My job requires that I travel quite a bit, and stay in hotels. I’ve also travel a bit for vacations. So far here is a list of things I look for in hotels:

  1. Having to prepay for a room is very irritating. It is even more irritating if the hotel is in a foreign country. This can cause issues with bad service or offerings that weren’t up to how it was described. Authorizing a credit card to an extremely high amount is also rather nutty. If the individual is not aware, this can cause legitimate charges to be rejected.

  2. When travelling for vacations, I tend to like apartment type rentals. They tend to be cheaper per the week, and often don’t include daily maid service.

  3. Comfortable beds are a requirement. I haven’t had issues with this in the Fairfield Inn, or the Hilton properties.  However, I have had issues with this in an Aloft and Town Suites hotel. I tried to talk with the property managers. In each case, I was told that the hotel had only one style of mattress: extremely hard. This is irritating because it makes sleeping uncomfortable and difficult.

  4. A good breakfast: I’m not expecting a made to order breakfast. However, if the scrambled eggs are overcooked and dry or if the meat product is questionable, this is extremely irritating. When I stay in a hotel, I often have no other choice than to stay in one. If I’m at home, I’ll cook the meal myself.  Having a bad breakfast service reminds me that I rather be at home. Also, if you charge for the breakfast, it better be good.

  5. If the room has a kitchenette, please stock it with the items one may need to cook with. A good example of this has been the Inn Sight apartments in Berlin. They include the spatulas, knives, glasses, utensils, and multiple pots + pans.

  6. Able to make taxi requests very quickly. When late for a flight leaving Berlin a year ago, I found that the Mercure was able to do this from their computer. Within 3 minutes of walking out the door of the hotel after checking out, the taxi was there.

  7. Easy to work with the TV: I rarely ever watch the TV channels that are provided with the room. I tend to load my tablet up with TV shows and watch content from my tablet onto the TV. If a hotel makes this difficult by either disabling the input selector or making the HDMI ports difficult to get to, this is irritating.

  8. The room design: This isn’t hugely important, however it is rather nice to stay in a modern-European styled hotel room.