Tag: hotels

Twozdaz Wandering Thoughts

I encountered two hotel trends which displease me during my recent travels. Yes, here is your warning: this is a first world rant.

When I was making reservations, I specifically sought a place with a bathing tub. The hotel said they have tubs. My wife has medical issues, and a hot soak in a tub helps alleviate many symptoms.

Guess what the hotel didn’t have when we checked in our room? Yeah, no bathtub. I spoke to them about it. Can we move to a room with a bathtub? Alas, only one room in the hotel’s entire offering has a bathtub.

Say whaaaat?

That hotel, the Courtyard by Marriott, told us we needed to change rooms. They’d made an error. The entire second floor had been promised to another party. We could stay in the room but not use the elevator. Whaaat? So, we left that hotel and moved into the Hampton Inns.

It was much better. Guess what the room didn’t have? Yep, no bathtub. The hotel only has one room with a tub.

Whaaat?

My wife and I had already been aware of this trend toward showers only in hotels. This was the first time it slammed us directly in the face.

I will predict that as this trend spreads, a counter trend will kick up: we have bathtubs! They’ll be advertising the presence of tubs as they once boasted of air conditioning, cable TV, HBO, and free Wifi. Time will tell, of course.

The other disturbing trend was the lack of a ventilation fan in the bathroom. There’s no switch to throw to circulate the air, help clear the air when the room is steamy, or, ahem, help us cope with body functions, if you know what I mean.

According to brief research (I queried search engines), the reasoning behind this: reduce costs. Aesthetics.

But, but, but…what about the customers’ needs?

I’m telling you, it’s just more enshittification.

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Do You Want to Connect

Daily writing prompt
Do you remember life before the internet?
View all responses

Life before the net. Do I remember those dark, soulless days? Oh, yeah. I remember those days, just as I recall life without the world wide web, life without cable and DVDs, life without CDs, eight-track and cassette tapes, life without microwaves, and life without cell phones and more than three networks. I remember life without remote controls, which my wife calls, the clicker.

Yes, I remember buying my first personal computer. I remember using the first one at home. Then I recall signing us up for Compuserve and Mindnet. I remember getting my first email address and having no one to email. That soon changed. Viagra offers quickly found my inbox. With it came an understanding of something non-meaty called ‘Spam’ and wealthy Nigerians in need of money.

Yes, I remember pre-net life. Primarily because our TV schedule was fixed according to the cable schedule. Cheers on Thursday, for example. But when the net came into its full flowering, I was able to find a huge variety of things to stream from around the world, watching them when I wanted, instead of waiting for their schedule. Long as I was willing to pay for it.

With the net, the days of going to the front door and looking for the daily newspaper disappeared. There was no need for all that inked paper to stack up and get put out for the trash. Now the news was right there online. I didn’t need to wait until 6 PM to check to see what was happening. Of course, information about what was happening locally soon began fading. We could no longer just pick up the paper and turn to the police log to see what the hell the sirens were all about the other day. No, that faded. Now, there are sometimes stories on Facebook or Nextdoor. Some others are struggling to bring the local news back to us. It’s a challenge. Many efforts arise and fall.

Freedom came with online ordering, too. I no longer needed to prowl through brick and mortar stores, making comparisons, trying to figure out what to buy. Boom, the net was heavy with choices. It was still onerous in the early days to compare things but then came Amazon… Suddenly, whoa. It was a desperate consumer’s dream.

Do you know what it was like to travel in pre-net days? Calling the airlines to get price checks, listening to them look up schedules for you, explaining options? Same with hotels. Expedia and the like made it easier…for a while. But wherever money and humans are involved with money transactions and information, others are there to scam us for their share of the pie.

Yes, I remember life before the net. It was simpler and harder, easier, and more problematic. That’s how it always is with progress. Each step unfolds with new and surprising insights, and the things we used to do begin to fade.

Just think: one day, people will be asking, do you remember life before AI?

And someone will reply, I remember the days before cars. And then we’ll all wonder, what was that like, and turn to AI for the answer.

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Dream Confrontations

Last night feature dream was in two parts. Both were about confrontation and communication.

The first had me and my wife visiting some people who may’ve been the wife’s distant relatives. Children and cats were strongly featured. Other than me, my wife was the only adult.

According to the children’s excited chatter, I’d arrived in a Ferrari, which, yes, I acknowledged with a smile. That impressed them. The place, a home where the children lived, was sprawling and one story, aging but in respectable condition, a modern-form-follows function shape. The children, probably eight to nine years old, three to four in number (I never got a good count on them), sandy haired and white, showed us around and helped us settle in. Cats were playing and running around, busy supervising it all. On a command from one child, all the cats hurried to one room, found a space, and settled down. A child closed a glass French door on them. I looked in at the cats on perches, seats, and sofas. There were at least five but there might have been seven. All were long haired.

Being discreet, I opened the door to visit the cats. The door’s round brass handle broke off in my hand. I attempted to stick in back on, but it’d been sheared, so that was impossible. Still, deciding I’d be able to get back out, I closed the door. After circulating and visiting with the cats, who were all well behaved and friendly, I went to leave. The door handle mechanism fell completely out. I decided to bring this to the children’s attention. When they didn’t grasp what I was talking about — that the door was broke because the handle had come off and the rest had fallen out — I asked them where their parents were.

Now, though, it was time to go. I had a speaking engagement and my wife and I were lunching first. With a dream shift, we were in an Asian city. Sitting outside on a leafy plaza, we were enjoying ourselves when I noticed black smoke in the sky. The smoke distracted me as the column grew thicker. I told my wife, “I think that’s our hotel.”

An explosion rocked the area. As everyone reacted with gasps and shouts, I could see that an upper floor of our hotel had exploded and was on fire. I told me wife that we should go back to get our stuff if we could

We joined others watching the hotel entrance. People were queuing to enter, so we got in line. A stocky Asian man in a red vest and white shirt was manning the door, controlling who entered. The line snaked forward until it was our turn. He asked for papers, some evidence that we were staying at the hotel. I had papers in my rear pocket so I reached around to get them out. The movement caused my arm to tremble.

The doorman demanded in a brusque tone to know why my arm was shaking. His tone and question outraged me but I answered that I’d broken the arm and it was still rehabilitating, and certain movement still caused me problems. With my wife trying to calm me, we went back and forth in rising tones about it, with the doorman implying or me inferring there was something sinister about me having a shaky arm. After we were admitted and walking away, I heard him say in snarky terms, “Oh, look at the strong man going away.” I turned to go back to have words with him.

The dream ended.

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Flooftel

Flooftel (floofinition) – A hotel or motel that allows pets to stay or caters to pets. ‘Flooftel’ is often misused for ‘flooftella‘, but other than sharing the same roots, the two words are not related.

In use: “Although a luxury hotel, the Overleaf is also a flooftel, allowing pets to stay with their owners.”

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