My sister shared with me a home listing that had a bedroom and basically a toilet in a closet, and no door — just a curtain for privacy. That was weird.
I've stayed in a hotel where the toilet door was made of glass, and had big gaps. I was staying with an acquaintance, so things were really awkward. It didn't help that the shower was right in front of this frosted glass, so the person's entire silhouette was very visible when showering.
Another time, in Amsterdam, I stayed at an AirBnB where the toilet was on the balcony, and had a glass door (non-frosted) in the kitchen. Yep, if you needed to go, and someone was cooking, or was a neighbour, they were looking right at you.
And people voting with their wallet have led to literally hundreds of thousands of companies going out of business.
So yeah, it is successful.
Outside of the realm of science fiction, my sister followed a TV show for a while that was basically a set of advertisements for a modular home company. One episode featured the installation of a small home on a remote British island; the shower was a pipe outside the house itself.
We live way out in the boonies, so that helps.
One of my short stories takes place in a not-to-distant future, where there is absolutely no privacy. In one chapter a child goes to a bathroom in an old building, and he sees that there is not only a door, but there is a contraption on it. A lock! The child runs out of the bathroom in fright. The audience learns only a little later that the child is frightened about what human-eating animals might stalk prey in that area, that anybody would ever think to lock themselves in there.
You might like “We” by Eugene Zamiatin.
There was a time, over a year ago now, when I was working on a project that required some very raunchy, dirty, absolute gutter language.
ChatGPT would only get about 30% of the way there, and never further. It stayed restrained, always.
But ChatGPT + image gen? This produced unfiltered amazement.
It played out like this: Tell the bot to generate an image involving some ludicrously filthy text backstory, and it would generate and display a prompt for Dall-E. But that generated prompt seemed to bypass the filters and could be absolute trash -- plain, no nonsense, dirt-nasty holy-fuckballs craptacularity.
Dall-E would refuse the prompt, of course, but it remained in the chat log for perusal.
Later, they made the generated prompt disappear when Dall-E refused. (This may in fact be my fault. I sent it on some pretty deep dives.)
And nowadays, it seems that we don't get to see the generated prompt at all, even when Dall-E accepts a (very normal, not pushing boundaries at all) prompt and generates an image.
But for a minute there: I did get to peer into depths of the wildly creative foulness that the bot can concoct. What we see above (in GP comment) isn't even scratching the surface.
(I didn't write about this little "jailbreak" anywhere at that time because I'm selfish, and I wanted to keep using it myself.)
It's not a virtue to be so unselfcounscious. It's not about being ashamed or inhibited or in pathological denial of biological realities. It's about being fucking minimally considerate and just the tiniest bit self-aware.
What do you mean "same goes"? Are you saying there are cultures in which being loud on the toilet is considered proper?
There's a pretty significant difference; human diseases are much more likely to spread to other humans.
Happy to see someone is trying to fix this trend.
So when the plumbing was installed, obviously some went to the kitchen. And the bathroom, which previously didn't exist, was often an addition to (or a division from) the kitchen -- with a doorway [with a door] betwixt the kitchen and the bathroom -- because that made the plumbing easier.
IIRC, that particular feature disqualifies the home for financing with both the VA and with HUD for reasons of hygiene.
So by extension: According to VA and HUD, hygiene requires at least one door and at least one additional room of separation between the place where you shit and the place where you eat.
(Just to be clear: I think doors on bathrooms are great. I just don't think they really contribute to hygiene or health--apart from mental health.)
A door provides at least some kind of physical barrier.
So in a hotel bathroom, you'd only be exposed to viruses from people you already share a room (or even bed) with.
SARS-CoV-2 would like to have a word with you (it can last as long as 28 days on smooth surfaces).
It's just that I don't believe they contribute to hygiene or health.
Update: this is why you should put the lid down to flush. But put it back up again after because <reasons>
(Of course, she said it in German, so she complained about 'Wohnklo' in analogy with a 'Wohnküche' which is the German word for an open-plan kitchen.)
It takes some experience to realize that a place graded 7.x probably has serious issues.
