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Bring bathroom doors back to hotels

689 pointsposted 14 hours ago

564 Comments

decimalenough

9 hours ago

I once stayed at a very boutiquey, avant-garde hotel with a platonic friend. We had booked a twin room with separate beds, but what I did not expect was that the shower cubicle, with clear glass on all three sides, would be placed between the beds.

KineticLensman

an hour ago

In London's Shard, the gent's toilets of the observation deck (on approx the 70th floor) have glass walls behind the urinals so if you look straight ahead while using them it is as if you are peeing on the city of London from a great height.

technothrasher

34 minutes ago

I always enjoy a "loo with a view", including that one at the Shard. I also enjoyed the outdoor one I utilized in Botswana that had the toilet isolated from camp behind a small wooden fence, but while sitting on the throne you are facing out from a slight elevation onto a sweeping 180 degree view of the savanna, with antelopes, giraffes, and elephants roaming around.

noduerme

30 minutes ago

Pretty sure I went to a bar in NYC that still had a urinal trough running directly below the bar as you were standing there... so one wouldn't need to leave the bar to take a leak. This was 30 years ago. McSorleys maybe?

ralnivar

The exposed loos were a novelty for me, at school we at least had shoulder height partitions - but we had communal showers and baths so it wasn’t a huge leap.

I also spent a year or so living in a studio where the loo was in the kitchen area - we at least installed a curtain.

technothrasher

27 minutes ago

> RAF

On a trip I took with my father-in-law, the first morning he waltzed right into the little hotel room bathroom while I was showering (in a glass shower) and proceeded to sit on the throne and take a crap. I was confused at his lack of basic respect for privacy, and then remembered he'd been a US Navy guy for many years. Military folks just get used to no privacy in such matters.

rsynnott

an hour ago

> but we had communal showers and baths so it wasn’t a huge leap.

I dunno, I've no problem with communal showers, or nudity in general, but partition-less toilets feels like a bridge too far.

normie3000

3 hours ago

Kitchen-loo must be illegal these days - I think rentals need to have 2 doors between the two. Did it seem reasonable at the time?!

kergonath

2 hours ago

I would suspect that this is highly jurisdiction-dependent. Around here (random EU country), it would instantly make all studio flats unrentable, so I don’t think that’s the case. Most of them have a bathroom door, though.

Ekaros

an hour ago

I just recently(september) saw a sale advertisement for loo/bathroom-kitchen... With only small not full height partition next to seat...

krater23

an hour ago

Had two toilets in my flat only parted with a thin wood wall. Better talking with another one that is shitting than playing on the smartphone.

FearNotDaniel

2 hours ago

> 80-ies

eighty...ies? eightieies? why not just "80s"?

lobsterthief

an hour ago

an hour ago

A number of hotels that were built with this lack of privacy (including one I love - but its been fixed there though - more subtle worse as you could see in from the stairs) were all designed by the same architect who is said to have had a kink about looking into toilets.

Maybe he started it, and as his hotels are (otherwise) lovely it made it part of a cool aesthetic and was therefore copied?

5 hours ago

Is it possible that people just think differently than you? Or is everyone else wrong?

Eisenstein

4 hours ago

Or perhaps the individual's dollar is not really that effective. It's like plastic recycling -- it is a way to make the consumer feel like it is their job to fix things that they really have no responsibility for or control over.

the_af

9 hours ago

I think Boeings bring themselves down on their own.

ba-dum-tish!

Psype

6 hours ago

Terrain, terrain.

stavros

12 hours ago

I did indeed.

thaumasiotes

11 hours ago

In Hyperion, the character Martin Silenus is rich enough that he lives in a novelty palace where all the rooms are connected by teleporters. As a joke, the bathroom is a wallless raft on an ocean world.

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.

Loughla

11 hours ago

We installed an outdoor shower at our house. There's nothing as nice as a cold shower outdoors on a really hot day. It feels so luxurious that I can pretend I'm a rich person instead of lower- to mid-middle class.

