Comment by akersten
2 days ago
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.
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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?
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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?
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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.
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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?
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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?
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> 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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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There will be photos of an example room, with zero guarantee the room you get will be the same.
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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.
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Until recently, you never had to think about it. But as it becomes more common it will become something you might want to consider.
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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.
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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.
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>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"
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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?
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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.
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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!!
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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..