a lot of space to meet all the accessibility requirements and a hinged door can make the minimum square footage much higher than you’d think.
It’s not exactly unknow. My nan lived in a big 3 bed semi in the midlands, but my grandad was bed bound and lived in the conservatory for 7 years. He had a portable commode but having a flushing toilet would have worked too.
Sometimes health means having a toilet in your bedroom is more important, and having a door is meaningless when you can’t even get into the toilet without two carers lifting you there.
I've seen it in the US in smaller dense urban rooms and it's honestly something I've never thought about.
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.
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.
This reminds me of the last time I was in Vegas for DEF CON and we booked rooms in this dimly-lit hotel that had surprisingly bright bathrooms with a floor-to-ceiling mirror in the shower. A similar mirror hung outside in the room on the wall opposite.
Yes, it was a one-way mirror looking in. A number of people who had booked rooms together had an exercise kicking their roommate out of the room to take showers that week.
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.
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.
It would be a good idea to put some eye-catching example of a hotel room in the article headline, like an image of a shower without a door, just for visual impact.
As for me, I’ve come across hotels where the shower is visible from the bedroom, separated only by a glass wall. Lol, that’s probably the next level.
I've never seen this. But I'm kind of the opposite. When it comes to hotel rooms, I prefer function over form. A lot of hotels cover up their lack of quality with a lot of crap that serves no purpose whatsoever. Generic art reproductions on the wall. A lot of shiny chrome or bronze. A fancy looking shower that produces a luke warm mediocre flow of water that than splatters all over the bath room, etc. Or, worse, a dingy looking bath that you have to awkwardly step into and a shower head that will point anywhere except at you unless you hold it. I've seen it all. US hotels tend to be the worst on this front. It's all form over function and the amount of nonsense goes up with the number of stars.
What I want is:
- clean, comfortable bed. Preferably without pubic hairs from the previous occupant (which is what happens if the hotel cuts corners on servicing the rooms).
- a simple but functional shower with hot water
- enough toilet paper. I don't care about anyone folding the first sheet over. Who does that at home? Absolutely no-one I know.
- Power plugs next to the bed so I can charge my phone and use it while I'm on it.
- A window that can open and an AC with an off button.
- Wifi that works just like at home and doesn't kick me out every morning because some cookie expired.
- Bonus points if I don't get to listen in on the TV next door.
What I've found in some expensive premium hotels is the exact opposite of all of the above. Stuffy warm rooms. Barely functional plumbing. Windows that cannot open "for my safety", ACs that are producing noise and bad air 24x7 that are turned off at night to save energy. But the light fixtures are beautiful. And there are 20x more pillows and blankets on the bed than I need.
Some of the best hotels I've had were very affordable budget affairs aimed at return customers that are like me. Basically good management and pragmatic decoration is all you need to turn a mediocre room into a very comfortable one.
Have had some where the shower is just glass panels for the room to see (and no, it wasn't that kind of hotel).
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.
I stayed at one in Iceland where the entire bathroom wall facing the living room was unfrosted glass, including the door. The living room was open concept so it was hard to avoid seeing into the bathroom. Great place for couples to bring their entire selves to the relationship.
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.
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.
There was definitely a layer of humor intended here, if you didn’t pick up on it.
Maybe not literally pooping with the door open but I can’t say I’d want to travel internationally with someone who I’m not comfortable with normal bodily functions around.
I had 4yr+ relationships. I am a shy pooper; I can't poop when someone watches me, while I fart or potentially destroy the toilet bowl. And also, there is the smell. Is "giving them full self" going full ape? Not judging, I am just curious, I don't talk about this with my other friends usually. Most guys don't share these weird details; it does not come up.
There was meant to be a layer of humor in my comments…
Maybe not everyone literally poops with the door open with their significant other but I’d personally have a hard time marrying someone who couldn’t exchange farts for a laugh.
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.
My personal "travel hack" for a while now is to poo in communal facilities that hardly ever seem to be in use in any hotel I've stayed in. I don't understand why anyone wants to poo a metre from their bed, regardless of a door.
As for showering, I don't really care to be honest. I'm cleaning my naked body. It's not some super secret affair that nobody is allowed to see.
Having said that I've yet to encounter a hotel where the toilet/shower isn't private.
What I really care about when travelling is being able to sleep which means the correct noise level and temperature. Far too many hotel rooms are simply too warm. Who the hell can sleep at 23 degrees with gigantic fluffy duvets designed for Nordic countries and no fan/airflow?
I've thought about making a similar site for this issue before but, ultimately, I don't travel anywhere near enough for it to be worth it. These days I just assume travelling will be shit sleep, and if it isn't then it's a bonus.
For the rest of the world: it seems way more common in the US/americas to share rooms than it is elsewhere.
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.
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.
Recently I stayed in the Korean hotel where the toilet and the bathroom had the door but made out of semi transparent glass. And the worst, the toilet was next to the glass and walls while on the opposite side was bed. Perfect view and the smell my friend
If someone cares about this so much to make a website, why not include an explanation? There's mention of dignity. I don't feel my dignity lessened when my bathroom has no door. Perhaps the door is useful to keep the heat and the steam inside the bathroom?
If you only stay in hotels alone, it probables doesn’t matter that much to you. Quite apart from questions of dignity, when sharing a hotel room, there are practical conveniences: it’s nice to keep odors contained, and to be able to turn on the bathroom light at night without waking anyone up.
Only slightly relevant, but at the Porsche dealership in Odesa, Ukraine, their bathroom has two toilets together in the one open space, with a chessboard on a plinth between them. The Ukrainians are very funny. I can share a photo if anyone's interested.
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.
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?
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.
Simple action for those who are unhappy with this situation (and a suggestion for this website creator/ owner): hotels appear to be linked to their booking.com listing. Take a few minutes to select some hotels from the list (possibly at random), then go to their Booking.com page, search for reviews mentioning the lack of a bathroom door, and mark them as helpful. The website could agevolate this process by providing a list of direct link to booking.com pages of the offending hotels.
I've recently stayed at a new Holiday Inn Express near NYC. It had a proper bathroom, nothing to complain about. But there was no ventilation at all. There was this American-style air conditioner under the window and some small outlet in the bathroom, but I couldn't force the air conditioner to force-intake air. It's either super-noisy with compressor running or completely off. I absolutely don't understand how it is even possible that room has no ventilation.
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?
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.
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...
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.
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.
> 4625.1200 TOILET REQUIREMENTS.
> 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. The doors of all toilet rooms serving the public and employees shall be self-closing. 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.
You are technically incorrect (for the US, I’m not familiar with UK architectural terminology), the colloquial usage does not match industry standard terminology. The ASME definition for ‘water closet’ is specifically the fixture itself, a flush toilet. Building codes define water closets the same way. Some people incorrectly refer to a separate toilet room inside of a bathroom as a water closet, but that is not what professionals (plumbers, mechanical engineers, and architects) call it. If you reread the MN statute, you’ll note it refers to water closets and toilet rooms separately, because one is the fixture and the other is the room containing the fixture.
The term ‘lavatory’ is also frequently used incorrectly, a lavatory is just a sink, not the entire room.
Similarly, a ‘light bulb’ should actually be called a ‘lamp’. That’s what lighting companies, electricians, and people that manage electricians call them. A luminaire is a complete light fixture, a lamp screws into a luminaire (some luminaire have integral light sources) and a ‘light bulb’ is technically an A19 E26 lamp, A19 is the bulbous shape, E26 is the ‘standard’ screw base size. The Wikipedia article is titled LED lamp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LED_lamp
I don’t correct people in real life when they misuse these terms, but I’ll write up several paragraphs to defend my position online ;) I work in commercial construction management so I’m exposed to these terms frequently, I don’t expect non-industry folks to know them.
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.
Does someone in local government own a plumbing contractor or plumbing supply company? That’d be my guess anyways.
There's actually no plumbing code (checks) for my house. I could drop my poop right out the back of the house and pull my water through lead pipes from a mosquito swamp into my sink. As long as it is immediately heated it is fine. It is literally the only requirement.
My permit explicitly says they will check absolutely nothing but how far the house is from the property line and that I have immediate hot water.
Haha that’s crazy, there has to be someone with a financial interest in instant hot water heaters making bank from that. If it was conservation they’d mandate ultra low flow toilets and other water saving measures. Is this a township or similar level of government?
I think it would be more effective if the site was analyzing existing reviews - and encouraging people to leave scathing reviews where a hotel decides that bathroom doors are optional.
A standalone web site isn't going to make it into the hotel's metrics, "the most driver of sub-9/10 ratings is the lack of bathroom doors" will make them find a way to reinstall them pronto.
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.
I had not been at hotels with bathroom without a door, but I would want them to have a door like the people who wrote the article allegedly do. What I could do without is a TV set and many other things, but I would want to have a door, and a desk, and fresh air.
>’m done. I’m done arriving at hotels and discovering that they have removed the bathroom door. Something that should be as standard as having a bed, has been sacrificed in the name of “aesthetic”.
In what country or region are we here? I've never seen a bathroom without a door in a hotel.
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.
I am a frequent traveller(literally have the star alliance card).
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.
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.
I agree bathroom doors are sensible when traveling with company. When staying alone, though, I prefer no doors. If there is a door, I tend to use a small piece of gaffers' tape to hold it open. I don't spend a lot of time in the hotel room, so while I'm in there I want my movement unimpeded.
The worst I've experienced was a sliding barn door which covered either the bathroom or the clothes rack. If I wanted my clothes to breathe, I had to shut the bathroom with a door that only impedes movement and does not provide privacy. If I wanted to move around freely, I had to shut my clothes in!
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!
I usually stay 50+ nights/year at hotels all across the value spectrum and haven't thought about this until now! Proper bathroom doors _are_ hard to come by.
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.
To borrow another Seinfeld bit: there's good naked and bad naked. The glass door problem invites the latter.
I get the point, but myself have no intention of ever sharing a hotel room with anyone I am not comfortable to concurrently use a bathroom with, i.e. my gf/wife. I would much rather see an initiative to show me if a hotel shower has a proper way to keep the water in, so I do not have to use three towels to provide some sort of spot where I can properly dry off whilst not standing ankle deep in water. Never understood why this is the case in so many hotels, it does nt seem to aid cleaning staff either. That, and a proper filter for on premises parking (not the "public parking is plentiful around the hotel" in the fine print bs), and for wifi, show me the speedtest results please.
Any hotel room without a bathroom door has been repeatedly blasted with fecal air covering all surfaces some order of magnitude more than rooms with a door
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.
To me that design screams it is a love hotel primarily used for one night stands and those beds you've slept on have been used for various such reasons. There isn't much dignity to be had after that.
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.
I have long standardised the way I do hotel reviews:
- bullshit wifi connectivity (e.g. captive wifi + OTP)?
- normal wifi but with very long password?
- is there a place to put toiletries in the shower?
- clean?
- time to check in and check out?
Where I travel the hotels without bathroom doors have not proliferated yet. I've been in a few, even when I am alone I hate the experience.
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.)
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?
It seems like the target hotel customer for fancy hotels is an Instagram model or a Kardashian. I get having a sliding door to the bathroom or translucent walls on the shower is annoying but the status symbols in hotels are not designed for your average hacker News poster. They're trying to make a small room in an older building look like a bigger room to justify the price.
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.
Not sure if they have gotten dimmer. Possibly the opposite: I don't remember having noticed it recently (but I've also travelled a lot less), but I do remember being very annoyed by this many years ago.