We live way out in the boonies, so that helps.

tbrownaw

10 hours ago

Also really good for a house that has beach access.

mogoman

an hour ago

We once stayed in a beach house with an outdoor shower in South Africa. One morning I got up, took a shower (without my glasses, I am very short sighted) and went in for breakfast. About 20 minutes later my sister-in-law comes running into the house shouting that "there is a huge snake in the outside shower"

fph

3 hours ago

I wasn't expecting to read a Hyperion reference in this thread, such a great book.

(And if you haven't read the book you can guess what could possibly go wrong with this setup.)

rsynnott

an hour ago

I feel like that house was a _bit_ of a Chekhov's gun; I think it was the first point in the story where what was going to happen became clear to me.

(This wasn't Simmons' invention, incidentally; Larry Niven did it first.)

cammikebrown

12 hours ago

A lot of them are becoming barn style sliding doors, with large gaps. So if you’re making some noise, everyone will hear you.

dotancohen

11 hours ago

This erosion of privacy is being taken to extremes.

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.

volemo

7 hours ago

> One of my short stories takes place in a not-to-distant future, where there is absolutely no privacy.

You might like “We” by Eugene Zamiatin.

dotancohen

3 hours ago

That's the book that was similar to 1948, but written a few decades before? I've heard of it, I will see if I can find an audiobook. Thank you!

1948 is one of my favourites, by the way.

kakacik

3 hours ago

It was quite shocking for me as somebody from eastern Europe to see ie Danish or Dutch homes having no curtains whatsoever, so me walking on sidewalk looking at them 3m from me behind the windows having breakfast, in pyjamas, kids doing early morning nasal cavities treasure hunt with finger etc.

Same for living rooms and bedrooms (those I would expect to at least have some curtains aside).

Still not used to it, i like my privacy and ability to shamelessly say scratch my butt when alone if needed.

teekert

3 hours ago

Haha dutch guy here... Who cares? Our bedrooms have curtains! Actually living rooms usually as well, but we are reluctant in closing them I guess. Also, you'll often find patches of intransparant glass to prevent directly looking in.

But then the horror to go to the US and find toilets in i.e. hospitals that don't have doors closing all the way. You can literally stare someone in the eye through the crack in the door, or over the door, while he's taking a dump. Holy cow. Imagine the sounds echoing through the collective toilet room. My god. I'm still recovering from my visit to the prestigious Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Having a s* together with someone in the next stall is a whole new level of intimacy I was not ready for.

kolp

2 hours ago

When I lived in NL, it was explained to me that closing the curtains would imply, in some sort of weird Calvinistic belief, that the occupants were engaged in some nefarious activities; therefore the curtains are left open to show that the occupants have nothing to hide and are engaged only in wholesome activities.

The other side of the social contract obliges passers-by to not look inside.

The other strange thing that I found is that some apartments have little spy mirrors mounted on the exterior wall to allow the occupants to monitor what's going on in the street.

kergonath

2 hours ago

> the occupants were engaged in some nefarious activities; therefore the curtains are left open to show that the occupants have nothing to hide and are engaged only in wholesome activities.

That sounds utterly dystopian. Whose business is it if we want to shag in the morning?

It’s also completely self-defeating. Nobody can prove that they never did anything that someone else would disapprove. There are solid reasons behind the "innocent until proven guilty" principle.

jonasdegendt

2 hours ago

The Dutch simply shamelessly scratch their butt, and if someone's watching that's their problem ;)

normie3000

3 hours ago

I think that system requires that passers by don't look inside the houses.

tohnjitor

11 hours ago

The worst aspect of the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport was the sliding bathroom door. Almost everything else about the place was really great but the bathroom door wae 1/2" from the face of the wall and bounced off the end of the slider track.

bcoates

5 hours ago

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.

11 hours ago

I had a friend growing up who ate with his mouth open. I fucking hated it. But he had problems breathing through his nose due to something with his soft tissue in his throat. So, you learn to ignore it.

snypher

10 hours ago

It would be virtuous to not judge others based on some small thing they do that annoys you, just as you do things that annoy others.

yunwal

10 hours ago

Actually what’s virtuous is just having a fucking door on the bathroom

foxglacier

12 hours ago

I agree but only because that's the standard for our culture so somebody not doing it is probably being disrespectful which means it becomes offensive to others because it normally only comes from people with some sort of negative feeling or inconsiderateness for those around them. In some cultures, noisy eating is the proper way and shows you're enjoying the food. Same goes for clothes, toilet sounds, etc. It's a lot more repulsive seeing a human poo on the street than a dog even though it's not fundamentally very different.

joombaga

11 hours ago

> Same goes for clothes, toilet sounds, etc.