The opposite situation can also occur. At my university, entrance scholarships were decided a few years ago based on students' aggregate score across 25ish dimensions (I can't remember the exact number) where students were each rated 1-4. Consequently a student who was absolutely exceptional in one area would be beaten out by a student who was marginally above average in all the other areas. I suggested that rather than scoring 1-4 the scores should be 1/2/5/25 instead.
I usually stay at chain hotels and this is never really a problem.
You shit behind your bed, I kid you not
I stick to rooms with two digits in front of the decimal.
This is why I just stay home.
Edit: apparently the virus has spread, and some US hotels now don’t have them
Why on earth did this half-pane of glass become standard in so many places. It’s completely ineffective and ends up with water everywhere.
My shower in Denmark has no door, and no curtain, but the splashes don't reach very far away, and aren't in the way of anywhere I'd want to walk after showering anyway.
I've often seen hotel bathrooms in other countries that get this wrong. In the worst case, splashed water from the open shower runs all across the bathroom, and in one case (a Grand Hyatt!) into the main room carpet.
Did the designers not know water flows down?
Even in Miami, I don't want the entire bathroom floor flooded, and I want to be able to close the curtain/door and increase the humidity in the shower.
when dealing with a new set of shower controls, i like to stand to the side and figure out what's happening and whether i need to let it warm up rather than stepping into the firing lane and taking whatever it throws at me
the same hotels have a kitchen sink tap which has hot/cold selected on the vertical axis, with no indication of which direction is hot/cold.
form over function. so annoying.
It's just... inefficient? Why wouldn't we want to catch the water closest to where it comes out?
If it's in the centre of the room it's been done very badly. I've never seen this in Denmark, even in some very old apartment buildings.
If you're renting an apartment in Shanghai, a cheap one will have a door to the bathroom, but the shower won't be a separate fixture. The entire bathroom functions as the shower (the hose or fixed piping is mounted on a wall), and there's a drain in the floor.
A more recent apartment will have a shower installation that is, say, separate from the toilet.
Nate Barzgate does a good bit on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgtgjA_UiAo
I stayed at a super fancy hotel in Napa for a work event that didn't even have a WALL separating off the bathroom it was just a half-partition sheer panel thing.
Now those places anre on the wrong side of the depreciation curve, and every chain hotel is a little worse every day. They bill upfront since COVID, don’t clean the room, shrink the towels and deliver a shittier level of service. I was at a Marriott recently where the room had no linens - no towels, sheets, pillows, nothing.
I called and was instructed to do everything myself, and the hotel GM’s attitude was that “shit happens”.
A younger, lone traveller staying 2-3 nights is probably going to be out doing things in the day, and in the evening. And they won't have much luggage either.
Elderly travellers might not have the same level of energy; they might prefer to spend a few hours quietly relaxing with a book. And they might want an armchair per person, rather than sitting on the bed to read.
Business travellers might need somewhere to set up a laptop and work from, power, decent internet connectivity, and someplace they can iron some shirts.
Longer-term travellers (e.g. someone visiting a city to supervise like the building of a warehouse) will have more luggage, and they'll want to make themselves a bit more at home - they won't be out on the town every night for a month. They're more likely to use the hotel gym.
For some people, holidays are all about relaxing and doing things at a leisurely pace. Perhaps they want to spend the morning sitting on a balcony reading the newspaper - if you have a balcony.
For couples on honeymoon, they might want a nice room with a great bed.
Families might have two children and two adults sharing a room, with the children going to bed earlier and the adults sorta hanging out nearby; in this market, the hotel room sofa might fold out into two beds suitable for under-10s.
And of course, if you want to target all of these markets at the same time you end up with the classic cluttered hotel room with wardrobe, desk, desk chair, armchair, bedside tables, reading lamp, ironing board, TV, etc etc etc
Of course, now we're getting into a fair fit of space in a dense city.
Even now that I work remotely, my wife and I might spend a week back home in Atlanta where our adult children and friends live. We “live” in the hotel like we live at home. I’m usually working during the day, she might hang out with other friends who don’t work during the day and we plan things at night.
It’s really nice to have the space of a Hyatt House/Homewood Suites.
Even when we go on vacation we don’t have a jam packed scheduled where we have to be doing something every minute.
