Finally getting to your hotel after a long, tiresome flight is like a taste of heaven. The urge to drop everything, take a hot shower and then plop into bed is simply overwhelming.
But sometimes the fantasy is ruined by smelly mold in the shower, hair on your bed or the evil that plagues most hotels: cheap, one-ply toilet paper. It's enough to make one shudder.
If this sounds like your worst nightmare, you're not alone. These are the 10 most common hotel pet peeves.
10. Uncomfortable Pillow, Bed or Blanket
A good night's sleep is the key to a happy life. But that's hard to achieve when you have a pillow that feels like a rock. Or like a huddled pillowcase. And don't even get us started on uncomfortable mattresses.
Hotels are literally places where people pay to sleep, so you'd assume that comfortable bedding would be the bear minimum.
*Rankings are based on Passport Photo's "America's Biggest Hotel Pet Peeves" study.
9. Hard to Reach or Insufficient Electrical Outlets
The eternal fight for the one side of the bed that has more outlets is probably responsible for many a vacation fight. We get that at one point, people didn't carry around a bunch of devices that needed charging. But the world has evolved and so should hotel rooms.
People shouldn't be having to play "rock-paper-scissors" or move furniture around just to charge their phones. And iPads and portable batteries and earphones and anything else that needs an outlet.
8. Slow Internet or Paid Wi-Fi
Once again, some hotels insist on living in the past. Yes, Y2K made a comeback, but that doesn't mean we should bring back all aspects of life before we were all consumed by the internet.
Not giving people free Wi-Fi is akin to charging them to use the shower. Or worse. And slow internet is simply unacceptable unless you're an accommodation in the middle of a remote island or in the jungle.
7. Clogged Shower, Sink or Toilet
Nope, nope, nope. People do not spend their hard-earned money just to unclog toilets and showers. That's already unpleasant when you have to do it in your house — and that's your own filth. But cleaning up after an unidentified stranger is something we absolutely refuse to do.
Of course, if this happens, a hotel should immediately fix the problem or change your room. But we all know that what should happen and what actually happens are sometimes two very different things.
6. Hotel Room Key Cards That Don’t Always Work
After a great night out, you stumble toward your hotel room, anxious to go straight to bed. But when you go to open the door, your key card decides to betray you for no reason except to make your life hard.
We get that replacing actual keys is costly and that people are prone to losing everything. It's just that we wish the technology behind hotel key cards weren't so unreliable. A faulty card can really put a damper on your day.
5. Unexpected Fees
Fees happen. It's fine. But hidden fees are simply evil. If people are giving you their business, why would you hit them with surprise expenses that they didn't anticipate?
When hotels do this, we just imagine an Austin Powers-type villain laughing maniacally at the idea of ruining people's days.
4. One-Ply Toilet Paper
Why, oh, why, does one-ply toilet paper even exist? And why has it not been made illegal?
More importantly, why do hotels that charge you hundreds of dollars per night insist on committing this violence against their own guests? The people demand answers.
3. Guests That Don’t Follow COVID-19 Safety Measures
The first post-pandemic trip is always nerve-racking. When things started opening back up, one of the worst things travelers could experience was dealing with other tourists not covering their faces or being careful where they sneezed and coughed.
While COVID-19 no longer has the hold on the world that it once did, travelers not covering their faces when they sneeze, not washing their hands, and being all-around dirty will continue to be a problem until the end of time.
2. Bad Room Smell
Have you ever opened your hotel room door only to be attacked by the strong smell of mold? If you haven't, consider yourself lucky because there's no worse way to start a vacation.
We didn't take days off work only to deal with a musty party of fungi growing on the carpet.
1. Poor Room Cleanliness
This goes hand-in-hand with smelly hotel rooms, but it's taken to another level. Few moments in our life have been as unpleasant as when we've found hairs in the sink and questionable stains on pillows, sheets or mattresses. (Yes, we are talking from personal experience.)
After this, you can pretty much forget about sleeping, since you'll be lying there thinking of all the possible horrid scenarios that caused said stains. Our advice? Leave the hotel and never look back. Sleep in the car if need be, but don't risk getting pink eye or lice from a dirty hotel room.
Unfortunately, one of those is also from personal experience.
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