Why I Hate Hotels

I don’t like hotels. In fact, I think I hate hotels. Sure, I’ve never had the opportunity to stay at the Ritz Carlton or even The Four Seasons but I have a funny feeling that even if I had such an opportunity, my feelings toward hotels would remain unchanged.

The funny thing is when I was young, I was intrigued with hotels. Perhaps, it had something to do with the association that only the rich and fabulous could travel and stay in hotels. Fast forward to today and many, rich or not are traveling and staying in hotels. Of course, rich or not, traveling in itself is already a form of privilege.

I longed to be able to see the world and stay in posh hotels, too.

As mentioned above, I’ve yet to stay in a very glamorous hotel. While it’s a no brainer that it’s not economically reasonable for me to shell out tons of cash for a room to sleep in, in the end, I think the biggest issue has to do with me not even liking hotels in the first place.

Here are the reasons why I hate hotels:

Resort Fees

Yes, I said that I’ve never stayed at a fancy place like the RItz Carlton before but it doesn’t mean I’m not aware that resort fees exist at some hotels. If you’re a Vegas go-er, you know what I’m talking about as practically every hotel on the Vegas strip has resort fees. Why? For the pool, perhaps? Who knows! Resort fees don’t make sense to me. If they’re truly necessary, resorts should just consider increasing room fees instead of tackling a daily resort fee when it comes time to reserve the room. I don’t know how the average person feels about resort fees, but to me, they’re the equivalent of homeowner association fees (HOAs) that exists within most condominium and townhome communities. They’re rip offs and totally not worth it. Like, how many people are going to spend the bulk of their day making use of the resort’s facilities?

Parking Fees

Parking for 1 vehicle should always be complimentary at a hotel. Of course, I kind of understand that things get a bit complex for hotels should their lot also cater to non-hotel guests. Example: Hotels in Los Angeles will often make extra money by opening their lot to the public so that people can attend a conference held at the hotel or run an errand within the vicinity of the hotel. It’s smart but kind of greedy. I say greedy because such lots tend to be jam packed and it becomes a disservice to hotel guests, who unfortunately have to pay a daily parking fee on top of working hard to find a parking spot should they return to the hotel at a not so ideal time.

WiFi Access Fee

Say what? I think it’s safe to say that all hotels provide complimentary wifi for their guests these days. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if some hotels provide limited wifi services. For example, they might limit the free wifi access area to a common lounge or lobby. Stingy, if you ask me.

I recall the time I actually had to pay for a wifi day pass, where I’d be given a flimsy card to access wifi over the hotel’s website. Looking back on it, it was strange but then again, this was ages ago and wifi was a bit of a luxury then. I’d find it really strange if a place, be it a hotel or some 2 star motel did not provide complimentary wifi for its guests in this day and age, though.

Thin Walls

The walls of hotel rooms are way too thin for my taste. So thin that I can almost always hear the conversation that a guest is having in the room next to mine. If mini refrigerators are present, I can also hear when a guest is opening or closing the refrigerator door for a midnight snack. If this doesn’t indicate that the walls are too thin, I don’t know what does.

When Sexual Tensions become too much

Continuing from above, if you can hear a conversation from next door, you’re going to hear people getting it on when their sexual tensions become too much. I understand the phrase, “Go get a room!” when people get too touchy feely with each other but I hate the concept of a hotel room being a place where sex happens. I get it, though. There are honeymooners. There are couples. There are also just flat out horny people. And at least they got a room instead of doing it out in the public.

But I have an issue with it. I have an issue because I can’t tell you how many times my sleep or rest in general has been disrupted because someone was getting it on.

I remember the time I stayed at a hotel with super duper thin walls where I’m sure every single guest heard the late night moans. Even my noisy air conditioner could not drown out the moans. It was bad. The worst part of it all, though was knowing a female child, staying with her family was exposed to the sounds of hanky panky. Not cool.

Another time, the room next door to me went at it at 1 am. I was not a happy camper. I wanted my sleep but couldn’t sleep when I wanted to. The next day, I woke up annoyed and so not refreshed despite having plans to get out and about early. Damn the two “love birds”!