I do like a good shower too, rather than those stupid bath things like it’s the 1980s, and get rid of American hotels which seem to be allergic to providing shower gel
I just stayed at the Westin in Rome, supposedly a 5 star place, but I don’t think it’s been updated in 30 years. I had to move the nightstand and unplug a lamp, so I could plug my phone in next to the bed. So go get my phone socket I had to lose the lamp. It didn’t even have an alarm clock on the nightstand; there would have been nowhere to plug it in. Maybe they expect everyone to get a wake up call, but the phone was across the room too.
I used to travel with a little power strip, but stopped since I never actually used it. That place needed one badly.
It did have bathroom door though, so it had that going for it.
Nobody comes and takes your stars away. They earned them once and they're still using them.
For a wakeup call, that's an advantage.
"Staying in a hotel with a romantic partner and/or family" is at least as primary a use case for hotels as "staying in a hotel with a platonic friend" and is still a scenario where you want a door but is NOT a scenario where "just get separate rooms" is a logical conclusion. "Get the hell out of that hotel and complain about it to everyone you know," on the other hand, is.
The much more specific way to target platonic buddies/coworkers from sharing a room would be eliminating rooms with two beds since the "couple" scenario would generally be perfectly happy with that still.
Not to mention no door doesn't bother me with another person because I can easily avoid "seeing them do their business" by being in the main room. I've never been in a hotel room where the bathroom door faces the beds. It's always in the hall just after entering the room. I'm sure there's exceptions but that's the standard setup.
It had some other interesting problems.
It could have been worse. They could have put the toilet there and you could be smelling the sewer all night...
Why don’t you just turn on the heat in the room?
I also don't mean to be snarky here, because I'm not sure how to say this in a way that can't be interpreted that way and feel like I'm just explaining being human...
The answer is really just physics. The feeling of comfort is generally about differential in temperature, not absolute. (That's also a logarithmic relationship too) So to have that nice feeling of stepping out of a hot shower then the room needs to be a decently high temperature. Mind you, you're also wet. This makes the temperature differential more influential. So two things happen when you dry off. You no longer have that water to transfer and maintain heat and you've also cooled down a bit. Now when you walk into the normal room temperature the differential isn't so bad.
If I turn the temperature up in the whole hotel room I will then have to turn it down. Now that introduced AC and we have the opposite problem... Plus both get rid of humidity.
To be snarky and try to be a bit humorous:
Haven't you ever noticed that 100F/38C is "hotter" and more uncomfortable in a humid environment than in a dry environment? Haven't you ever noticed that 15F/-10C is "colder" in a humid environment? Haven't you noticed that being in a hot tub or sauna is comfortable but if it was that temperature outside you'd be cursing the gods? Haven't you noticed that in the summer 50F/10C is cold and most people won't wear a short sleeve shirt yet if it was the winter that's a nice day to go out and wear shorts? Haven't you... lived in a body?
It's winter man, here's a trivial experiment for you:
- Heat up your house:
- Shower with door open
- Shower with door closed
- Don't heat up your house:
- Shower with door open
- Shower with door closed
Quick tip I discovered when traveling with my teenage daughter: a lot of hotel sites are now unclear on whether a booking is for a room with one or two beds. I found that listing "occupants" as 3 would usually force such sites to sort for rooms with two beds (even though there would only be two of us). Assuming there's no breakfast included, the price is usually the same for 2 or 3.
Sort of. I'll take a King by choice but if a Queen is the only option I don't really have an issue with that. And I'm not a short person.
You now play games with per person occupancy fees/taxes upon arrival, instead of screening available information.
Fortunately Japanese bedding naming is quite standardized: search for twin/ツイン and you'll get rooms with two beds.
A lot of businesses ask co-workers to share a room on trips. Business travel is a large share of reservations.
So they want to save a few bucks for which I am expected to trade not just my privacy but also my good night rest (who knows if one of us snores) against a few dollars of profit margin for my employer?
If they cannot afford sending me on a business trip they probably shouldn’t do so.
What kind of company are doing so?
Marriot,Hilton,IGT,Hyatt own almost all hotels in any area you want to go to.
Enshittification is not just for apps anymore.
Best Western, Choice, Wyndham, IHG (typo?), Accor, Blackstone (Motel6), Radisson, Red Lion, Red Roof. Etc. There's lots of choices.