No idea why hotels were doing it, neither LEDs nor the electricity for them are that expensive and I doubt anyone wants to be stuck in a dark cave.
It's not a function of price. One of the most expensive hotels in Southeast Asia has this problem. I've complained. They said they're fixing it in an upcoming design refresh.
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.
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 :)
Sounds like the various RAF bases I did stints at as a cadet - the ablutions were just a great big room full of loos, showers, and bathtubs, all with dark brown water, and absolutely zero privacy of any variety.
The exposed loos were a novelty for me, at school we at least had shoulder height partitions - but we had communal showers and baths so it wasn’t a huge leap.
I also spent a year or so living in a studio where the loo was in the kitchen area - we at least installed a curtain.
> RAF
On a trip I took with my father-in-law, the first morning he waltzed right into the little hotel room bathroom while I was showering (in a glass shower) and proceeded to sit on the throne and take a crap. I was confused at his lack of basic respect for privacy, and then remembered he'd been a US Navy guy for many years. Military folks just get used to no privacy in such matters.
> but we had communal showers and baths so it wasn’t a huge leap.
I dunno, I've no problem with communal showers, or nudity in general, but partition-less toilets feels like a bridge too far.
Growing up in West Virginia, I was in a moderately sized city (40k people) but when traveling to smaller high schools for football games, you'd often find a shared latrine as the bathroom, and everyone who needed to pee would just crowd around a long sink thing and just let 'er rip. No idea what it was like in the ladies'
Open troughs are fine, toilets facing each other with no partitions is a bit far. I grew up rural but not that rural.
Kitchen-loo must be illegal these days - I think rentals need to have 2 doors between the two. Did it seem reasonable at the time?!
I would suspect that this is highly jurisdiction-dependent. Around here (random EU country), it would instantly make all studio flats unrentable, so I don’t think that’s the case. Most of them have a bathroom door, though.
I just recently(september) saw a sale advertisement for loo/bathroom-kitchen... With only small not full height partition next to seat...
Seeing it was advanced science, authorities wanted to add venues to encourage constant communication and collaboration. Always working for the people and the state! No time wasted.
We pretend to shit and they pretend to pay us
This is similar to the arrangements of public toilets in ancient Rome, except for them the seats are arrangemed in a circle. Everything old is new again.
Had two toilets in my flat only parted with a thin wood wall. Better talking with another one that is shitting than playing on the smartphone.
They had built some of those for the Olympics in Sochi, if memory serves.. :-)
> 80-ies
eighty...ies? eightieies? why not just "80s"?
English is not their first language so please give them a break ;)
Edit: I realize you are probably trying to help them learn. Carry on.
[flagged]
"Some artists are communists".
In London's Shard, the gent's toilets of the observation deck (on approx the 70th floor) have glass walls behind the urinals so if you look straight ahead while using them it is as if you are peeing on the city of London from a great height.
The old Warner stand at Lord's cricket ground used to be where the press watched from (before the new Media Centre was built). The urinals in old stand used to have windows above them looking out over the pitch so that the journalists wouldn't miss anything whilst they urinated.
Image: https://d3rcx32iafnn0o.cloudfront.net/Pictures/980x653fitpad...
The three square windows under the second tier, just below where the sportingbet.com and Jaguar advertising boards meet.
I always enjoy a "loo with a view", including that one at the Shard. I also enjoyed the outdoor one I utilized in Botswana that had the toilet isolated from camp behind a small wooden fence, but while sitting on the throne you are facing out from a slight elevation onto a sweeping 180 degree view of the savanna, with antelopes, giraffes, and elephants roaming around.
The W in Santiago, Chile, has a full-length floor-to-ceiling glass window in the shower, with the morning sun shining right in. Your other option is a bathtub set in the middle of the bedroom itself. Mercifully the WC has a door.
"Back in my day," Lake Helen (~10,000 ft) on Mt. Shasta had a pit toilet without walls that faced the valley. Depending on the weather, it could even be above the clouds/fog and IIRC on a clear day you could see the ocean.
I've been on something similar in Washington State. Forget where. Maybe below Shuksan someplace. While wilderness experiences are obviously a different matter, I suspect that people here freaking out about lack of doors or whatever wouldn't necessarily be comfortable with how many deal with climbing/camping/canoeing/etc. People just look the other way.
At a road stop somewhere at 5000 meters on a mountain somewhere in Sichuan (a day out of Chengdu?), the latrine was two slippery 2-by-4s over an open pit. I’m really glad I just had to pee, because that was terrifying.
Wilderness privvies often make up for in view what they lack in privacy and/or plumbing technology. I've similar memories from elsewhere.
Pretty sure I went to a bar in NYC that still had a urinal trough running directly below the bar as you were standing there... so one wouldn't need to leave the bar to take a leak. This was 30 years ago. McSorleys maybe?
It could be a spittoon, which is designed for chewing tobacco. https://www.kegworks.com/blog/a-lesson-in-tavern-history-the...
But it seems like they also where used as urinals
Not the Platonic ideal of a hotel room
No, but I bet the shower was a decent approximation of a Platonic solid.
I like to leave my platonic solids in the toilet bowl.
Such an odd decision. No privacy or isolation for the shower, but yes for the two twin beds. Sleep apart but shower together.
My SO and I move and snore, not a bad arrangement. Somehow I don't think that's what they were going for though.
It builds tension
There's a hotel in Edinburgh with boutique pretensions I stayed in that had smoked glass (only) around the toilet. That was a pretty annoying arrangement for me and my wife. Luckily they had regular loos in reception.
was it a travelodge? with that smoked glass bathrom being right behind the bed?
It was "The Hub by Premier Inn". There are some photos on Google.
wow, it is actually the one me and my SO stayed at! specifically this[0] kind of room. when reading your description i immediately thought about this one. we did have a gentleman's agreement, "can you please put on your noise cancelling headphones and don't look back, i gotta..."
only stayed there for one or two nights, it says a lot when a campervan gives more comfort than a hotel room :)
[0]https://www.premierinn.com/content/dam/pi/websites/desktop/n...
In between the beds?? Does that mean the shower was right in the middle of the room ? So that it would be impossible to place a double bed ? This is the weirdest part to me
That's how platonic friendships usually end.
Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder..
Was it a "love hotel" because...that doesn't sound like a regular hotel?
That bathroom layout has become extremely common in normal hotels in parts of Asia and the Middle East.
But what's the logic? I have never seen it but it doesn't sound good even aesthetically (which is usually the justification for all kinds of violations of common sense). So what are they thinking?
A number of hotels that were built with this lack of privacy (including one I love - but its been fixed there though - more subtle worse as you could see in from the stairs) were all designed by the same architect who is said to have had a kink about looking into toilets.
Maybe he started it, and as his hotels are (otherwise) lovely it made it part of a cool aesthetic and was therefore copied?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Bawa
It also sounds like a plumbing nightmare to build.
Where is Asia? I travel there often for work and have never come across such a layout
It is the large landmass covering about half of the northern hemisphere.
I get the joke on OP's typo for is/in, but even then you answered "what" instead of OP's "where".
It’s miscommunication all the way down
I live in Asia, I've only seen in love hotels.
It's called foreplay. Jk.
I've seen a glass shower where the glass turned to smoked opaque glass with the push of a button. Maybe this shower had something similar?
But this is no excuse, still completely awkward and horrible design.
I went looking for pictures (someone must have shared this on internet ...). This is the closes I could find https://www.reddit.com/r/CrappyDesign/comments/if6ahf/the_sh...
I've only really encountered glass walls for the shower room in Asia, and in almost every case there's been a curtain that could be drawn across the glass if required.
In my high school the toilet stalls had no doors and the walls were only about waist high brick walls. Horrific
Please tell my that you have pictures of this to show!
Wouldn’t be very platonic to take pictures.
[dead]
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?
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.
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.
In Hyperion, 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.
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.
We installed an outdoor shower at our house. There's nothing as nice as a cold shower outdoors on a really hot day. It feels so luxurious that I can pretend I'm a rich person instead of lower- to mid-middle class.
We live way out in the boonies, so that helps.
Also really good for a house that has beach access.
We once stayed in a beach house with an outdoor shower in South Africa. One morning I got up, took a shower (without my glasses, I am very short sighted) and went in for breakfast. About 20 minutes later my sister-in-law comes running into the house shouting that "there is a huge snake in the outside shower"
I wasn't expecting to read a Hyperion reference in this thread, such a great book.
(And if you haven't read the book you can guess what could possibly go wrong with this setup.)
I feel like that house was a _bit_ of a Chekhov's gun; I think it was the first point in the story where what was going to happen became clear to me.
(This wasn't Simmons' invention, incidentally; Larry Niven did it first.)
I've seen this. Sometimes, they have curtains. I don't really understand what the point is though. It's definitely not price. I would imagine that it's costlier to add a window to a wall than just to brick it. I thought it was to allow one to watch the TV while taking a shower or a bath. It's the most reasonable thing I could come up with.
What I believe:
It's to encourage e.g. two coworkers to get separate rooms instead of one room with separate beds. The increase in revenue is more than the construction cost.
That's equal parts evil and clever. And completely plausible. You've just reduced my faith in humanity a little. Thanks. :-/
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.
And people voting with their wallet have led to literally hundreds of thousands of companies going out of business.
So yeah, it is successful.
You might need to read up on the concept of a monopoly.
Possibly you might need to.
Ah yes, people voted with their wallets, some people just have much larger wallets than others.
Such a bunch of nonsense, among other things because it ignores the government's role in the sucess of all those businesses.
I think Boeings bring themselves down on their own.
ba-dum-tish!
Terrain, terrain.
Is it possible that people just think differently than you? Or is everyone else wrong?
Or perhaps the individual's dollar is not really that effective. It's like plastic recycling -- it is a way to make the consumer feel like it is their job to fix things that they really have no responsibility for or control over.
The individuals isnt, but as soon as you attempt to organise a widespread boycott they will come for you. BDS type movements are sucessful, that's why they often get so much push back.
They think differently precisely because they're wrong.
They're wrong.
People with more dollars get more votes
s/People/Advertisers/
I did indeed.
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.
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.
It was quite shocking for me as somebody from eastern Europe to see ie Danish or Dutch homes having no curtains whatsoever, so me walking on sidewalk looking at them 3m from me behind the windows having breakfast, in pyjamas, kids doing early morning nasal cavities treasure hunt with finger etc.
Same for living rooms and bedrooms (those I would expect to at least have some curtains aside).
Still not used to it, i like my privacy and ability to shamelessly say scratch my butt when alone if needed.
Haha dutch guy here... Who cares? Our bedrooms have curtains! Actually living rooms usually as well, but we are reluctant in closing them I guess. Also, you'll often find patches of intransparant glass to prevent directly looking in.
But then the horror to go to the US and find toilets in i.e. hospitals that don't have doors closing all the way. You can literally stare someone in the eye through the crack in the door, or over the door, while he's taking a dump. Holy cow. Imagine the sounds echoing through the collective toilet room. My god. I'm still recovering from my visit to the prestigious Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Having a s* together with someone in the next stall is a whole new level of intimacy I was not ready for.
When I lived in NL, it was explained to me that closing the curtains would imply, in some sort of weird Calvinistic belief, that the occupants were engaged in some nefarious activities; therefore the curtains are left open to show that the occupants have nothing to hide and are engaged only in wholesome activities.
The other side of the social contract obliges passers-by to not look inside.
The other strange thing that I found is that some apartments have little spy mirrors mounted on the exterior wall to allow the occupants to monitor what's going on in the street.