Advice: Although I’ve never made a complaint to the front desk about people being noisy, I advise you to call the front desk if you’re ever disturbed by noise. Yes, this includes noise from people doing the hanky panky. Keep in mind that most hotels have “quiet hours” and if people doing the hanky panky are disturbing your sleep, especially if they happen to be doing it in the room next to yours, you have every right to complain. You are a paying guest after all and it’s not fair that you have to suffer from someone else’s fun when all you want to do is get a sufficient amount of rest.

Is it clean enough?

How clean is a hotel room? Some hotels do a good job of cleaning but others do a relatively subpar job with cleaning rooms. I’ve stayed in a well known chain before and was disappointed to find an unwrapped lollipop stuck to the ice bucket as well as a piece of cilantro on the stove top. It was devastating to have paid extra for the suite only to encounter a suite that wasn’t as clean as it should’ve been. To make matters worse, a stack of towels greeted me when I entered the suite. The housekeeper had forgotten it and while mistakes are normal, I couldn’t help but to question the housekeeping standards of this particular hotel.

I understand that their housekeeping staff could have just been short staffed, but that cilantro basically revealed how much they could and would skimp on cleaning. Ew.

For the adventurers that aren’t heeding (or just can’t heed) covid19 and staying in hotels, it’s worrisome, isn’t it? It’s worrisome enough that particles from another guest’s room can make way to your hotel room, but when the housekeeping staff sloppily cleans, it makes the situation that much worse.

No place to store leftovers

A nice hotel is a place that provides a mini fridge. If you’re someone that likes to bring your leftovers back as dinner or tomorrow’s breakfast even, a mini fridge is a must. I can do without a microwave but a mini fridge is a must should I not want to risk having my food spoiled. Of course, this isn’t exactly too much of a problem in that I can usually filter out hotels that don’t provide mini fridges in guest rooms.

That ice machine

That ice machine is great when hotels are too stingy to provide enough complimentary water bottles for you each day. If you’re a cheapskate and not in a rush to drink water, you can get some ice from the ice machine and melt it into water. Voila! Sounds great and dandy until you hear the ice machine at an odd hour in the night. It can be disruptive.

Party hard!

If the hotel is on top of or adjacent to a restaurant, bar or nightclub, you have the option to “party” in your room for free or force yourself to be awake until the noise quiets down around 2 am. Not cool. The same can be said of hotels in big cities. If you’re not used to city noise, you may have a hard time sleeping with all of the noise in the streets.

Elevator noise

If you ever get a room closest to the elevator, be prepared to not be able to sleep well. You’ll hear the noise that enables the elevator to move up or down and it can be annoying if you want to sleep in a quiet room. If you’re really close to the elevator, you’ll hear any “ding dong” noises the elevator makes as well as the loud chit chatting going on outside of the elevator while groups of people are waiting to board the elevator. Meh.

Everyone’s a stranger

There’s a certain level of charm to meet people you don’t know yet somehow obtain a relationship with them. In the case of being a hotel guest, you form a relationship with the hotel staff and fellow guests in that you’re all associated with the same hotel. However, there’s a dark side to this in that everyone’s a stranger. In general, you want to think that you can trust the staff of a hotel but staff are just human beings. They also, for the most part have access to your hotel room.

Want to sprawl everything out like it’s your own room back home? You might want to think about that again especially if you have valuables with you. Example: Own the latest gopro? It can get stolen. In general, staff will leave your stuff alone especially if they already own what you have or own something better. It’s unethical staff that might be tempted into taking something they shouldn’t.

Guests with sticky fingers can also attempt to enter your room when it’s open for housekeeping duties.

In general, you shouldn’t take something you’d get upset losing with you on a trip in the first place but in this day and age, it seems like the average person seems to all own something valuable. The latest iPhone anyone? Yeah, that’s already a whopping $1,000+ but you normally would have that on you at all times, right? Right, except some people might not want a bulky phone on them while they’re at the hotel’s gym for 30 minutes or so.

So, with these reasons and possibly some more, I don’t like hotels. I know you’re thinking airbnbs would probably be more to my liking and to be honest, I once thought that, too. However, airbnbs, like hotels are not without their own pitfalls and some of these pitfalls can be pretty bad.