Many (most?) hotels are franchises and the name on the hotel can change. I haven't run into a hotel with no bathroom door yet, but I only have 2-3 stays a year and one is usually in the same hotel every year. I have noticed housekeeping creeping back up to mostly every day though.
You have to request it special and some properties still won’t make the bed daily even with a request. They’ll just bring extra towels.
I personally prefer on-demand.
These days, some people see scaled-back housekeeping as sort of a ripoff while others of us are fine without the sometimes interruptions.
The "do not disturb" card is always there. You can always decline housekeeping, but it's nice to have it available (and it's not like prices went lower to compensate for the lack of it anyway).
You might be very comfortable sharing the story about the situation, but I hope you can appreciate that not everyone else would be.
Regulation is a form of collective action.
The hospitality industry has self-imposed standards as to what kind of amenities a facility should have in order to rate as a two-star hotel, three-star hotel, etc. Things like TV, shampoo, and hair dryer are on that list. If customers make enough noise about bathroom doors, the rating organizations might actually add that as a requirement.
Technically, they own almost none of the hotels. The hotel owners buy the franchises, and hence follow the brand standards.
In what way would it discourage you and your friend(s) from booking a standard twin room, if they don't tell you there's no bathroom door?
Dr. Strangelove: Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you *keep* it a *secret*! Why didn't you tell the world, eh?
1. You offer double, twin and single rooms. Friends book twin rooms.
2. You offer only double and single rooms, in the hope that non-romantically engaged pairs of people will book two single rooms. Friends book some other hotel's twin rooms.
3. You offer double, twin and single rooms and you tell people before booking there's no toilet door. Friends book some other hotel's twin rooms.
4. You offer double, twin and single rooms but surprise! there are no toilet doors. Friends who've booked a twin room either demand a cancellation immediately upon seeing the room, demand a room with a toilet door, or they demand you offer some kind of ersatz privacy screen, and no matter what you do they're going to rain fury on every review site they can think of, tanking your reputation.
In which of these situations does the hotel get extra money?
(They regard it as cheapskating/cheating.)
Very simple: by making it the status quo that bathroom doors aren't there they discourage you to rent a single room. So instead, you rent two single rooms with full privacy for each of you. Because a double room is only for couples, in their (I concur: twisted) world.
You mean you want to go to the competition? What if the competition does it as well? What if it is the norm?
As for your #4. People don't have time to put effort into such. Outliers do, they're the ones who make noisy drama at the reception. But they're the exception, not the rule.
In most hotel pricings I've seen, twin rooms and double rooms cost the same. In fact, in the cheaper hotels, double rooms are just twin rooms with the beds bolted together (very annoying if you're a couple seeking romance). The hotel can reconfigure the rooms to match demand, as the only difference is whether the beds are joined.
As a random example (I don't endorse it, I just picked a random London hotel) https://www.booking.com/hotel/gb/crowne-plaza-london-ealing.... has "Standard Room" (choice of twin or double bed), "Standard Twin Room", "Standard Queen Room with Bathtub" and "Standard Queen Room with Walk-In Shower" options all at exactly the same price. Each option makes abundantly clear what type of bed(s) you get, and how many people can use the room.
Hotels that want to rent rooms to couples simply remove twin rooms from the list of rooms available. Only offer the double-bed option. People looking for a twin room go to the next hotel in the list. They don't need some secret plan to disappoint twin-room guests by not having a bathroom door so their next booking is two single rooms.
You and the OP both said "single" rooms. Is this key to unlocking the mystery? In my experience, single rooms literally have one single bed. Why are multiple people hoping to stay in one? Also from what I've seen, "single" rooms are more expensive than twin/double rooms, not just because you can't share the costs but because they literally cost more, because there are so few such rooms in the hotel. The hotel couldn't accomodate people if it compelled twin room guests to get two single rooms, it'd run out of single rooms in a jiffy and be left with a lot of twin/double room capacity. Most of the rooms are double/twin.
Why would any group of people book a single room? Is there some secret trick where multiple people turn up and bring their own beds with them, only to be foiled by a missing toilet door?
To save money.
> Is there some secret trick where multiple people turn up and bring their own beds with them, only to be foiled by a missing toilet door?