> the occupants were engaged in some nefarious activities; therefore the curtains are left open to show that the occupants have nothing to hide and are engaged only in wholesome activities.
That sounds utterly dystopian. Whose business is it if we want to shag in the morning?
It’s also completely self-defeating. Nobody can prove that they never did anything that someone else would disapprove. There are solid reasons behind the "innocent until proven guilty" principle.
That sounds utterly dystopian
Welcome to 18th-century small-village politics.
Priests used to visit houses if the wife had not been pregnant for a while.
Most of us do not realise how utterly NEW individuality and freedom is. Not so long ago we were all Taliban.
Most of us (humans) still are. Only in Europe and the Americas is privacy or individually widely acknowledged.
The Dutch simply shamelessly scratch their butt, and if someone's watching that's their problem ;)
I think that system requires that passers by don't look inside the houses.
> One of my short stories takes place in a not-to-distant future, where there is absolutely no privacy.
You might like “We” by Eugene Zamiatin.
That's the book that was similar to 1948, but written a few decades before? I've heard of it, I will see if I can find an audiobook. Thank you!
1948 is one of my favourites, by the way.
I’m sorry, do you mean Orwell’s “1984”? Because all I can find for “1948” is an Israeli autobiographical novel, that, as far as I can tell, doesn’t resemble “We”. (Although, imho, “1984” is quite different from “We” as well.)
Yes, I meant 1984.
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.
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.
I think it's an unavoidable consequence of the space constraints they're working with.
On the plus side, when I dayroomed there it was dead silent and the room had blackout curtains.
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.
AI can't generate this prose yet.
It just doesn’t want to produce it, and it’s holding it in. Maybe if you ask it try hard, it might finally release a backlog of text.
Oh, yes it can.
There was a time, over a year ago now, when I was working on a project that required some very raunchy, dirty, absolute gutter language.
ChatGPT would only get about 30% of the way there, and never further. It stayed restrained, always.
But ChatGPT + image gen? This produced unfiltered amazement.
It played out like this: Tell the bot to generate an image involving some ludicrously filthy text backstory, and it would generate and display a prompt for Dall-E. But that generated prompt seemed to bypass the filters and could be absolute trash -- plain, no nonsense, dirt-nasty holy-fuckballs craptacularity.
Dall-E would refuse the prompt, of course, but it remained in the chat log for perusal.
Later, they made the generated prompt disappear when Dall-E refused. (This may in fact be my fault. I sent it on some pretty deep dives.)
And nowadays, it seems that we don't get to see the generated prompt at all, even when Dall-E accepts a (very normal, not pushing boundaries at all) prompt and generates an image.
But for a minute there: I did get to peer into depths of the wildly creative foulness that the bot can concoct. What we see above (in GP comment) isn't even scratching the surface.
(I didn't write about this little "jailbreak" anywhere at that time because I'm selfish, and I wanted to keep using it myself.)
I can picture a certain CEO taking this as a dare (or improvement suggestion) for the next version of Grok
Literally 80% of grok output.
You oughtta pride yourself on being able to make that jobsite porta potty ring like a bell.
How will we know your digestive health otherwise?
Just yell out "Who is number two working for?" and then give a courtesy flush.
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.
Just make an even louder jungle cat snarling noise.
Hotel bathrooms should just play rainforest sounds[1] whenever the fan is turned on.
1: https://youtu.be/ef_3Wj4T_ts
You're joking, but my wife got us a box emitting bird sounds when the motion sensor is triggered. Suffice to say that it does absolutely nothing to mask the sounds that are produced on a toilet, it's just another ridiculous layer on top of it.
"What the hell?! That scared the shit out of me!"
"You're welcome."
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.
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.
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.
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.
Actually what’s virtuous is just having a fucking door on the bathroom
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.
> even though it's not fundamentally very different.
There's a pretty significant difference; human diseases are much more likely to spread to other humans.
> Same goes for clothes, toilet sounds, etc.
What do you mean "same goes"? Are you saying there are cultures in which being loud on the toilet is considered proper?
In China making noise with mouth when eating is considered respectful.
No it isn't. You can slurp noodles without being rude but they do not consider 'loud mouth noises' respectful.
https://ali.mk/posts/the-role-of-noises-in-chinese-dining-et...
https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/6w5hux/slurping_nood...
+ personal questions to real Chinese people.
First link: That is a Swedish robotics blog and the sources linked are just landing pages for Chinese tours or language lessons.
Second link: Where do they say that 'making loud mouth noises is a sign of respect'? They say 'people slurp noodles' which is exactly what I said.
> It's so common that the only logical explanation is that it is encouraged. It appears to be the norm and the non-slurper is the exception. I'm glad that your parents taught you to not slurp. You are an exceptional individual.
Anyway I’ve asked enough Chinese people about it to get the same answer. Not all do it, but some do it for these reasons.
I doubt you ever asked any Chinese.
They are saying it is normal to slurp noodles, which is what I said in my first reply to you. They did not say that they make 'loud mouth noises' as a sign of respect.
Ask this specific question: "Do you make loud mouth noises while you eat as a sign of respect, or is it just normal to slurp noodles?" and see what answer you get.
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).
Happy to see someone is trying to fix this trend.
How are doors important for hygiene?
In my part of the US, a lot of our "old" houses were built before indoor plumbing.
So when the plumbing was installed, obviously some went to the kitchen. And the bathroom, which previously didn't exist, was often an addition to (or a division from) the kitchen -- with a doorway [with a door] betwixt the kitchen and the bathroom -- because that made the plumbing easier.
IIRC, that particular feature disqualifies the home for financing with both the VA and with HUD for reasons of hygiene.
So by extension: According to VA and HUD, hygiene requires at least one door and at least one additional room of separation between the place where you shit and the place where you eat.
I assume my house in the Northeast didn't originally have indoor plumbing. The bathroom is upstairs; I assume it was carved off from one of the upstairs bedrooms or it was a closet/storage area of some sort. It's been redone a couple times since I moved in and it does have a door.
That's not so unusual, either.
My present house (in Ohio) also has its singular bathroom upstairs. The bathroom is on top of the kitchen. Neither room is an addition -- as far as I can tell, it has always used this basic layout.
According to aerial photos, it was built in the 1950s. It resides within a small but very industrialized city that was positively booming at the time the home was constructed; it definitely included plumbing from the beginning.
A previous house in the same city was definitely built before indoor plumbing. It was even built before separate kitchens were considered normal or necessary. It originally had only two rooms downstairs, and two rooms upstairs. Heating and cooking would have been provided by a central stove (probably wood-fired, and with no ductwork).
While it was stick-built, it was initially only a step or two above a fairly primitive log cabin in function.
By the time I lived there, it also had a kitchen, laundry, downstairs bathroom, another upstairs bedroom, and subgrade basement added. The bathroom was part of the kitchen addition, and one entered the bathroom through the kitchen.
I've actually lived in three houses so far that were initially constructed like that -- with two rooms downstairs, and two upstairs.
Only one of those 3 had a bathroom that was separated from the kitchen by a room, and that one was perhaps the oldest: The floor joists for the first level were made from logs that were hewn flat[ish] on the top by hand, and that still hard bark on them. For that house, the bathroom was its own small separate single-story addition that jutted off of the side of [what had become] the dining room.
The house I grew up in was larger and much more-nicely finished in terms of things like woodworking and trim, but was also very old by US norms. It was built before both plumbing and electricity, though it included gas lighting (!) in every room. The partial basement, kitchen and downstairs bathroom were additions, but the bathroom connected to two different common rooms even though it was physically adjacent to the kitchen. There also was an upstairs bathroom, and which was created by taking part of the master bedroom and making it into a hallway while the the original bedroom closet became the bathroom (with a small and somewhat haphazard roof extension where the bathtub was).
Anyway: The point, other than that old houses present interesting evolutions, is that old houses often (but not always) had bathrooms attached to the kitchen -- and that we usually seek to keep them separated these days in newer construction, at least in the US.
I've also lived in a few different apartment buildings (many of which were "old", but all of which were initially intended to be apartment buildings), and all of those bathrooms were separated from the kitchen by a hallway.
And all of these bathrooms had doors. I don't understand the questioning of bathroom doors that I see here in some comments -- at all.
(I shall spare at this time the details of the house I once owned that had been an old farmhouse (with no gas, no lights, and no plumbing), and which had subsequently been divided into a triplex that contained a total of 17 distinct rooms. I could probably write a whole book about that place.)
My house is early 1800s (old farmhouse). Yes, the bathroom is pretty much right above the kitchen/pantry presumably because that was the most straightforward way to pipe it. Not even sure what is original and what was probably installed/built around 1900 or so.
No real opportunity to put in another bathroom and I've talked with contractors. You could squeeze a really minimalist half bath in the pantry but then you lose the pantry and the washer/dryer need to go somewhere and the basement isn't really a good idea for various reasons.
In Singapore (of all places) many apartments have one of their toilets right next to the kitchen. Seems to be fine.
But they have a door, right?
Yes, of course, we are not barbarians.
(Just to be clear: I think doors on bathrooms are great. I just don't think they really contribute to hygiene or health--apart from mental health.)
Airborne fecal contamination from flushing is likely reduced by having a barrier
Like a toilet lid?
It helps. Know what also helps more? A second barrier after that one.
I’m sure a third would also help even more (front door of the house?) but most people consider that a bit excessive for daily use within their own domicile.
That wouldn't apply to hotel rooms, though, as most do not have kitchens in the guest rooms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_plume
A door provides at least some kind of physical barrier.
Only if everybody is closing the door. If I use a hotel room alone, I never close the bathroom door.
You don't close the door when doing number two in your own home either?
If you are alone at home, why would you?
If you don't feel disgusted by the idea of your poop particles being ejected and spreading around, I don't think anyone can instill it in you
How much does the door help? I think generally people don't follow hygiene to the point that particles anywhere in the bathroom won't get tracked out of the bathroom. Don't get me started on people who touch their phones while eating...
A bit, and it's not like it's too much of a hassle
I'm writing this while sitting on the toilet, and I'm thinking about making a sandwich.
People often keep their toothbrushes in their bathroom..
tbh if I start worrying about poop particles in my day to day, I fear I'm one step closer to becoming a germaphobe. plus I feel if that's something that truly worries you, you'd start taking showers after each poop because clearly you will bring some poop particles with you when you leave anyway.
maybe this thread will end up being some kind of revelation, but I very much agree with the person you replied to. If I'm alone, I'm not bothered and the door may as well stay open
Sure, you can't get rid of everything. But you can mitigate a few things, and closing the door is such an easy fix... There's worrying too much, and there's not worrying enough
So that poop particles didn't spread beyond the bathroom.
Have you considered closing the toilet lid?
>A 2024 study showed evidence that even closing the lid may still lead to small viral particles escaping through gaps under the lid, resulting in viral cross contamination of the air and surfaces in a washroom
Viruses don't last long outside the body.
So in a hotel bathroom, you'd only be exposed to viruses from people you already share a room (or even bed) with.
> Viruses don't last long outside the body.
SARS-CoV-2 would like to have a word with you (it can last as long as 28 days on smooth surfaces).
You can't get covid from contact infection. Or at least it's really, really hard. We could dig up studies for that, but you can also look at how food delivery which exploded in popularity all over the world during the lockdowns apparently did not transmit Covid.
You're moving the goal posts. Your assertion was that viruses don't last long outside the body. GP shot down that argument. You have not refuted their argument.
