Hotel Pet Peeves – What Bugs You the Most in 2012
While some things in a hotel are hopefully a given, such as a comfortable bed and fresh towels, other aspects of life on the road are not. Our readers travel on a regular basis for work and today this means Internet connectivity and lots of electrical outlets for charging and powering devices. Unfortunately, this seems to be where most hotels fall flat. Our pet peeve poll sought to determine which of those aspects most frustrate our readers, and after weeks of voting the results are in.
The hotel pet peeve poll was conducted in conjunction with FlyerTalk, the world’s largest online travel community.
Over 750 readers participated in the survey, and their top peeves – expensive Internet, inaccessible/insufficient electrical outlets, and weak/slow Internet – were all tech related. These results speak to business travelers’ priorities these days, as they try to stay mobile and work on the go.
Expensive Internet moved from the number two position last year to the top position this year; inaccessible electrical outlets moved from three to two; and weak/slow Internet jumped from number eight to number three.
Last year’s biggest gripe, climate control not easily adjustable, dropped to number five while noise (from neighboring rooms, hallways, the elevator, or other parts of the hotel stayed steady at number four.
Other peeves in our readers’ Top 10 list related directly to how comfortable a guest felt in his room. This included insufficient water pressure combined with inconsistent water temperature (6th), drapes that don’t fully close/let too much light in (7th), hotel staff ignoring a do not disturb sign (8th), insufficient of poor lighting (9th), and uncomfortable pillows (10th).
The survey was conducted in parallel with a discussion on FlyerTalk.com about hotel pet peeves that elicited over 300 comments and garnered 37,000 views.
Some FlyerTalk members felt that all of the peeves listed had affected them at some time or another. “I looked at the poll, and I’m pretty peevish about each of the items listed, almost equally so for most of them,” reported FlyerTalk member TMOliver.