Beds? Probably not. But, people (especially younger people, can sleep on the floor with climate appropriate (which, depending on the season and available heating, can be "none") coverings for warmth; I did this happily a fair amount in various groups aroun high school age, but I certainly wouldn't want to now in middle age.
If they want to save money, hostels are usually half the price of hotels. Why would they even choose a hotel in the first place?
Plus, my experience is that hotels will simply cancel your booking, or force you to upgrade, if multiple people turn up to check in for a single room. They don't need some passive-aggressive doorless bathroom, they have the right to tell you to book a 2-person room (whether twin or double bed) for 2 people.
In your first message you wrote at #2: "[...] Friends book some other hotel's twin rooms." I wrote: what if all hotels follow this same manual? You could only end up in a hostel, or perhaps a cheap hotel.
Honestly, it doesn't bother me at all seeing my mother naked (my father is passé), or my daughter or son naked (but they're still children). It only ever did till my mid teenager years. After that, I overcame it. So while it doesn't bother me, it may bother my children, and important to note: I'll respect that. It already started with my daughter (nearly eight y.o.) when going to the swimming pool. Kind of normal. But these hotels wouldn't accommodate for that.
FWIW, just my theories. I'm not saying I know all about this market.
Then why do they even offer twin rooms?
Doorless bathrooms are not explained by saying hotels (that offer twin rooms) secretly want all twin room guests to pay double and use two single rooms. Most hotels don't even have very many single rooms!
It may be different in small places where there's only one or two hotels. But most cities have dozens to hundreds of hotels, not all owned by the same conglomerates. There is no way they'd miss out the entire twin-room market by pretending not to have them. And they certainly wouldn't take the reputational damage by pretending you'll get a normal twin room when you book, but hit you with a doorless bathroom twin room when you arrive. The booking website will have photos showing the typical room layout, in order to give prospective customers clarity about what they'd be booking, so they choose to book there.
I'm no hotel tycoon either, but the idea that it's a secret ruse to get people to pay double doesn't make any sense to me. The idea that they're blindly following some design trend, or that it lets them make the rooms physically smaller by giving the impression of a bigger room, are much more plausible ideas.
Before: sell two business travelers one room with two separate beds and one dignified bathroom.
Now: sell two business travelers two separate rooms just so they can each use the bathroom with dignity.
Profit Now ($x2) > Profit Before ($x1)
The business travelers are looking at a website with hundreds of hotels in the city they're going to. If you don't offer a twin room option, they don't think "well shucks, let's just get two single rooms". They go to the next hotel, out of hundreds, which has a twin room option. It may cost more, but it won't cost double. They'd be complete idiots to pick two single rooms if what they wanted as a twin room.
You can't compel them to book your single rooms, and you definitely can't compel them by springing a surprise doorless bathroom on them in your twin room option after they've paid and arrived. That's when they expense a taxi to some other hotel and report their findings to their entire company, who never book from you again.
Simply offering a twin room option means you expect unrelated or distantly-related people will book it. If you don't want that, take away the twin room option. Business travellers will not share a double bed. You get all that benefit of double-profit (if for some reason the travellers are morons or they're going to bumfuck nowhere and you're the only hotel), without going to the expense of removing bathroom doors.
...like, the building adjacent your La Quinta is a diner, period. "La Quinta, Spanish for 'next to Denny's'"
Jabs aside, you don’t need to be rich to use a travel agent or Rick Steves guidebook instead of blindly booking hotels on Internet sites. If there’s an issue like this you’ll easily find it on review sites and most of those are searchable.
The same thing applies to other experiences like restaurants and museums. For example, it’s always smart to jump on Google/Trip Advisor reviews and type in “kids” or “stroller” into various attractions to make sure you are prepared if you’re bringing kids along.
Travel is never perfect. I’ve been in weird rooms with actual glass walls with a perfect framed view of the shitter facing the bed. I have no idea why they did this, maybe this culture values natural light in bathrooms? I witnessed it more than once so it wasn’t just one creepy place. Individual privacy especially within the same family is something of a recent and western concept from my understanding.
Either way it was hilarious and a minor inconvenience considering it was a lot minute hotel. It’s just peeing and pooping, we all do it. My traveling friend and I took turns averting our eyes. We had warm clean beds and a story to tell.
Often this does mean that the pictures are lacking.