Even without being that strict about the discussion, I think GP was making the point that viruses can survive for many days, so stating that "you'd only be exposed to viruses from people you already share a room (or even bed) with." is an argument that requires some elaboration.
Many American toilets don't have lids.
Flushing generates aerosols that travel.
Have you considered closing the lid?
Have you just been trolling this thread for a few hours posting this copypasta to anyone who thinks not having bathroom doors is gross? This is the third or fourth one of these I've seen, and that's a pretty weird battle to fight, is all I'm saying.
Oh, I agree that bathroom doors are great. And it's "gross" not to have them. Yes.
It's just that I don't believe they contribute to hygiene or health.
Yes, but I've also considered the previous guest not closing the lid.
What makes you think they closed the door?
When there is a door, I don't know if they closed it or not. I'm not their mom. Maybe they did; maybe they did not.
But when there is no door, I can say with certainty that it was never closed because it doesn't even exist.
Little pieces of shit can fly through the air quite far when the wc is flushed. As a former British person I had no idea about this, but was brought up to speed by US family members..
Update: this is why you should put the lid down to flush. But put it back up again after because <reasons>
The steady state of my toilet is closed. As my mother used to say: 'This ain't an open plan toilet.'
(Of course, she said it in German, so she complained about 'Wohnklo' in analogy with a 'Wohnküche' which is the German word for an open-plan kitchen.)
So, would you state that you generally advocate for hinged surfaces in bathrooms, and being able to use them to adequately close/shield a larger space from a smaller space? ;)
Doors are great. I never doubted that. I'd want a proper door on my bathroom.
But I'm under no illusion that it would help with health or hygiene. Perhaps with mental health; the door is mostly there for social reasons.
>But put it back up again after because <reasons>
What reasons?
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!
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.
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.
The problem here begins even before the mathematical issue - it's that web sites that live from listing bookings have an incentive to offer a way to delete reviews that are not in line with what the owner wants to see.
Honestly, the ratings on those sites are essentially useless anyway, because people are bad at reviewing.
I generally sample the lowest rating written reviews, to check if people are complaining about real stuff, or are just confused. For instance, if a hotel doesn't have a bar, some of the negative reviews will usually be about how the hotel doesn't have a bar; these can be safely ignored as having been written by idiots (it is not like the hotel is hiding the fact that it doesn't have a bar).
Occasionally some of the positive reviews are similarly baffling. Was recently booking a hotel in Berlin in January, and the top review's main positive comment about the hotel was that it had heating. Well, yeah, I mean, you'd hope so. I can only assume that the reviewer was a visitor from the 19th century.
The worst thing I’ve found with positive reviews is ones that are obviously fake/incentivized. I looked up reviews recently for a hotel that I used to stay at a lot for work, and had gone way downhill with many issues (broken ACs, mold, leaking ceilings, etc.). I was curious if they ever fixed their problems. I was at first surprised that they had a fairly positive overall review rating. But looking deeper, the many negative reviews were just crowded out by obviously fake reviews. Dead giveaways: every single one named multiple people by name. “Dave at the front desk was just so friendly and welcoming! Barbara the housecleaner did a fantastic job cleaning. And Steve the bartender just made my day! I love this hotel! 5 stars!” (Almost) nobody reviewing a hotel for real does that.
I've been in hotels with no bathroom door, but it has pretty much always been in tiny one-person rooms, where realistically there are not going to be two people in the room because they _would not fit_. I don't have a particular problem with it there.
(In that case, the reason it's done is fairly clearly that to accommodate a door they'd have to make the room bigger.)
To be honest, those are the rooms that I hope would have a bathroom door so that you don't end up with water everywhere outside the bathroom.
Wow I've only stayed in about 100 but have seen several. There are several variations:
- bathrooms with glass walls but with (glass) door
- bathrooms with walls but without door
- bathrooms with partially open walls, sometimes even with door :P
The worst was when I was once sharing a room with my daughter and the bathroom was one with glass walls and no shower curtain. We decided to schedule our toilet visits and showers so the other one would not be in the room.
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.
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.
Reading this thread, it seems like it's a trend with very fancy hotels?
I usually stay at chain hotels and this is never really a problem.
I run into this barn door style decently often at run of the mill Marriotts and Hiltons across the US. It seems like the chances are higher the newer the construction.
I've seen it at cheap hotels (EasyHotel and similar) but generally only in tiny single-person rooms (of the "single bed and just enough space to walk past it to the bathroom, which is the size of an airplane toilet" variety), where it's basically _fine_.
The last 3 JW Marriotts had open shower rooms connected to bedroom, no door, just a curtain [1].
[1]: https://www.google.com/travel/hotels/Houston%2C%20TX/entity/...
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”.
The author does point out glass doors being an issue that he asks about.
Ah yes, quite a few. Not great, but definitely better than literally no door.
The weirdest one I stayed at so far was a hotel with tiny rooms in central London which had the upper half of the wall separating the bathroom made out of the kind of glass that becomes opaque with electricity. The switch to control that was outside of the bathroom, of course.
And I don't even travel that much, around once a year on average.
ALoft London Excel hotel. Fancy as hell, no bathroom doors.
You shit behind your bed, I kid you not
Well that explains why I've never seen this trend.
I stick to rooms with two digits in front of the decimal.
In London that will get you a different set of problems. Like gaps in the window frame, and a damp smell in the bathroom without ventilation.
Ah, just like home.
My most recent encounter with no-bathroom-door was in a hotel in London that was under 100 pounds a night. Though the room was so tiny that I'd honestly be happy enough to give them a pass on it.
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.
$200+ a night and it doesn't come with a bathroom door?
This is why I just stay home.
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.
https://www.hotel-development.marriott.com/brands
Ditto. I've never seen this before. They always have at least those sliding doors.
The author of the site considers sliding doors not a real door
I'm currently in a room with frosted glass for the shower and bathroom, with my girlfriend and her daughter. I guess it helps with lighting?
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)
Yes, not one. I just googled for pictures of hotel bathrooms without doors out of curiosity and mostly see sliding and frosted glass doors. Is that what people are talking about?
I’m as confused as you
I remember hotel in China several years ago where the bathroom had a door, but the wall between bathroom and sleeping area was unfrosted glass with no blind. Idiotic design trend.
> where the bathroom had a door, but the wall between bathroom and sleeping area was unfrosted glass with no blind.
Just like in Windows, where the window has a border, but it is 1 px wide.
> Idiotic design trend.
Maybe some UX designers found work in other areas.
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.
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.
Some years ago I stayed in a hotel outside London, and they apparently had a policy of saving as much as possible on soap bars.. so they used some horrible high-pH soap, very cheap looking. But it was nearly impossible to rinse it off.. took me fifteen minutes of hot water usage after I was, or should have been done with the shower. Whatever they saved in soap they lost many times over in water and even more in energy use.
And in a tourist place on an island farther south the room had an information binder which also asked that you shouldn't waste water as there weren't many natural resources for water there. However, the hot water came from the far end of the narrow, rectangular-shaped long hotel, and the pipes were outside and weren't insulated, they were completely bare. Whenever you turned off the hot water for a few minutes it would take some five minutes to get it back, water running, as the pipes got cold right away (there are many other usages for hot water than just using the shower - the rooms had kitchens). So of course all the guests used many times more water than they would have needed, not to mention the wasted heat. Totally baffling.
Also they probably save on cleaning costs.
A more widespread piece of hostile hotel shower architecture is unlabelled controls. You need trial and error to work out which way is more water, and more heat.
I first thought this is nonsense, but then it made a lot sense. It might be an exception to the rule "never attribute to malice, that which can be explained by stupidity."
> never attribute to malice, that which can be explained by stupidity
This maxim fails as soon as the malicious realise people will apply it to them.
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 never understand the "cosplay a small flood" style bathrooms.
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.
I've never really run into capacity problems with European washing machines, but the run times are definitely real. Most of them have a well-hidden faster mode. Still not as fast as a US machine on fast mode, but not the mandatory-default-by-law three-hour program.
Which would be even longer than 3h if some EU bureaucrat didn't realize that making the default unacceptably long for everyone will result in nobody using it.
> Most of them have a well-hidden faster mode
My shiny new (2025) Bosch washing machine has a big button on the front which switches from the default 3 hour programme (for 40 degree wash) to 1hr 30m. Like, it's not very _well_ hidden :)
Interestingly, the 3 hour programme isn't really a 3 hour programme. If you use it, the timer will generally start at 3 hours and drop to an hour or so after 20 minutes. I have no idea what the heuristic is, and the manual is silent on the matter.
Isn’t this mostly drying time and the fact that hardly any driers in Europe are vented (so either heat pump based or condensation)? Or is this the uses less water type washing machines? Europe tends to have higher rates on water and electricity to make efficiency worth while.
My Bosch dishwasher takes 3 hours I guess due to efficiency, it seems reasonable. I didn’t go with a European washer dryer combo though (my laundry room has a vent and I’ve heard that heat pump tech still isn’t good enough).
> my laundry room has a vent and I’ve heard that heat pump tech still isn’t good enough
Heat pump dryers are in a slightly weird place in that they're boring old tech in Europe (they've been common for over a decade), and exciting new tech in the US. This means that dryers made for US preferences (physically larger, either three phase or <1500W, etc) are generally first or second models (and thus unreliable) while those made for European preferences are mature designs (and thus reliable).
I thought Europe used condensation and heat pump tech was still a new thing? Ok, 1997 with wide adoption around 2007 according to Google. I really wanted to give it a try, but with a vent right there it just didn’t seem worth it.
Really depends on how expensive your electricity is; a modern heat pump dryer consumes about 1kWh to dry an 8kg load, vs 2-3kWh for either vented or conventional condenser. Though, also depends on what's available to you and at what cost; my impression is that decent heat pump dryers are still very expensive in the US. My fairly high end Bosch one cost about 550eur this year; looking at Bosch's US website the roughly equivalent US model seems to cost $1500, somehow. That's around what they cost here 10-15 years ago.
The other advantage of heat pump dryers is that they operate at lower temperatures than the other types (so damage clothes less); on the negative side, they're slower.
Electricity is cheap here, 12 cents/KwH. I more liked the not ruining clothes aspect and not using the vent means I can get the unit closer to the wall. But I was worried about the smell complaints, my wife is really strict on that, also we have a combo so we can’t pipeline loads anymore. The drawback is that only Samsung makes a vented combo, an Samsung doesn’t have the best reputation. Heat pump was cheaper than vented in a combo at least, but only by 1-2 hundred bucks.
Ah, right. After having had a washer-dryer for about 15 years (they're very common in apartments and small houses in Ireland), would never have one again; when the existing one finally died I replaced with a separate washer and dryer.
I'm somewhat surprised anyone makes a vented washer-dryer at all.
I really like the extra space and not needing to transfer clothes when drying. To each their own though. Only Samsung is making a vented combo so far, and it’s a beast to install and drag up three stories of stairs.
How much useful extra space do you really get? You can stack separate washers and dryers on top of each other without issues.
> How much useful extra space do you really get? You can stack separate washers and dryers on top of each other without issues.
Stacking still takes up usable space; in rooms designed for unstacked washers and/or dryers the space above is frequently used for cabinets
Enough space for me, but you are right stacking would provide similar benefits. Don’t undervalue not needing to transfer clothes to your drier, and you never have to worry about mold and mildew in your washer.
No, this is just about washing machines, not washer-dryers or doing both in sequence.
