What makes a good hotel room?

For me, what makes my holiday is the hotel room. If the hotel is awful, then my holiday is already off to a bad start. I am sure many of you have heard of all the hotel room horror stories. From mice in the bedrooms, weird stains on the mattresses, rooms not being the same as the listing, showers not working, dirty rooms, the list goes on and on. Thankfully, none of these things have ever happened to me and hopefully have never happened to you.

But on a more positive note, I have always had great experiences in hotels, and they have all mostly been to my satisfaction. But what do people actually look for in a good hotel room?

For me, the most important aspect of a hotel is not even the room, but the staff. I find it such a relief when the hotel staff are all friendly, have relatively good English speaking skills (especially when I am in a foreign country) and are accommodating to my needs. I just find it such a relief when I get to a hotel after such a long journey and the staff have great customer service skills. Most the time I don’t ask for big things, I just have some small issues like splitting my double bed to two singles so I don’t have to share a bed with my family. And usually, the staff are always quick to solve this issue, especially in chain hotels like Premier Inns.

Once in the hotel room, it is always a blessing for me when good shampoo and shower gel are provided

Once in the hotel room, it is always a blessing for me when good shampoo and shower gel are provided. The worst-case scenario is going into a hotel room thinking that toiletries are included in the room and then discovering they are not, and you have to go out and purchase them. The next worse thing is when they give you toiletries, but not enough to last you your whole stay, and then you have to go and purchase them anyway. The ideal scenario for me is when I enter my hotel room and it is full of toiletries, and in the unlikely scenario that they run out, it is very easy to ask staff for more and they are very happy to accommodate it. That is why I love cruising so much; the staff clean your room daily and top up all your toiletries whilst you are out for the day so when you return to your room in the evening it is like you are entering a freshly made hotel room every single night.

A less common thing that makes my hotel room turn from good to amazing is the TV. This may sound strange, especially when you are going on an exploring holiday, but for me I love to watch something on TV before going to bed at night, so I value a TV in my room very highly. But of course, it also matters what sort of things are on the TV. It is a pretty pointless TV if all the channels you can watch are the ones in the language of the place you are staying in as for me, I generally can’t speak the languages of the countries I visit. Of course, I do try to learn the odd phrase or two to get me by, but this is not enough to watch a 30-minute soap series episode in that language and understand what is going on.

I guess for me, the top things I look for in a good hotel room is friendly staff, a good supply of toiletries and a range of things to watch on the TV

The best-case scenario for me with regards to the TV is to have a smart one with apps like Netflix and Amazon Prime (other streaming services are available), where I can watch my favourite shows whilst on holiday (currently watching The Sopranos). A decent compromise that I have found satisfactory in many foreign hotel rooms is having a few English-speaking channels like BBC World News and then some foreign channels too with English subtitles. This is ideal for me as I do like to watch foreign films and tv series when I can read the English translation at the bottom and understand what is going on. A strange channel that I do enjoy whilst abroad is the foreign sports channels. I love listening to the commentators getting passionate about the sport they are commentating on as sport transcends all languages so I can sort of understand the commentators from watching the sport despite not knowing the language. So, for me the ideal TV scenario in my hotel room would consist of a few UK known streaming services and then a selection of foreign programmes as well as the sport channels.

I guess for me, the top things I look for in a good hotel room is friendly staff, a good supply of toiletries and a range of things to watch on the TV. Of course, these things are all subjective and what matters to you may be completely different to what matters to me. But hopefully you can see why these things are so important to me!