What do you mean "same goes"? Are you saying there are cultures in which being loud on the toilet is considered proper?

throwaway-0001

7 hours ago

In China making noise with mouth when eating is considered respectful.

Eisenstein

4 hours ago

No it isn't. You can slurp noodles without being rude but they do not consider 'loud mouth noises' respectful.

throwaway-0001

3 hours ago

https://ali.mk/posts/the-role-of-noises-in-chinese-dining-et...

https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/6w5hux/slurping_nood...

+ personal questions to real Chinese people.

Eisenstein

3 hours ago

First link: That is a Swedish robotics blog and the sources linked are just landing pages for Chinese tours or language lessons.

Second link: Where do they say that 'making loud mouth noises is a sign of respect'? They say 'people slurp noodles' which is exactly what I said.

thaumasiotes

11 hours ago

> even though it's not fundamentally very different.

There's a pretty significant difference; human diseases are much more likely to spread to other humans.

mitthrowaway2

12 hours ago

I recently stayed at a hotel in San Francisco that had no bathroom door. I'd even upgraded to the queen size room specifically because their layout map showed a door while the smaller rooms did not. I was pretty annoyed by that. (Edit: Despite being a single traveller. I think doors are important for hygiene).

Happy to see someone is trying to fix this trend.

eru

11 hours ago

How are doors important for hygiene?

ssl-3

10 hours ago

In my part of the US, a lot of our "old" houses were built before indoor plumbing.

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.

ghaff

8 hours ago

I assume my house in the Northeast didn't originally have indoor plumbing. The bathroom is upstairs; I assume it was carved off from one of the upstairs bedrooms or it was a closet/storage area of some sort. It's been redone a couple times since I moved in and it does have a door.

ssl-3

an hour ago

That's not so unusual, either.

My present house (in Ohio) also has its singular bathroom upstairs. The bathroom is on top of the kitchen. Neither room is an addition -- as far as I can tell, it has always used this basic layout.

According to aerial photos, it was built in the 1950s. It resides within a small but very industrialized city that was positively booming at the time the home was constructed; it definitely included plumbing from the beginning.

A previous house in the same city was definitely built before indoor plumbing. It was even built before separate kitchens were considered normal or necessary. It originally had only two rooms downstairs, and two rooms upstairs. Heating and cooking would have been provided by a central stove (probably wood-fired, and with no ductwork).

While it was stick-built, it was initially only a step or two above a fairly primitive log cabin in function.

By the time I lived there, it also had a kitchen, laundry, downstairs bathroom, another upstairs bedroom, and subgrade basement added. The bathroom was part of the kitchen addition, and one entered the bathroom through the kitchen.

I've actually lived in three houses so far that were initially constructed like that -- with two rooms downstairs, and two upstairs.

Only one of those 3 had a bathroom that was separated from the kitchen by a room, and that one was perhaps the oldest: The floor joists for the first level were made from logs that were hewn flat[ish] on the top by hand, and that still hard bark on them. For that house, the bathroom was its own small separate single-story addition that jutted off of the side of [what had become] the dining room.

The house I grew up in was larger and much more-nicely finished in terms of things like woodworking and trim, but was also very old by US norms. It was built before both plumbing and electricity, though it included gas lighting (!) in every room. The partial basement, kitchen and downstairs bathroom were additions, but the bathroom connected to two different common rooms even though it was physically adjacent to the kitchen. There also was an upstairs bathroom, and which was created by taking part of the master bedroom and making it into a hallway while the the original bedroom closet became the bathroom (with a small and somewhat haphazard roof extension where the bathtub was).

Anyway: The point, other than that old houses present interesting evolutions, is that old houses often (but not always) had bathrooms attached to the kitchen -- and that we usually seek to keep them separated these days in newer construction, at least in the US.