Due to ecodesign legislation, I would assume that all machines that can be legally sold in the EU would count as "uses less water" in the US.
The dishwashers are another can of worms. My last one had an EU and a non-EU program, and you quickly learned to pick the "non-efficient" one if you actually wanted clean dishes.
My experience with dishwashers is that there are bad and good ones regardless of country. I had terrible and great dishwashers in the US, Australia, and Europe (basically in all countries there). The same with washing machines.
My Bosch is slow but the results are always good. I rarely resort to the quick program.
Thankfully it is just a matter of choosing the "Cotton" program on the dial, not the "Cotton (eco)" one.
What do you mean?
EU ecodesign rules require washing machines to meet certain low energy/water consumption standards in the "default" program. Washing machine designers implement this by making these programs ridiculously long. The EU has now capped them at 3h because they realized that if these programs grow even longer nobody will use them.
Even regular programs in front-loading machines (at least in the European countries I've been to, these make up the absolute vast majority of machines) are longer than typical top loaders. Top loaders are faster but put more wear on the clothes and use more energy and water. A regular, "non-EU" cycle will typically take around 2h. The EU one will typically max out the 3h limit.
> Denmark loves their 'wet' bathrooms in hotels, no shower door and a drain in the center of the room.
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.
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.
This is standard in all of southeast Asia and often the middle east.
The drain should be within the shower area, with all the bathroom floor draining that way.
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.
I’ve lived in a newish apartment where the wet room drain was in the center. It didn’t seem weird at all. There wasn’t much separation between the shower and toilet and sink, though.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Turn head to wall.
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
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).
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.
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.
That's an overly broad generalization. Shower curtains are pretty common in Norway, and I've found them in hotels all over Europe and even one in Japan.
I assume curtains are just far more labor to keep clean? They build up soap scum on a daily basis, and you can't just quickly wipe them down like tile or glass. A glass shower door just feels so much more hygienic.
But I'm with you about the confusion around showers that don't even have a door. Never seen that in the US. But abroad, I truly don't get it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I did. They told me to go pound it and talk to the GM. I ended up getting 15,000 points.
I probably have ~100 hotel nights a year, that’s only happened once. But the experience is dramatically worse since Covid. They used it as an excuse and then re-baselined the service. Worse product, worse services, higher prices.
The change in baseline provision is certainly true. I did a similar number of nights to you this year, but have certainly never encountered a lack of linens and would consider a credit card chargeback if I ever did.
The bottom quintiles saw their wages rise a lot corresponding to every other group. You’re just seeing the results of the fact that people are too costly to spend on this.
Yeah, I'm sure I've spent hundreds of nights in Marriott properties and never not had linens.
Wait.. there are hotels which don't have a door on the bathroom? I have literally never 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.
Nate Barzgate does a good bit on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgtgjA_UiAo
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'
And right they are; sliding doors offer even less seal than the regular cheap doors usually used and as such less sound or odor protection.
The worst are the batwing / saloon doors, no idea who believes this is even a door
WSJ did a good explainer on hotel room design anti-patterns: https://youtu.be/116cwKs2XQs
Kendra Gaylord released a video on the topic yesterday too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFPGUTyo9Yk
[flagged]
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.
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.
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.
Business travellers might need somewhere to set up a laptop and work from, power, decent internet connectivity, and someplace they can iron some shirts.
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.
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.
For couples on honeymoon, they might want a nice room with a great bed.
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.
And of course, if you want to target all of these markets at the same time 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).
Of course, now we're getting into a fair fit of space in a dense city.
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
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.
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.
I used to travel with a little power strip, but stopped since I never actually used it. That place needed one badly.
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
Nobody comes and takes your stars away. They earned them once and they're still using them.
The stars are typically assigned based on silly checklists anyway, that’s how you end up with “4-star” $2000+/night Aman properties.
> Maybe they expect everyone to get a wake up call, but the phone was across the room too.
For a wakeup call, that's an advantage.
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.
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.
It’s really nice to have the space of a Hyatt House/Homewood Suites.
Even when we go on vacation we don’t have a jam packed scheduled where we have to be doing something every minute.
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...
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.
Hotel beds are covered in far worse, a few more floating poo particles coming round the corner from the loo (after all, even if there is a door, it isn't always closed by prior guests, and they may get into bed without washing hands or worse) is the least of your worries.
Fungus still everywhere though.
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.
If it smells that bad something is wrong with your diet.
I feel like you're not picking up on the central point of "worse is worse than bad".
It's half dead bacteria, it's not supposed to smell like a bed of roses.
I can safely say there’s no person whose shit I want to be smelling, regardless of their diet.
That’s not remotely true. There are plenty of health conditions that affect this. Alcohol consumption can affect it. Completely normal diets with specific foods can affect how stinky your poop is. Non standard but healthy diets also can do the same. There’s a lot more to it.
You might at least consider it. When I cut most of the processed foods from my diet, that particular bodily function became much less odorous.
While yes to a certain extent cutting some processed food and adjusting your diet may help with it, eating a few boiled eggs would set you back massively. It’s not that straightforward.
Travel messes with a lot of people's systems.
Bathroom should have extractor fan. I havent smelt a shit outside of my home bathroom for this reason.
It probably is.
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)
A door stops airflow? No.
>A door stops airflow? No.
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.
I forgot HN isn’t exactly the demographic that tries this and finds out exactly how well it works. I guess for this demographic, I’d suggest telling your tenants it’s okay to smoke in the bathroom as long as the door is closed and the fan is on.
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!
"To sex" is to determine sex (gender.)
If someone says "I am sexing your mom" on the internet, that is definitely not what they mean.
Not me. I’m definitely checking your mom’s gender.
grammar*
What does his grandmother have to do with it?
She was the first person to check his mom's gender. Duh.
It could be, from a certain point of view.
Thank you, Obi Wan.
We're buying mice and we want 2 or 3 females. So yesterday I was searching "how to check mouse gender". Imagine my confusion when search engine recommended me a bunch of "how to sex mice" youtube videos!
Some words have multiple meanings
There’s a sign on the door but she wants to be sure…
> I hung a towel over him.
Be careful, that's probably a felony.
Seems like it. Randy from Cupertino should probably avoid visiting UAE again.
https://uaelegislation.gov.ae/en/legislations/2131
> Section Two: Crimes and Penalties; 2. Slander, challenge, or insult the Divine Essence:
> 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.
While this is obviously grotesque, it's both funny, sad and telling that the overarching name for the legislation is Federal Law by Decree Concerning Combating Discrimination, Hatred and Extremism. UAE learned this from the US/Europe.
> the Divine Essence
Surely this refers to God/Allah though. I would expect using such a monkier to refer to the king would be shirk (associating/comparing something with God), one of the worst sins in Islam.
So Randy is probably safe.
Looking over the linked legal page (with the caveat that I spent ten seconds and I am not a lawyer although I did use to watch Law and Order every week), I didn’t see anything that would make the portrait of the king subject to the law.
In The Good Soldier Svejk, the tavern keeper Pavilec is arrested for taking down his portrait of Emperor Franz Josef, because the flies were shitting on it.
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.
"Staying in a hotel with a romantic partner and/or family" is at least 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.
The much more specific way to target platonic buddies/coworkers from sharing a room would be eliminating rooms with two beds 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.
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.
https://hunters.com.co/
It had some other interesting problems.
Ahhhh... nothing like sleeping in a wet bed... full of mold...
It could have been worse. They could have put the toilet there and you could be smelling the sewer all night...
The master bath in my parents' old place had a massive bathroom and gigantic shower that seems to be all the rage now in more "luxurious" bathroom designs - often with a bathtub in the shower as well. I had to use their shower once while I was there, and it was terrible - it was cold and drafty in the shower, even with the shower on its highest setting. Luxury shouldn't be uncomfortable.
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 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):
Why don’t you just turn on the heat in the room?
Locality and humidity.
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...
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.
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.
To be snarky and try to be a bit humorous:
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?
It's winter man, here's a trivial experiment for you:
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?The temperature that's comfortable when stepping out of the shower is not the same as the temperature that's comfortable after you have dried off and put something on.
I can't book my grown up kids into the same room because of this reason. Utter stupidity or callousness, can't tell which.
> eliminating rooms with two beds
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.
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?
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 not 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.
Which is odd, since I feel like I always end up paying $13 extra for one king bed with my girlfriend to make sure we're not sleeping in a queen next to an empty one
This guy has a girlfriend ^
>Does that now make me a spoiled first world rich person?
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.
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.
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.
If you book a queen room isn't it always 2 beds? A king room is usually 1 bed. Is there some option where it's just totally random what room you get? I don't have any Marriott status but going on their site I can clearly see a choice of rooms, and each one says what amenities it has.
The point is that you aren't guaranteed the room type you select: you'll show up at the Marriott and they'll give you a room with one king instead of the room with two queens you thought you booked; your selection is just a preference, not a lock.
https://www.marriott.com/loyalty/member-benefits/guarantee.m...
^ you have to have Platinum status to get the type "guaranteed"... and, even then, they might just give you $25-100 and say "sorry" (it is more of an SLA with a penalty; though, this is also true of the reservation itself... FWIW, getting a random room type is MUCH more common than getting bumped).
> this is also true of the reservation itself...
Too true. If you have a normal reservation (vs some kind of pre-paid room), they oversell their capacity based on a statistical model. This means if everyone with a reservation shows up, some of the last to check in won't have a room (which tends to occur during statistically unusual events like a large trade show, where every reservation is more likely to show up). The hotel will basically just say "sorry" and suggest another hotel which may have rooms. I think they try to recommend hotels that are nearby and similar but sometimes that either doesn't exist or is also sold-out.
One of the benefits of having platinum status at Marriott is they'll actually guarantee your room but platinum status isn't easy to get. I used to frequently drive into the bay area late at night to avoid traffic, arriving at the hotel at midnight or later. Being platinum at the time, I'd sometimes get a call on my mobile from the manager after 9p to find out if I was showing up for sure and I'd tell them "Yep, I'm driving now." That's how I knew they were sold out and bouncing people with reservations. They didn't want to keep holding my room if I wasn't going to show up (being platinum there was no penalty for no-showing on a reservation).
A tip: if you have a non-guaranteed reservation and you think the hotel is likely to be full but you're arriving later in the evening - call the actual hotel front desk before 5p (not the reservation center), ask to speak to the manager on duty and ask them to check you into your room over the phone. Ask for the actual room # and then have them actually print out your card key and put it in an envelope under your name at the front desk. Once your reservation has been checked in, a room assigned and a key printed, it can't be given away by the late shift.
>If you book a queen room isn't it always 2 beds
No, although that is pretty common for business hotels in the US.
I’ve been to Los Angeles recently, and they wanted to give us a single bed room for 3 of us, and they told us that “some” wants the one bed option for 3 adults for whatever reason.
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.
This is not going to work well in Japan, since very few city hotel rooms have room for three guests.
Fortunately Japanese bedding naming is quite standardized: search for twin/ツイン and you'll get rooms with two beds.
[dead]
I think it’s at least partly right (few things are simple enough to have one cause).
A lot of businesses ask co-workers to share a room on trips. Business travel is a large share of reservations.
It’s wild to me that anyone would agree to go on a work trip where they are expected to share the room where they are sleeping. What an insane thing from a company to want.
So they want to save a few bucks for which I am expected to trade not just my privacy but also my good night rest (who knows if one of us snores) against a few dollars of profit margin for my employer?
If they cannot afford sending me on a business trip they probably shouldn’t do so.
