What’s Been Removed From Your Hotel Room?
October 28, 2009 | Uncategorized
The managing director of our company — in Los Angeles attending a convention at the Hyatt Grand Regency Plaza – telephoned me yesterday.
Although he called me on his cell phone the connection was so spotty I suggested he find a land line and call back. I then sat there for 15 minutes awaiting his call, wondering if he had gotten mugged in a phone booth somewhere. I was thinking what a great opening that would make for an episode of Law & Order…the body slouched over the house phone, the receiver dangling from the cord like some strung-up bandit in an old western…
When he finally called — on his cell again — he told me he couldn’t find a telephone in the hotel’s convention area or lobby. In fact, he said, according to the concierge all phones had been removed from the hotel’s public areas. Few people have noticed, I guess, since we’re all busy chatting away on our cells.
This got me thinking about all the other things that hotels are quietly removing.
When was the last time you found stationary and envelopes in your hotel room? It seems most hotels have now put the cost of printing stationary towards the cost of installing modems.
And remember sewing kits? Now when you’re in a rush and a button falls off you wait a half-hour as housekeeping runs your shirt down to some hidden cave in the bowels of the building beneath the laundry room beneath the kitchen.
And pillows. Good hotels still give you nice comfortable pillows, but a few weeks ago I stayed in a chain hotel I think Mobil Travel Guides and Fodors have been avoiding for years. The pillows in this place were so small I would have used one for a stamp if there had been any writing paper and envelopes around. I mean what hotel GM in his right mind would ever think all his guests would have heads the size of Muppets?
It was, to say the least, a bit hard to fall asleep. But lying there in bed I thought of how a hotel guest here could escape a murderer trying to suffocate him or her with a pillow, because the perp could only cover one nostril. Ah, what a great opening for Law & Order…
Jim Ferri