But I absolutely check out google maps reviews, and a single review saying that the hotel did not have a proper door on the bathroom would guarantee I would not stay there.
Even traveling alone it's a clear indication they have no respect for their guests, and it's a significant hygiene issue.
I feel like if you consider lack of a door a significant hygiene issue, you probably just shouldn’t be staying in hotels. These rooms aren’t being sanitized between guests, they are pretty dirty.
There are good reasons to keep bathrooms physically separated from where you sleep and hygiene is one of them, along with not wanting the bed to be a front row seat to the sights, smells, and sounds of whatever is going on in there and not wanting an expensive hotel room I'm paying for to be like a prison cell.
How so?
> viruses & bacteria many of which are known to survive on surfaces for days
> Toilets are scientifically proven
> There is 70 plus years
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339650907_Real-time...
Doors are nice from the public health perspective in that people actually do usually close them without even being asked.
> it's distinct from hygiene.
Not to mention that any bacteria thrives in more humid environments. They aren't so good at keeping moist. This is true for a lot of things, especially the smaller the thing is, including bugs. Higher humidity definitely makes good hygiene more difficult.
Why do you think bathrooms have fans? That'd be a lot of effort to deal with farts.
Nothing bad happened.
I have to admit that I'm getting very tired of the unsustainable push for endless growth driving companies everywhere to jack up prices as high as people will tolerate and then also delivering the least and worst product/service they can possibly get away with on top of it. It means that everything is getting shittier unless you're willing to spend insane amounts of money to get what used to be standard and more affordable.
It's becoming exhausting maintaining a list of businesses I no longer want to give money to and products/services I won't pay for. This is especially true as companies change names, redesign products, and buy up one another. the list just grows and grows all the time.
Not necessarily. Just like natural evolution doesn't requite its participants to understand themselves, neither does the market require anyone at a business to understand why they are successful.
This is closely related to a phenomenon I don't understand.
Pretty much every proposed regulatory change (for example: letting drivers pump their own gas at gas stations) meets a fierce counterargument that says "currently, no one considers this situation at all because only one state of affairs is legal. If that thoughtlessness continues after we legalize other possibilities, TERRIBLE THINGS COULD HAPPEN!".
But obviously this protasis† can never occur and so it doesn't matter what's in the apodosis.
And likewise I absolutely return to a hotel where the bathroom was good when going back to a city.
I'm mostly talking about the water pressure for the shower here, but you get the idea.
There is a website dedicated to it. It would take someone posting that to a few social media accounts and for hotel search sites to put "has an almost see through glass bathroom door" result category, and I think it could turn from a sneaky money maker into a reason people avoid the place.
Aside from rinsing off after a pool or ocean swim, or when she is actually dirty (e.g., after yard work), I think I have known her to voluntarily take three or four showers in 25 years together.
If they're cheaping out on the shower then I'm not going to trust the mattress is clean or the linens are soft.
But if i got burned once or twice by a room without a bathroom door, i'd start checking that too and avoiding places that don't have them.
With those two you're also playing the lottery but there is no baseline.
With a hotel, you're also generally paying when you check-in and can thus refuse a subpar room and argue with a real, mostly-reasonable person.
With those two, you get charged before you even enter the place and any arguments will be with a bot or a call center drone in a third-world country pretending to be one.
Not having a bathroom with a door is an incredibly low baseline. I can only think of a single Airbnb that I’ve stayed in that’s been worse than that
(The key to the Airbnb was missing and the host was inaccessible)
More like "I dare you, regulation will only further increase our moat"
And almost any regulation gives a (relative) advantage to the people who can afford the lawyers and bureaucrats to furnish the documentation to show that they are in compliance.
Going from no regulation to one does carry some of what you suggest, but there are already regulations about tons of things here (fire alarms, exits, building codes, etc) adding one more does not increase the need for lawyers and documentation.
Which, as I think you're hinting, is largely distinct from anybody's actual health
I'm all in favour of opaque bathroom doors (and none of these stupid vertical slits American have between their public bathroom doors and the walls). But I wouldn't want to pretend it's about hygiene or health.
With the rise in AIRBNB and other similar competing services I expected hotels to compete back by lowering costs and improving conditions. Was I wrong, oh boy..