What kind of company are doing so?
I recall Sun doing this in the late 90s
I think part of it is the idea that getting to travel for work (site visit, conference, convention, etc) is a perk. It’s madness.
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.
Marriot,Hilton,IGT,Hyatt own almost all hotels in any area you want to go to.
Enshittification is not just for apps anymore.
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?
Regulation is when individual action isn’t enough.
Regulation is a form of collective action.
And it doesn't even need to be government regulation.
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.
Yep! Government regulation is basically when the industry puts their heads way too far into the sand.
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 American system, for better or for worse, is a representational based political system. Unfortunately that means that our political power is not direct.
That doesn't make it "not collective action", just collective action through an intermediary. Sometimes that's very clearly willed by people, sometimes (often) not. Doesn't mean we should throw out the baby with the bathwater though.
> don't stay there, go somewhere else, and tell everyone you know
You might be very comfortable sharing the story about the situation, but I hope you can appreciate that not everyone else would be.
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.
> Marriot,Hilton,IGT,Hyatt own almost all hotels in any area you want to go to.
Best Western, Choice, Wyndham, IHG (typo?), Accor, Blackstone (Motel6), Radisson, Red Lion, Red Roof. Etc. There's lots of choices.
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.
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).
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.
I personally prefer on-demand.
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.
What's the explanation for housekeeping? I actually prefer very little to no housekeeping, especially for short stays.
Historically housekeeping was daily and it largely went away during COVID.
These days, some people see scaled-back housekeeping as sort of a ripoff while others of us are fine without the sometimes interruptions.
> while others of us are fine without the sometimes interruptions
The "do not disturb" card is always there. You can always decline housekeeping, but it's nice to have it available (and it's not like prices went lower to compensate for the lack of it anyway).
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.
Next up: "Bring bathroom doors back to AirBnBs"
I've stayed at a lot of hotels. I have almost never been in one that didn't have a proper bathroom door.
> Marriot,Hilton,IGT,Hyatt own almost all hotels in any area you want to go to.
Technically, they own almost none of the hotels. The hotel owners buy the franchises, and hence follow the brand standards.
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.
This doesn't make any sense.
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?
Here are the options:1. You offer double, twin and single rooms. Friends book twin rooms.
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.
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.
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.
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?
(They regard it as cheapskating/cheating.)
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.
You mean you want to go to the competition? What if the competition does it as well? What if it is the norm?
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.
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.
As a random example (I don't endorse it, I just picked a random London hotel) https://www.booking.com/hotel/gb/crowne-plaza-london-ealing.... 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.
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 next booking is two single rooms.
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.
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?
To save money.
> 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?
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.
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?
Plus, my experience is that hotels will simply cancel 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.
Think based on bathroom rather than bed count here.
Before: sell two business travelers one room with two separate beds and one dignified bathroom.
Now: sell two business travelers two separate rooms just so they can each use the bathroom with dignity.
Profit Now ($x2) > Profit Before ($x1)
This still makes no sense.
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 double. They'd be complete idiots to pick two single rooms if what they wanted as a twin room.
You can't compel them to book your single rooms, and you definitely can't compel them by springing a surprise doorless bathroom on them in your twin room option 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.
Simply offering a twin room option means you expect unrelated or distantly-related people will book it. If you don't want that, take away the twin room option. 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.
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.
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.
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'll respect that. 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.
FWIW, just my theories. I'm not saying I know all about this market.
> They want two adults [...] to rent separate single bedrooms
Then why do they even offer twin rooms?
Doorless bathrooms are not explained by saying hotels (that offer twin rooms) secretly want all twin room guests to pay double and use two single rooms. Most hotels don't even have very many single rooms!
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 no way they'd miss out the entire 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 there.
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.
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.
...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.
This is where you can practice human interaction and call or email the hotel.
I just feel like this becomes time consuming after a while. Will there be soap? Toilet paper? A bed? You don't know unless you ask! But ... c'mon ... they can just tell you on the website.
Or just don't travel if every detail becomes an issue. I make certain basic assumptions--yes I assume there will be a bed and toilet paper--but, in general, I adapt as necessary.
That is fair. I have noticed doors going missing in hotels but typically travel alone so it didn't really register as an issue. I would not want to share a room with a coworker ever, bathroom door or not.
A former company did have shared rooms for people in Asia-Pacific but it's never been the norm in my experience.
If you’re going on so much travel that this is a burden then you’re truly privileged. Maybe your assistant or travel agent can handle this issue for you.
Jabs aside, you don’t need to be rich to use a travel agent or Rick Steves guidebook instead of blindly booking hotels on Internet sites. If there’s an issue like this you’ll easily find it on review sites and most of those are searchable.
The same thing applies to other experiences like restaurants and museums. For example, it’s always smart to jump on Google/Trip Advisor reviews and type in “kids” or “stroller” into various attractions to make sure you are prepared if you’re bringing kids along.
Travel is never perfect. I’ve been in weird rooms with actual glass walls with a perfect framed view of the shitter facing the bed. I have no idea why they did this, maybe this culture values natural light in bathrooms? I witnessed it more than once so it wasn’t just one creepy place. Individual privacy especially within the same family is something of a recent and western concept from my understanding.
Either way it was hilarious and a minor inconvenience considering it was a lot minute hotel. It’s just peeing and pooping, we all do it. My traveling friend and I took turns averting our eyes. We had warm clean beds and a story to tell.
There will be photos of an example room, with zero guarantee the room you get will be the same.
Typically chain hotels are very careful about making sure everything in a picture is representative of the room to avoid this exact conflict.
Often this does mean that the pictures are lacking.
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.
By making it enough of a nuisance such that the next time you book a hotel, any hotel, for 2 platonic friends you are strongly nudged to book two separate rooms.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
How so?
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.
Open the window or run the aircon?
Good idea, I'll make sure the previous guests all do that.
It's been a very long time since I've stayed in a hotel room with a window that actually opened.
That's a comfort issue. Comfort is important, but it's distinct from hygiene.
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.
Why do you think bathrooms have fans? That'd be a lot of effort to deal with farts.
Open the window or run the aircon.
This is a hotel room, you would need the last hundred guests to have done that, not yourself
Considering this and your other comments I really think you need to think a bit deeper about your answers. I believe in you, just ask "and then what happens" and I'm positive you'll figure it out.
I've both opened windows and ran aircons. (Though I try to avoid doing both at the same time.)
Nothing bad happened.
If done both for a long time over many years.
If the increased humidity promotes mold growth, then yes, it's a hygiene issue.
Yes. Though trapping humidity in the bathroom doesn't make it go away, and you have to open the door to get in and out of the bathroom, and that lets the humidity escape.
The hotel will typically have an extractor running in the bathroom, wired to the light switch.
Shit particles are literally blown into the surrounding air when flushing; closing the door and running the fan contains the mess.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_plume
It feels like that wikipedia article was written by a motivated individual and hasn't received significant review...
> viruses & bacteria many of which are known to survive on surfaces for days
> Toilets are scientifically proven
> 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.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339650907_Real-time...
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.
Doors are nice from the public health perspective in that people actually do usually close them without even being asked.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is closely related to a phenomenon I don't understand.
Pretty much every 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!".
But obviously this protasis† can never occur and so it doesn't matter what's in the apodosis.
† https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/protasis#English (2)
I definitely do not return to a hotel where the bathroom was sub-par...
And likewise I absolutely return to a hotel where the bathroom was good when going back to a city.
I'm mostly talking about the water pressure for the shower here, but you get the idea.
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.
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.
Depends on how long I stay. For a two week vacation I definitely check out the layout.
For a city trip I basically accept anything with a bed and running water.
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?
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.
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.
If they're cheaping out on the shower then I'm not going to trust the mattress is clean or the linens are soft.
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.
Aside from rinsing off after a pool or ocean swim, or when she is actually dirty (e.g., after yard work), I think I have known her to voluntarily take three or four showers in 25 years together.
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: "we're behaving like a cartel, whaddaya gonna do? Regulate us!? We've already tricked you into thinking that's socialism!"
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.
With those two you're also playing the lottery but there is no baseline.
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.
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.
> there is generally a baseline consistent
Not having a bathroom with a door is an incredibly low baseline. I can only think of a single Airbnb that I’ve stayed in that’s been worse than that
(The key to the Airbnb was missing and the host was inaccessible)
>whaddaya gonna do? Regulate us!? We've already tricked you into thinking that's socialism!"
More like "I dare you, regulation will only further increase our moat"
I'm gonna go ahead and suggest that the "bathrooms must have doors" public health regulation is unlikely to increase any moats.
How does this have anything to do with 'public health'?
And almost any regulation gives a (relative) advantage to the people who can afford the lawyers and bureaucrats to furnish the documentation to show that they are in compliance.
Fecal particles are well documented as a vector for disease transmission, particularly an issue when travelling with someone who is sick but also just from the long term distribution of them into the room.
Going from no regulation to one does carry some of what you suggest, but there are already regulations about tons of things here (fire alarms, exits, building codes, etc) adding one more does not increase the need for lawyers and documentation.
The absence of a door strikes some people's sensibilities as mingling the capital-C Clean with the capital-U Unclean.
Which, as I think you're hinting, is largely distinct from anybody's actual health
Yes, that's what I think as well.
I'm all in favour of opaque bathroom doors (and none of these stupid vertical slits American have between their public bathroom doors and the walls). But I wouldn't want to pretend it's about hygiene or health.
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.
This makes much more sense.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
And a lot of people just don't care about many of those details (and others may deeply care about things that don't matter to you). Bathroom doors are mostly something that wouldn't appear on my radar screen in general. While I might notice things that wouldn't be on yours.
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.
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.
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 :)
I've seen that in some hotel rooms in China.
The logical conclusion here would be to have no door for the bathroom, but to have specifically the toilet in a separate subroom.
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.
Not sure how uncommon that is. Certainly a sink is often in an open alcove. The toilet and probably often the shower is in a subroom with a door.
Not sure how common sharing a room with a work colleague--especially of the opposite sex--or a family member who is a teen is. But traveling with friends, activity partners (hiking, etc.), so much of what's being discussed on this thread just isn't a real issue in my experience at least in most Western culture.
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!
How does a family of 3 or 4 use this room according to this logic?
Too bad, what have they done!!
[dead]
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.
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..
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.
I've found the hotel the shower controls are akin to a bop-it...pull it...twist it...hit it....twist it....pull it....
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?
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
You can't put affiliate links in OSM tags.
The list doesn't seem to be accurate. I looked at a few and found zero evidence of missing bathroom doors in reviews or photos. One even had a review complaining the bathroom door was broken and not closing fully... indicating it is actually there.
The website has no open data license so this isn't usable for OSM, even if we wanted to. I just meant to propose collaborating on an existing platform where we already have a lot of data about physical features, rather than erecting an ephemeral platform for this special purpose
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.
I can assure you not even single people nor couples want doorless bathrooms.
Single people or couples don't want doorless bathrooms, but they will probably tolerate 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.
Can you show off your toilet fetish on a more appropriate forum please
Why? I'd prefer a doorless bathroom.
One of my bedrooms at home opens into an open concept bathroom. No doors, vaulted ceilings, open.
I really don't get this.
I don't want to feel claustrophobic.
Edit: Like these -
https://34stjohn.com/blogs/inspiration/how-to-pull-off-an-op...
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:
Making Privacy Work
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.
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.
apparently not having doors prevents hemorrhoids.
So you can take a dump with some privacy, obviously.
There must be two types of people/couples.