I've also lived in a few different apartment buildings (many of which were "old", but all of which were initially intended to be apartment buildings), and all of those bathrooms were separated from the kitchen by a hallway.

And all of these bathrooms had doors. I don't understand the questioning of bathroom doors that I see here in some comments -- at all.

(I shall spare at this time the details of the house I once owned that had been an old farmhouse (with no gas, no lights, and no plumbing), and which had subsequently been divided into a triplex that contained a total of 17 distinct rooms. I could probably write a whole book about that place.)

eru

10 hours ago

In Singapore (of all places) many apartments have one of their toilets right next to the kitchen. Seems to be fine.

mitthrowaway2

9 hours ago

But they have a door, right?

eru

6 hours ago

Yes, of course, we are not barbarians.

(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.)

lazide

3 hours ago

Airborne fecal contamination from flushing is likely reduced by having a barrier

kelnos

5 hours ago

That wouldn't apply to hotel rooms, though, as most do not have kitchens in the guest rooms.

kgeist

So in a hotel bathroom, you'd only be exposed to viruses from people you already share a room (or even bed) with.

d3Xt3r

6 hours ago

> Viruses don't last long outside the body.

SARS-CoV-2 would like to have a word with you (it can last as long as 28 days on smooth surfaces).

eru

6 hours ago

You can't get covid from contact infection. Or at least it's really, really hard. We could dig up studies for that, but you can also look at how food delivery which exploded in popularity all over the world during the lockdowns apparently did not transmit Covid.

flowerthoughts

5 hours ago

You're moving the goal posts. Your assertion was that viruses don't last long outside the body. GP shot down that argument. You have not refuted their argument.

Even without being that strict about the discussion, I think GP was making the point that viruses can survive for many days, so stating that "you'd only be exposed to viruses from people you already share a room (or even bed) with." is an argument that requires some elaboration.

throwawayffffas

10 hours ago

Flushing generates aerosols that travel.

eru

9 hours ago

Have you considered closing the lid?

rsynnott

an hour ago

I've been in hotels with no bathroom door, but it has pretty much always been in tiny one-person rooms, where realistically there are not going to be two people in the room because they _would not fit_. I don't have a particular problem with it there.

(In that case, the reason it's done is fairly clearly that to accommodate a door they'd have to make the room bigger.)

ralferoo

an hour ago

To be honest, those are the rooms that I hope would have a bathroom door so that you don't end up with water everywhere outside the bathroom.

misja111

2 hours ago

Wow I've only stayed in about 100 but have seen several. There are several variations:

- bathrooms with glass walls but with (glass) door

- bathrooms with walls but without door

- bathrooms with partially open walls, sometimes even with door :P

The worst was when I was once sharing a room with my daughter and the bathroom was one with glass walls and no shower curtain. We decided to schedule our toilet visits and showers so the other one would not be in the room.

grishka

2 hours ago

The weirdest one I stayed at so far was a hotel with tiny rooms in central London which had the upper half of the wall separating the bathroom made out of the kind of glass that becomes opaque with electricity. The switch to control that was outside of the bathroom, of course.

And I don't even travel that much, around once a year on average.

jampa

12 hours ago

Me neither, but I remember that when searching for hotels and Airbnbs, I only filter for hotels that are 8+/10 domestically and 9+/10 internationally, which filters out many of the hotels that have those kinds of issues (and score doesn't affect budget much).

netsharc

11 hours ago

Booking.com has this grade inflation issue. if something is shit but you rate everything else fairly (things like location, staff friendliness, etc), the final score will be 7 or 8.. in summary: I had a lousy experience, 7/10!

It takes some experience to realize that a place graded 7.x probably has serious issues.

cperciva

8 hours ago

The problem here is that "mean" is a poor average. For hotels, if you're rating in 10 different categories, you really want a single 0/10 to bring the overall score down by way more than one point.

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.

rsynnott

an hour ago

Honestly, the ratings on those sites are essentially useless anyway, because people are bad at reviewing.