Most people would assume bathrooms have doors. It is just exhausting to have to check for every small, commonsensical, super basic detail
I just want to give businesses my money in exchange for goods and services. Is that asking too much?
Imagine some future hotel service trend where, right after the customer checks in, the checkin agent punches the customer in the face, by policy. I shouldn't have to check beforehand whether this is a "face punch" hotel or a "non face punch" hotel.
We shouldn't all have to live our lives with Caveat Emptor as some sort of horrible default societal moral framework.
But I don’t think this makes much sense anyways. The hotel industry is not one that thrives from repeat patronage, and “the bathroom has no doors” features rarely in marketing.
This makes much more sense.
But then hotel do dumb things like fully enclose a barfridge in a cupboard too.
Door closed + extractor makes gaps have negative pressure, no way anything goes into the room.
A door stops airflow? No.
I mean, it literally does. Put something that smokes in a bathroom, open the window, close the door, and caulk the gaps. See how much smoke phases through the door.
Be careful, that's probably a felony.
https://uaelegislation.gov.ae/en/legislations/2131
> Section Two: Crimes and Penalties; 2. Slander, challenge, or insult the Divine Essence:
> Anyone who commits one of the acts stipulated in Clauses (2, 3, and 5) of Article (4) of this Decree by Law, by any means of expression or other forms or by using any means, shall be punished by imprisonment for a period of not less than one year and a fine of not less than (AED 250,000) two hundred and fifty thousand UAE Dirhams and not exceeding (AED 1,000,000) one million UAE Dirhams, or by one of these two penalties.
While this is obviously grotesque, it's both funny, sad and telling that the overarching name for the legislation is Federal Law by Decree Concerning Combating Discrimination, Hatred and Extremism. UAE learned this from the US/Europe.
Surely this refers to God/Allah though. I would expect using such a monkier to refer to the king would be shirk (associating/comparing something with God), one of the worst sins in Islam.
So Randy is probably safe.
There does not seem to be a tag for it yet. That there are apparently hundreds of instances, and it being definitely something you'd want to select for, makes me think it's a good fit for OSM. Currently, hotels can already have tags like phone number, reception opening hours, WiFi fees, etc. It might even be a good fit for the toilets:* namespace, since this has overlap with toilets in (semi-)public spaces offering different levels of privacy
One of my bedrooms at home opens into an open concept bathroom. No doors, vaulted ceilings, open.
I really don't get this.
I don't want to feel claustrophobic.
Edit: Like these -
https://34stjohn.com/blogs/inspiration/how-to-pull-off-an-op...
Making Privacy Work
Make sure to address the elephant in the room - privacy. Consider installing electrochromic glass panels that switch from clear to opaque. Or take inspiration from Japanese architecture with sliding wooden screens that double as art pieces.
But even without talking about toilets, I don't like airy/drafty feelings when I'm wet, so I'd hate most of those designs, myself.
Those that prefer privacy and those that don't care.
Even if I'm alone in a hotel room, I'd prefer to contain the odor to the bathroom.
If you're single or have a partner that you're comfortable with, open concept bathrooms feel luxurious. But if you need sanctity and salvation from the kids, I can get it.
I'd rather sleep in a shared room at a hostel and use a toilet in a stall in a communal bathroom than in a hotel room without a proper door on the bathroom.
Right?
My wife and I don't use the toilet in front of each other. Even when we lived in an apartment with only 1 bathroom. You gotta use the toilet while one is showering? You can hold it.
Even when I'm home alone and don't expect her to come home any time soon, I close the door. I just feel so exposed with the door open. Even when I lived alone, I'm pretty sure I would close the door.
I wouldn't be OK with going on trips (or sending people I manage on trips) where two people had to sleep in the same room, I wouldn't consider that acceptable...
And also, when I travel with my kids, I still want to close the door.
There's a shade inside the glass, but still... did I really need to open the blinds to my bathroom?
When you are bootstrapping and flying a team to a conference, sharing twin rooms is standard procedure to stretch the runway. There is nothing that kills the vibe of a "strategic roadmap discussion" faster than realizing you have zero acoustic privacy from your co-founder using the toilet 3 feet away.
It feels like hostile architecture specifically designed to break the "business frugality" use case. We ended up switching to Airbnbs solely because of this.
