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Hotel Room Design

Wed., September 21, 2005

My company had its New York real estate conference today at the Marriott Marquis on Times Square. I’d read that Marriott is sinking more than $5 billion over the next five years to revamp all of its hotels and rooms to “the New Look and Feel of Marriott,” which includes crisp, white beds, because one was sitting right there on the Times Square sidewalk outside the Marquis this morning. It was one of the more incongruous things I’ve seen on Times Square and I was disappointed to see that no one, not even the Naked Cowboy, was curled up on it and taking a nap, as you’d expect on the streets of this city.

The bed was part of a PR stunt and demonstration on the new Marriott room design, but other than it, the details are hazy. According to a press release, the new look of the guest rooms will be “clean and crisp, with simple forms, straight lines and uncluttered surfaces,” which describes an iPod as usefully as it does a hotel room. Having traveled much recently for both fun and profit, I can say that all I want from my hotel room is a place to sleep and use the restroom. If I must discuss “features” of my hotel room, here would be my wish/complaint list, for Marriott or any other chain:

• Can you please, please let me open the windows? What, you think I’ll jump? I know you have air conditioning, but either it’s cold enough to keep Ted Williams’ head fresh or it’s dry and warm and smells like one’s armpit at that critical point when the deodorant has just started to break down.
• Can you also stop dicking me over on business center charges? Recent examples (both at Marriott chains) include computer usage for 69 cents a minute and printing of a single-page document for eight dollars. I get reimbursed by my company for this stuff, but cut it out.
• I don’t need eight pillows on my bed. One is fine.
• Marriott is bragging about the “plug and play” capabilities it will feature its new room design. Via an “exclusive high-tech device,” you’ll be able to plug your laptop, videogame system or mp3 player into the in-room television. Wow, just like I did with my Commodore 128 in 1986. How’s about something useful, like wireless internet access in all the rooms, idiots?
• I’m undecided if hotel beds are too firm. I tend to think so, but that’s better than having them slightly lumpy, which more people are going to complain about. But, man, some of these beds, they’re so hard you can play bocce on them. Then again, usually I’m so tuckered out and sleep arrives so easily, I don’t notice.

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