I generally sample the lowest rating written reviews, to check if people are complaining about real stuff, or are just confused. For instance, if a hotel doesn't have a bar, some of the negative reviews will usually be about how the hotel doesn't have a bar; these can be safely ignored as having been written by idiots (it is not like the hotel is hiding the fact that it doesn't have a bar).

Occasionally some of the positive reviews are similarly baffling. Was recently booking a hotel in Berlin in January, and the top review's main positive comment about the hotel was that it had heating. Well, yeah, I mean, you'd hope so. I can only assume that the reviewer was a visitor from the 19th century.

cogman10

9 hours ago

Reading this thread, it seems like it's a trend with very fancy hotels?

I usually stay at chain hotels and this is never really a problem.

rsynnott

an hour ago

I've seen it at cheap hotels (EasyHotel and similar) but generally only in tiny single-person rooms (of the "single bed and just enough space to walk past it to the bathroom, which is the size of an airplane toilet" variety), where it's basically _fine_.

zamadatix

9 hours ago

I run into this barn door style decently often at run of the mill Marriotts and Hiltons across the US. It seems like the chances are higher the newer the construction.

abustamam

6 hours ago

I've stayed in probably 15 hotels in the US in the past 15 years and at least one of them had either no bathroom door, or a glass door, or a bathroom door and a shower that had a glass door.

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.

etskinner

7 hours ago

You've never seen a sliding door rather than a fully closing one? That's one of the types of doors that the author is complaining about

happyopossum

6 hours ago

The author of TFA doesn’t really mention sliders at all - just harps on about “no doors”.

AmbroseBierce

an hour ago

The author does point out glass doors being an issue that he asks about.

rjdj377dhabsn

7 hours ago

Ah yes, quite a few. Not great, but definitely better than literally no door.

tetris11

12 hours ago

ALoft London Excel hotel. Fancy as hell, no bathroom doors.

You shit behind your bed, I kid you not

potato3732842

12 hours ago

Well that explains why I've never seen this trend.

I stick to rooms with two digits in front of the decimal.

rsynnott

an hour ago

My most recent encounter with no-bathroom-door was in a hotel in London that was under 100 pounds a night. Though the room was so tiny that I'd honestly be happy enough to give them a pass on it.

Symbiote

11 hours ago

In London that will get you a different set of problems. Like gaps in the window frame, and a damp smell in the bathroom without ventilation.

bregma

21 minutes ago

Ah, just like home.

ghaff

8 hours ago

Post-Sheraton acquisition, I find the Marriott branding can be a bit random. Still stay in them a lot, but I've had a couple of relatively mediocre Aloft stays of late.

decimalenough

9 hours ago

Uhh, Aloft is in Marriott's "Select" bucket along with Fairfield and Courtyard. They have some shiny touches that let them claim the "Distinctive" label, but are basically just motels.

https://www.hotel-development.marriott.com/brands

squigz

10 hours ago

$200+ a night and it doesn't come with a bathroom door?

This is why I just stay home.

scuff3d

11 hours ago

Ditto. I've never seen this before. They always have at least those sliding doors.

etskinner

7 hours ago

The author of the site considers sliding doors not a real door

762236

3 hours ago

I'm currently in a room with frosted glass for the shower and bathroom, with my girlfriend and her daughter. I guess it helps with lighting?

conductr

11 hours ago

I see it all the time. I actually don’t have an issue with it though. I’m usually alone in the room, or with my family and we all know that we poop. Not that we don’t respect privacy but when circumstance arise, we can bunk together in close quarters without it being super weird.

zeroonetwothree

12 hours ago

Really? I stayed in far fewer and maybe 10% have no doors. And then another 30% have no locks or doors that don’t close all the way (barn doors)

rjdj377dhabsn

10 hours ago

Yes, not one. I just googled for pictures of hotel bathrooms without doors out of curiosity and mostly see sliding and frosted glass doors. Is that what people are talking about?

elboru

7 hours ago

I’m as confused as you

prawn

6 hours ago

I remember hotel in China several years ago where the bathroom had a door, but the wall between bathroom and sleeping area was unfrosted glass with no blind. Idiotic design trend.

hulitu

4 hours ago

> where the bathroom had a door, but the wall between bathroom and sleeping area was unfrosted glass with no blind.