Somehow I seem to be in the minority with this opinion. But if we’re sharing a room we’re probably pretty comfortable with each other.
It's honestly something it would never occur to me to write a blog post about. But I guess it's one of those things that some people are sensitive about.
I really prefer bathrooms with a separate door for the separate toilet from the rest of it. And the shower has to be a walk in, but bathtubs are really only common in North America outside of higher end resorts that have both a separate walk in shower and a bathtub.
Boldest choice thus far was the one with the OPS next to the kitchenette.
There are some very strange people out there...
Although I’ve never stayed in a hotel without bathroom doors, they frequently have sliding doors which don’t seal properly. So that’s the first thing I look out for nowadays.
I stayed in such a hotel, and getting up to go the bathroom I noticed someone had flicked a business-card-sized advertisement under the door, for said companionship...
On the topic, though... I want a desk that isn't made of glass so that I can use a mouse. Optical mice have been the standard for years, and of course I don't carry a mousepad. Who thinks glass desktops are good?
Well, there was this hip-high divider wall, barely enough to hide my cheeks while I took a shit. Forget about masking sounds and smell.
I generally enjoy eye contact with my wife, but not while I'm pooping!
Another hotel in a small town here in Germany where it had shutter-style doors and where the roof of the bathroom didn't go all the way to the actual ceiling, so you can hear everything.
Both in the name of aesthetic, clearly.
Rooms with two queen-sized beds sitting next to each other are pretty standard, even in mid and high range hotels, while I’ve never seen those elsewhere.
So yeah people share these rooms as it’s usually quite cheaper than getting two rooms. I did it with friends and my in laws.
The free wifi in my last hotel in Tokyo was 800Mbps symmetric. I’m ruined forever.
What happened to bathroom doors? [video]
I couldn’t find anything in the International Building Code about bathroom doors aside from minimum opening width, but I don’t have access to the full code. I’d have to ask an architect or GC to verify.
> 4625.1200 TOILET REQUIREMENTS.
> Every hotel, motel, and lodging house shall be equipped with adequate and conveniently located water closets for the accommodation of its employees and guests. Water closets, lavatories, and bathtubs or showers shall be available on each floor when not provided in each individual room. Toilet, lavatory, and bath facilities shall be provided in the ratio of one toilet and one lavatory for every ten occupants, or fraction thereof, and one bathtub or shower for every 20 occupants, or fraction thereof. Toilet rooms shall be well ventilated by natural or mechanical methods. The doors of all toilet rooms serving the public and employees shall be self-closing. Toilets and bathrooms shall be kept clean and in good repair and shall be well lighted and ventilated. Hand-washing signs shall be posted in each toilet room used by employees. Every resort shall be equipped with adequate and convenient toilet facilities for its employees and guests. If privies are provided they shall be separate buildings and shall be constructed, equipped, and maintained in conformity with the standards of the commissioner and shall be kept clean.
Does someone in local government own a plumbing contractor or plumbing supply company? That’d be my guess anyways.
My permit explicitly says they will check absolutely nothing but how far the house is from the property line and that I have immediate hot water.
Personally I like having both. Doors are great for a variety of reasons, not just privacy.
Joking aside, I find this far more in newer European hotels for whatever reason (though I'm sure it exists stateside and elsewhere too). My wife and I at this point just agree to tell each other when we're going to occupy it because we don't feel like it getting weird. Feels like - if the conspiracy-ish theory of it being used to dissuade people sharing rooms is true - they're inadvertently throwing out the couples dynamic.
To borrow another Seinfeld bit: there's good naked and bad naked. The glass door problem invites the latter.
- ceiling lights
- shower curtains or glass box
- 7 ft tall (minimum) shower head
- firm mattressThey find this out in advance and find a 'normal' hotel and book a room there.
They find this out when they get to the hotel, complain to everyone, write bad reviews, never come back.
Lose-lose for the hotel (unless it's some remote destination with just one hotel there, but those are rare)
https://dynamic-media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-o/2e/9...
One doorless bathroom if you are interested:
https://cf.bstatic.com/xdata/images/hotel/max1024x768/919323...
Is it just me, or have hotel rooms gotten dimmer?
It seems less cheerful.