Those that prefer privacy and those that don't care.
A door has two states to choose from, so having a door covers all use cases.
And a third type, people who have had children so have gone through the toddler stage where a toddler would literally chainsaw and burn down a locked door before they let you have 3 seconds of peace to take a shit.
That's actually a very valid point I hadn't taken into consideration.
If you're single or have a partner that you're comfortable with, open concept bathrooms feel luxurious. But if you need sanctity and salvation from the kids, I can get it.
The real issue is when they're old enough to reach the lock, but not old enough to trust not to destroy things or injure themselves if left unsupervised.
I would be surprised if private defecation is not a majority preference among couples.
Even if I'm alone in a hotel room, I'd prefer to contain the odor to the bathroom.
We tend to not care for showering/peeing, but pooping is something else...
I’ve actually ended otherwise decent relationships early because the other person was way too coy/upset with bodily functions like farting and pooping. If we’er sleeping together I expect us to be farting together. And if we are living together I expect us to be using the toilet in front of each other. Anything less is both inconvenient and reflective of deep personality conflicts that will never be resolved.
Sounds like there's going to be someone around who's bound to be the source of deep personality conflicts all right.
I have never in my life imagined that someone might break up with another person for the sole reason that the person refused to poop in front of them. That is honestly wild to me, but I appreciate your perspective, thanks for sharing.
Been married twenty years and haven't seen my wife poop yet. Not really on my list.
Similarly, married ten years and my wife and I have never seen each other use the bathroom. And barring dire emergencies I can't actually envision, we never will.
It's stories like these (and poor parenting I guess) that causes things like my cousin standing up to wipe for close to 30 years until his gf filled him in one day.
My college roommate told me I was doing it wrong by not standing up to wipe. I just rolled my eyes, that guy had a lot of weird things going on.
I don't want a room to smell literally like shit.
You live alone?
No. I think some couples are just more private than others.
I don't think there are any couples who prefer the bedroom to smell like the toilet.
If you flush the toilet at precisely the moment after you take a shit, the vacuum force of the toilet venting down the waste line will pretty much keep that from happening. That's basically prison rules.
Where is this magical prison where nobody farts?
They flush the toilet every time they fart, of course.
That is called a courtesy flush and it does happen.
I'd imagine that most couples would still want to be able to close a door when they're on the toilet.
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.
Right?
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.
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. Even when I lived alone, I'm pretty sure I would close the door.
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).
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.
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.
This is why many newer hotels choose to sliding doors, which barely take up any space, or just remove doors entirely.
[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.
Unlikely, given that you don't know it has no door until after you get there.
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).
This trend is the absolute bane of early-stage startups.
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.
It feels like hostile architecture specifically designed to break the "business frugality" use case. We ended up switching to Airbnbs solely because of this.
just book separate and cheaper motel rooms.
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.
There's a shade inside the glass, but still... did I really need to open the blinds to my bathroom?
https://www.brookstreethotel.com/rooms/double-queen
Having natural daylight in the bathroom is a plus for me.
It's also a major plus for perverts.
Which perverts?
If you want to share a room get a bed in a hostel. Is sharing a room with strangers - or worse work colleagues - really that common in the US?
What do you do with the bed? Or are you happy lying asleep next to a stranger , but not having a shower in sight (even if the shower was really open to the room which I can’t think I’ve ever seen)
What do you do at the gym/spa?
In my view, a hotel's primary function is to provide a comfortable bathroom and a comfortable night's sleep. Both should be simple. If is has failed in either, it has failed as a hotel altogether.
I now need extra wide space in the bathroom, so before booking I always check images on hotel-booking web sites, read reviews and look up video reviews of the hotel on YouTube.
There are surprisingly many video reviews of hotel rooms out there. Videos can also sometimes reveal whether a hotel bathroom has a particularly noisy fan, which is important to avoid for sleep.
The weirdest hotel bathroom I've encountered was in a top-floor suite. It had a door, but... multiple toilet seats and showers with no individual doors in-between them, nor to the multiple washbasins. There was no shortage of space for doors or partitions.
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.
At least in the US, the design choice of barn door or no door might also be driven by ADA compliance. You have to provide a lot of space to meet all the accessibility requirements and a hinged door can make the minimum square footage much higher than you’d think.
I think that's the real answer. ADA-compliant doors will not fit in many smaller hotel rooms.
On insta I'm seeing more stories about people reviewing/mocking OPS (Open plan shi.tters) on rental websites like rightmove.
Boldest choice thus far was the one with the OPS next to the kitchenette.
There are some very strange people out there...
A lot of rightmove ones are old people who need access to a toilet and don’t have room to install a whole new bathroom
Yeah, the joys of London real estate market :(
It’s not exactly unknow. My nan lived in a big 3 bed semi in the midlands, but my grandad was bed bound and lived in the conservatory for 7 years. He had a portable commode but having a flushing toilet would have worked too.
Sometimes health means having a toilet in your bedroom is more important, and having a door is meaningless when you can’t even get into the toilet without two carers lifting you there.
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.
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 assume you must be a solo traveler?
Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. Not something that's ever come up as an issue.
I first encountered it at a Hotel du Vin (UK) about 10 years ago.
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.
Dont give those airlines ideas. A doorless toilet at the back of the plane would be awesome (traditional usage of word)
This reminds me of the last time I was in Vegas for DEF CON and we booked rooms in this dimly-lit hotel that had surprisingly bright bathrooms with a floor-to-ceiling mirror in the shower. A similar mirror hung outside in the room on the wall opposite.
Yes, it was a one-way mirror looking in. A number of people who had booked rooms together had an exercise kicking their roommate out of the room to take showers that week.
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.
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.
It would be a good idea to put some eye-catching example of a hotel room in the article headline, like an image of a shower without a door, just for visual impact. As for me, I’ve come across hotels where the shower is visible from the bedroom, separated only by a glass wall. Lol, that’s probably the next level.
The one I stayed at in France had this shit. Annoyed me to no end and plus I got sick on the trip.
I've never seen this. But I'm kind of the opposite. When it comes to hotel rooms, I prefer function over form. A lot of hotels cover up their lack of quality with a lot of crap that serves no purpose whatsoever. Generic art reproductions on the wall. A lot of shiny chrome or bronze. A fancy looking shower that produces a luke warm mediocre flow of water that than splatters all over the bath room, etc. Or, worse, a dingy looking bath that you have to awkwardly step into and a shower head that will point anywhere except at you unless you hold it. I've seen it all. US hotels tend to be the worst on this front. It's all form over function and the amount of nonsense goes up with the number of stars.
What I want is:
- clean, comfortable bed. Preferably without pubic hairs from the previous occupant (which is what happens if the hotel cuts corners on servicing the rooms).
- a simple but functional shower with hot water
- enough toilet paper. I don't care about anyone folding the first sheet over. Who does that at home? Absolutely no-one I know.
- Power plugs next to the bed so I can charge my phone and use it while I'm on it.
- A window that can open and an AC with an off button.
- Wifi that works just like at home and doesn't kick me out every morning because some cookie expired.
- Bonus points if I don't get to listen in on the TV next door.
What I've found in some expensive premium hotels is the exact opposite of all of the above. Stuffy warm rooms. Barely functional plumbing. Windows that cannot open "for my safety", ACs that are producing noise and bad air 24x7 that are turned off at night to save energy. But the light fixtures are beautiful. And there are 20x more pillows and blankets on the bed than I need.
Some of the best hotels I've had were very affordable budget affairs aimed at return customers that are like me. Basically good management and pragmatic decoration is all you need to turn a mediocre room into a very comfortable one.
> a simple but functional shower with hot water
Sorry, no, not allowed. Hotel showers always have _something_ wrong with them; it's a law of nature.
Potential problems:
- No thermostatic valve (particularly common in the US and Spain, neither of which seems to believe that thermostatic valves exist at all)
- Leaks and/or insufficient drainage
- Overly complex control scheme
- Fixed showerhead, with no handheld shower at all (mostly a US thing)
- Arbitrarily loses pressure.
- Impossible to turn on without getting drenched in cold water
I don't _really_ care about the bathroom door thing that the website is so excited about, but I am constantly irritated by hotel showers.
My pet peeve is noisy fridges that clatter and whirr at night, and whose plug is inaccessible behind fixed furniture.
Have had some where the shower is just glass panels for the room to see (and no, it wasn't that kind of hotel).
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.
Both in the name of aesthetic, clearly.
I stayed at one in Iceland where the entire bathroom wall facing the living room was unfrosted glass, including the door. The living room was open concept so it was hard to avoid seeing into the bathroom. Great place for couples to bring their entire selves to the relationship.
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.
https://davebarry.substack.com/p/hotel-showers
Dave Barry having a substack was such a bonus find here
Related:
What happened to bathroom doors? [video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFPGUTyo9Yk
(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46062242)
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.
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.
Love this. I was super scared the first time i was booking travel to Europe with a newish girlfriend.
If you’re doing intentional travel with a significant other you should probably already be at the “pooping with the door open” phase.
Married with baby here—this is not a phase. Baby is the only one comfortable pooping with the door open.
There was definitely a layer of humor intended here, if you didn’t pick up on it.
Maybe not literally pooping with the door open but I can’t say I’d want to travel internationally with someone who I’m not comfortable with normal bodily functions around.
In my long dating years, I've never pooped my bathroom door open. Never even farted next to a girl. Is this disgusting behavior normal to some people?
Did you ever get married or did your relationships always end when they complained that you weren’t giving them your full self?
I had 4yr+ relationships. I am a shy pooper; I can't poop when someone watches me, while I fart or potentially destroy the toilet bowl. And also, there is the smell. Is "giving them full self" going full ape? Not judging, I am just curious, I don't talk about this with my other friends usually. Most guys don't share these weird details; it does not come up.
There was meant to be a layer of humor in my comments…
Maybe not everyone literally poops with the door open with their significant other but I’d personally have a hard time marrying someone who couldn’t exchange farts for a laugh.
I don't have a rigorous study to back my feelings, but I am pretty sure most people actually prefer to avoid their partner's farts and toilet smells.
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.
It's been a while since I've stayed in one but separation in Yotels seemed to be pretty much missing. Can't think of other chains in particular.
My personal "travel hack" for a while now is to poo in communal facilities that hardly ever seem to be in use in any hotel I've stayed in. I don't understand why anyone wants to poo a metre from their bed, regardless of a door.
As for showering, I don't really care to be honest. I'm cleaning my naked body. It's not some super secret affair that nobody is allowed to see.
Having said that I've yet to encounter a hotel where the toilet/shower isn't private.
What I really care about when travelling is being able to sleep which means the correct noise level and temperature. Far too many hotel rooms are simply too warm. Who the hell can sleep at 23 degrees with gigantic fluffy duvets designed for Nordic countries and no fan/airflow?
I've thought about making a similar site for this issue before but, ultimately, I don't travel anywhere near enough for it to be worth it. These days I just assume travelling will be shit sleep, and if it isn't then it's a bonus.
For the rest of the world: it seems way more common in the US/americas to share rooms than it is elsewhere.
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.
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.
We went on a driving trip a couple months ago. Every single hotel we stayed in had those stupid barn door style doors on the bathroom.
Not only do they leave a multiple inch gap, but are very easily opened by my curious one and two year old children.
There was zero privacy the entire trip.
Bring back real doors, with locks!