Just like in Windows, where the window has a border, but it is 1 px wide.

> Idiotic design trend.

Maybe some UX designers found work in other areas.

meisel

12 hours ago

While we’re at it, bring back shower doors/curtains. It’s such a pain having this huge puddle outside the shower just because they decided it shouldn’t have one. It’s not so common to be missing one in US hotels, but it’s common internationally.

Edit: apparently the virus has spread, and some US hotels now don’t have them

Symbiote

11 hours ago

The bathroom needs to be destined properly.

11 hours ago

See also: washing machines. If you have three pairs of underwear and all day, Europe’s washing machines have you covered. Otherwise, you’re SOL.

tgsovlerkhgsel

4 hours ago

I've never really run into capacity problems with European washing machines, but the run times are definitely real. Most of them have a well-hidden faster mode. Still not as fast as a US machine on fast mode, but not the mandatory-default-by-law three-hour program.

Which would be even longer than 3h if some EU bureaucrat didn't realize that making the default unacceptably long for everyone will result in nobody using it.

rsynnott

an hour ago

> Most of them have a well-hidden faster mode

My shiny new (2025) Bosch washing machine has a big button on the front which switches from the default 3 hour programme (for 40 degree wash) to 1hr 30m. Like, it's not very _well_ hidden :)

Interestingly, the 3 hour programme isn't really a 3 hour programme. If you use it, the timer will generally start at 3 hours and drop to an hour or so after 20 minutes. I have no idea what the heuristic is, and the manual is silent on the matter.

seanmcdirmid

4 hours ago

Isn’t this mostly drying time and the fact that hardly any driers in Europe are vented (so either heat pump based or condensation)? Or is this the uses less water type washing machines? Europe tends to have higher rates on water and electricity to make efficiency worth while.

My Bosch dishwasher takes 3 hours I guess due to efficiency, it seems reasonable. I didn’t go with a European washer dryer combo though (my laundry room has a vent and I’ve heard that heat pump tech still isn’t good enough).

rsynnott

43 minutes ago

> my laundry room has a vent and I’ve heard that heat pump tech still isn’t good enough

Heat pump dryers are in a slightly weird place in that they're boring old tech in Europe (they've been common for over a decade), and exciting new tech in the US. This means that dryers made for US preferences (physically larger, either three phase or <1500W, etc) are generally first or second models (and thus unreliable) while those made for European preferences are mature designs (and thus reliable).

tgsovlerkhgsel

3 hours ago

No, this is just about washing machines, not washer-dryers or doing both in sequence.

Due to ecodesign legislation, I would assume that all machines that can be legally sold in the EU would count as "uses less water" in the US.

The dishwashers are another can of worms. My last one had an EU and a non-EU program, and you quickly learned to pick the "non-efficient" one if you actually wanted clean dishes.

ruszki

2 hours ago

My experience with dishwashers is that there are bad and good ones regardless of country. I had terrible and great dishwashers in the US, Australia, and Europe (basically in all countries there). The same with washing machines.

veeti

2 hours ago

Thankfully it is just a matter of choosing the "Cotton" program on the dial, not the "Cotton (eco)" one.

trymas

5 hours ago

What do you mean?

tgsovlerkhgsel

4 hours ago

EU ecodesign rules require washing machines to meet certain low energy/water consumption standards in the "default" program. Washing machine designers implement this by making these programs ridiculously long. The EU has now capped them at 3h because they realized that if these programs grow even longer nobody will use them.

Even regular programs in front-loading machines (at least in the European countries I've been to, these make up the absolute vast majority of machines) are longer than typical top loaders. Top loaders are faster but put more wear on the clothes and use more energy and water. A regular, "non-EU" cycle will typically take around 2h. The EU one will typically max out the 3h limit.

Symbiote

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.

etskinner

7 hours ago

The author of the site considers sliding barn doors 'not real doors'

ga_to

3 hours ago

And right they are; sliding doors offer even less seal than the regular cheap doors usually used and as such less sound or odor protection.

rvnx

an hour ago

The worst are the batwing / saloon doors, no idea who believes this is even a door

Findecanor

3 hours ago

In my view, a hotel's primary function is to provide a comfortable bathroom and a comfortable night's sleep. Both should be simple. If is has failed in either, it has failed as a hotel altogether.

