This article explores the frustrations of using technology in hotel rooms, highlighting common issues with lighting, shower controls, and in-room entertainment systems.
One of the phrases I repeat most frequently and wearily in a hotel is: “Why doesn’t it work?” When fortunes have been spent creating a place where a one-night stay costs more than a long-haul flight, why is the in-room tech unfathomable, useless or ridiculous? And why so much work?If it involves downloading an app, I won’t do it. If my attention is directed to a QR code, I don’t want to scan it.
I once stayed at The Nines in Portland, Oregon, and couldn’t find a switch to turn off a bright light above the minibar. The issue was dealt with prosaically – by an engineer coming up and unscrewing the bulb. My most hated lighting situation, encountered with bizarre frequency, is when a switch on one side of the bed controls the reading light on the other, and vice versa – creating a perverse game for couples in which you must align your bedtime reading precisely. “I’m not a big user of gadgets, as I often find they don’t work or they’re too complicated when all I want to do is turn something on and off,” says Martin Brudniziki, whose impressive portfolio of interior design work includes properties for the Four Seasons, Six Senses and Rocco Forte. “I appreciate efficiency in design and technology is often, ironically, the antithesis of this. “Instead, there could be things like surface sensor chargers in bedside tables, blue light filters and white noise machines to help you sleep.”Lighting and shower taps are a constant annoyance, but the biggest problem for me arises when I want to kick back, lie down, and watch something at the end of the day. This simple pleasure has turned into a palaver that makes me long for the violently expensive halcyon days of pay-per-view in hotel rooms. I asked James Grant of Airwave, a tech company that specialises in in-room TV installation – specifically Apple TV – why I have never, in all my years of staying at hotels, managed to successfully use Chromecast to play anything from my MacBook to a T
HOTEL TECHNOLOGY TRAVEL IN-ROOM TECH HOTEL DESIGN TECHNOLOGY
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