Recently I stayed in the Korean hotel where the toilet and the bathroom had the door but made out of semi transparent glass. And the worst, the toilet was next to the glass and walls while on the opposite side was bed. Perfect view and the smell my friend
If someone cares about this so much to make a website, why not include an explanation? There's mention of dignity. I don't feel my dignity lessened when my bathroom has no door. Perhaps the door is useful to keep the heat and the steam inside the bathroom?
If you only stay in hotels alone, it probables doesn’t matter that much to you. Quite apart from questions of dignity, when sharing a hotel room, there are practical conveniences: it’s nice to keep odors contained, and to be able to turn on the bathroom light at night without waking anyone up.
What is there to explain? Bathroom needs to be isolated.
Do they also have to explain why there are walls around your bathroom and it's not just a commode next to a bed?
Only slightly relevant, but at the Porsche dealership in Odesa, Ukraine, their bathroom has two toilets together in the one open space, with a chessboard on a plinth between them. The Ukrainians are very funny. I can share a photo if anyone's interested.
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.
Worst I've ever seen was a bathroom that didn't have walls!
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.
I generally enjoy eye contact with my wife, but not while I'm pooping!
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?
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.
Simple action for those who are unhappy with this situation (and a suggestion for this website creator/ owner): hotels appear to be linked to their booking.com listing. Take a few minutes to select some hotels from the list (possibly at random), then go to their Booking.com page, search for reviews mentioning the lack of a bathroom door, and mark them as helpful. The website could agevolate this process by providing a list of direct link to booking.com pages of the offending hotels.
I've recently stayed at a new Holiday Inn Express near NYC. It had a proper bathroom, nothing to complain about. But there was no ventilation at all. There was this American-style air conditioner under the window and some small outlet in the bathroom, but I couldn't force the air conditioner to force-intake air. It's either super-noisy with compressor running or completely off. I absolutely don't understand how it is even possible that room has no ventilation.
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?
One doorless bathroom if you are interested:
https://cf.bstatic.com/xdata/images/hotel/max1024x768/919323...
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.
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...
Hotel safes are a much simpler solution to this problem...
I've seen that in japan, but they had a switch that would electronically switch off the window (it would become opaque white).
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.
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.
> 4625.1200 TOILET REQUIREMENTS.
> 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. The doors of all toilet rooms serving the public and employees shall be self-closing. 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.
> https://www.revisor.mn.gov/rules/4625.1200/
A water closet is just water shelving without a door.
You are technically incorrect (for the US, I’m not familiar with UK architectural terminology), the colloquial usage does not match industry standard terminology. The ASME definition for ‘water closet’ is specifically the fixture itself, a flush toilet. Building codes define water closets the same way. Some people incorrectly refer to a separate toilet room inside of a bathroom as a water closet, but that is not what professionals (plumbers, mechanical engineers, and architects) call it. If you reread the MN statute, you’ll note it refers to water closets and toilet rooms separately, because one is the fixture and the other is the room containing the fixture.
The term ‘lavatory’ is also frequently used incorrectly, a lavatory is just a sink, not the entire room.
Similarly, a ‘light bulb’ should actually be called a ‘lamp’. That’s what lighting companies, electricians, and people that manage electricians call them. A luminaire is a complete light fixture, a lamp screws into a luminaire (some luminaire have integral light sources) and a ‘light bulb’ is technically an A19 E26 lamp, A19 is the bulbous shape, E26 is the ‘standard’ screw base size. The Wikipedia article is titled LED lamp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LED_lamp
I don’t correct people in real life when they misuse these terms, but I’ll write up several paragraphs to defend my position online ;) I work in commercial construction management so I’m exposed to these terms frequently, I don’t expect non-industry folks to know them.
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.
Does someone in local government own a plumbing contractor or plumbing supply company? That’d be my guess anyways.
There's actually no plumbing code (checks) for my house. I could drop my poop right out the back of the house and pull my water through lead pipes from a mosquito swamp into my sink. As long as it is immediately heated it is fine. It is literally the only requirement.
My permit explicitly says they will check absolutely nothing but how far the house is from the property line and that I have immediate hot water.
Haha that’s crazy, there has to be someone with a financial interest in instant hot water heaters making bank from that. If it was conservation they’d mandate ultra low flow toilets and other water saving measures. Is this a township or similar level of government?
Likely for the same reason that fans are often a building code requirement.
Is that actually common? My house has no built-in fans much less AC.
In my state every bathroom in a private home is required to have an exhaust fan or an openable window.
I actually analyze the photos of the hotelrooms looking for the bathroom door before I book a hotel room these days.
Has become this new weird step to take during bookings.
I think it would be more effective if the site was analyzing existing reviews - and encouraging people to leave scathing reviews where a hotel decides that bathroom doors are optional.
A standalone web site isn't going to make it into the hotel's metrics, "the most driver of sub-9/10 ratings is the lack of bathroom doors" will make them find a way to reinstall them pronto.
isnt the compromise usually that the stalls have fully enclosed doors if the bathroom doesnt?
Personally I like having both. Doors are great for a variety of reasons, not just privacy.
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.
More useful than this would be speed test results from the hotel wifi.
The free wifi in my last hotel in Tokyo was 800Mbps symmetric. I’m ruined forever.
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.
I had not been at hotels with bathroom without a door, but I would want them to have a door like the people who wrote the article allegedly do. What I could do without is a TV set and many other things, but I would want to have a door, and a desk, and fresh air.
Nice Collection! Glass box are good for couples and all. But if you're traveling with group friends, it could be awkward.
The typical couple does not want a glass box.
>’m done. I’m done arriving at hotels and discovering that they have removed the bathroom door. Something that should be as standard as having a bed, has been sacrificed in the name of “aesthetic”.
In what country or region are we here? I've never seen a bathroom without a door in a hotel.
Or anywhere, really, for that matter.
Take a dump in the lobby bathroom, and crap on the seat and clog the toilet with paper, maybe they will learn
Wait, are hotels now taking bathroom doors away? It’s awful enough when they don’t let you lock the door.
If there's no door between the toilet bowl and the bed, the bed is in the bathroom.
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.
"Sliding doors"? What's this guy's problem with sliding doors? This is the best type of door there is, all bathrooms ever should have sliding doors!
I am a frequent traveller(literally have the star alliance card).
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.
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.
There are two possibilities:
They find this out in advance and find a 'normal' hotel and book a room there.
They find this out when they get to the hotel, complain to everyone, write bad reviews, never come back.
Lose-lose for the hotel (unless it's some remote destination with just one hotel there, but those are rare)
Then why offer twin beds?
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
I agree bathroom doors are sensible when traveling with company. When staying alone, though, I prefer no doors. If there is a door, I tend to use a small piece of gaffers' tape to hold it open. I don't spend a lot of time in the hotel room, so while I'm in there I want my movement unimpeded.
The worst I've experienced was a sliding barn door which covered either the bathroom or the clothes rack. If I wanted my clothes to breathe, I had to shut the bathroom with a door that only impedes movement and does not provide privacy. If I wanted to move around freely, I had to shut my clothes in!
Along with a closing door, a nice loud exhaust fan is appreciated.
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!
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'.
In my experience, hotels in most of the world already ~doubled their rates since COVID while also taking the door...
like adding basic to basic economy for plane tickets, and adding an even lower class of service
A way to force people to buy separate rooms?
I usually stay 50+ nights/year at hotels all across the value spectrum and haven't thought about this until now! Proper bathroom doors _are_ hard to come by.
"There has to be a safety/design reason for this," I thought. And, sure enough, there is: https://old.reddit.com/r/hotels/comments/1gmearh/hotel_desig...
TL;DR: Sliding doors are an easier way to keep hotel rooms up to code long-term than doors that need to be refitted/redesigned if the room changes.
To me, what's more annoying than sliding bathroom doors (which honestly haven't bothered me that much, though I usually travel alone) are:
1) Sliding shower doors that are ill-fitted and don't close properly, and
2) Bathrooms without proper ventilation (though I learned why vent fans are uncommon in hotels in the US: https://old.reddit.com/r/CasualConversation/comments/18z9sd0...)
If this is a trend, I have not noticed it. Are there particular brands and/or regions where there is happening?
And hooks… Too many hotel rooms without enough hooks to hang things like worn clothes, jackets…
Isn't that what all the hangers are for? Hangers are generally a lot better for your clothes and jackets than hooks.
Doorless bathrooms, open office plans. As it turns out , people like privacy
I’m in the states and haven’t seen this despite a lot of travel but I’ll be looking out for it now!
This is some new age Costanza shit.
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.
To borrow another Seinfeld bit: there's good naked and bad naked. The glass door problem invites the latter.
I only know about this because of the scene in the White Lotus.
Which scene are you referring to?
I wonder if the bathroom for the hotel staff is doorless too.
It's nice to see a passion project.
I get the point, but myself have no intention of ever sharing a hotel room with anyone I am not comfortable to concurrently use a bathroom with, i.e. my gf/wife. I would much rather see an initiative to show me if a hotel shower has a proper way to keep the water in, so I do not have to use three towels to provide some sort of spot where I can properly dry off whilst not standing ankle deep in water. Never understood why this is the case in so many hotels, it does nt seem to aid cleaning staff either. That, and a proper filter for on premises parking (not the "public parking is plentiful around the hotel" in the fine print bs), and for wifi, show me the speedtest results please.
Any hotel room without a bathroom door has been repeatedly blasted with fecal air covering all surfaces some order of magnitude more than rooms with a door
Actual reason - users would lock the door before suicdice or during mental health events. Or even just refuse to leave.
No door, one less thing to worry about.
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.
To me that design screams it is a love hotel primarily used for one night stands and those beds you've slept on have been used for various such reasons. There isn't much dignity to be had after that.
I wish I could upvote this multiple times.
had no idea this was a 'thing' .
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.
I have long standardised the way I do hotel reviews:
- bullshit wifi connectivity (e.g. captive wifi + OTP)? - normal wifi but with very long password? - is there a place to put toiletries in the shower? - clean? - time to check in and check out?
Where I travel the hotels without bathroom doors have not proliferated yet. I've been in a few, even when I am alone I hate the experience.
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.)
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?
The people's champ
It seems like the target hotel customer for fancy hotels is an Instagram model or a Kardashian. I get having a sliding door to the bathroom or translucent walls on the shower is annoying but the status symbols in hotels are not designed for your average hacker News poster. They're trying to make a small room in an older building look like a bigger room to justify the price.
London, Marriot, W. Sink in the bedroom. Just No.
https://dynamic-media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-o/2e/9...
Bad, bad architects.
They have a reason for this choice. I remember studying it at university—the professor said that when people have intimacy, there's no need for doors.
But what if you have a guest? And what if your poop stinks?
Incredibly low-IQ people.
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.
Also bring back brighter lighting?
Is it just me, or have hotel rooms gotten dimmer?
It seems less cheerful.
Not sure if they have gotten dimmer. Possibly the opposite: I don't remember having noticed it recently (but I've also travelled a lot less), but I do remember being very annoyed by this many years ago.
No idea why hotels were doing it, neither LEDs nor the electricity for them are that expensive and I doubt anyone wants to be stuck in a dark cave.
That's probably intentional to prevent you from realizing how unsanitary the room really is.
Can we have a website for these things too?
Well now I feel like a pretty smug 1%-er since I've never been in a hotel room with no bathroom door.
It's not a function of price. One of the most expensive hotels in Southeast Asia has this problem. I've complained. They said they're fixing it in an upcoming design refresh.
[dead]
[dead]
[dead]
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.
Pooping isn't intimacy.
This doesn't have anything to do with Americans.
And europeans.