I now need extra wide space in the bathroom, so before booking I always check images on hotel-booking web sites, read reviews and look up video reviews of the hotel on YouTube.

There are surprisingly many video reviews of hotel rooms out there. Videos can also sometimes reveal whether a hotel bathroom has a particularly noisy fan, which is important to avoid for sleep.

The weirdest hotel bathroom I've encountered was in a top-floor suite. It had a door, but... multiple toilet seats and showers with no individual doors in-between them, nor to the multiple washbasins. There was no shortage of space for doors or partitions.

m-hodges

13 hours ago

WSJ did a good explainer on hotel room design anti-patterns: https://youtu.be/116cwKs2XQs

petepete

12 hours ago

Kendra Gaylord released a video on the topic yesterday too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFPGUTyo9Yk

GCUMstlyHarmls

12 hours ago

Very glad to see the root cause is once again traced back to that bastard of a generation, the Millennial.

stickfigure

12 hours ago

I watched this and it doesn't seem like anti-patterns to me? I spend more time in hotels than most and ironing boards, closets, minibars, and "bigger rooms" are not things I care about. I don't hang out in the room; it's a box I enter to shower and sleep.

michaelt

11 hours ago

It depends on the market you're aiming for.

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

ghaff

10 hours ago

For me, in addition to a clean comfortable bed, and a good shower (I don't like a deep bathtub I need to step into), I like having a desk and at least a comfortable chair (ideally a sofa).

Of course, now we're getting into a fair fit of space in a dense city.

nimih

12 hours ago

I don't hang out in my hotel rooms either, but an iron, ironing board, and closet with hangars help me not look like a slob when I want to put on some nice clothes and go out for the evening.

hdgvhicv

12 hours ago

Things I want, Socket next to bed, light switch next to bed, decent mattress and pillow, blackout blinds, no noise from next door/corridor

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

al_borland

12 hours ago

It blows my mind that sockets on the nightstand aren’t standard by now.

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.

toast0

10 hours ago

> 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

Nobody comes and takes your stars away. They earned them once and they're still using them.

thaumasiotes

11 hours ago

> Maybe they expect everyone to get a wake up call, but the phone was across the room too.

For a wakeup call, that's an advantage.

raw_anon_1111

7 hours ago

When I use to travel for work, I exclusively stayed in Embassy Suites because it didn’t feel like a shoebox and it gave me space to decompress after a full day of active like I like people.

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.

_carbyau_

moralestapia

12 hours ago

It probably is.

Door closed + extractor makes gaps have negative pressure, no way anything goes into the room.

refulgentis

12 hours ago

Extractor, what I’d call a bathroom fan, fair that effectively stops airflow, I’ll go with “close enough to negative pressure for civvies that they fool themselves” (I.e. ain’t actual negative pressure like a cdc lab)

A door stops airflow? No.

fluoridation

12 hours ago

>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.

refulgentis

10 hours ago

I forgot HN isn’t exactly the demographic that tries this and finds out exactly how well it works. I guess for this demographic, I’d suggest telling your tenants it’s okay to smoke in the bathroom as long as the door is closed and the fan is on.

akersten

13 hours ago

It's not about saving a few bucks on a door. It's about discouraging you and your friends from sharing a single room. Hotel sees the money they're leaving on the table and will trade you for it for the low price of watching your buddies do their business.

majormajor

11 hours ago

I don't think that adds up.

"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.

godelski

9 hours ago

Also even in the single person case I want to have the bathroom door closed when I take a shower because it keeps the heat in. Which is why I also dislike (most of) the barn door style doors. I can't be the only one that likes to step out of the shower and into a nice and steamy room. Like what, you want to step out and be cold? That's masochistic.

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.

chasil

8 hours ago

I stayed in this place where the shower was directly adjacent to the bed, and the commode had its own separate room.

https://hunters.com.co/

It had some other interesting problems.

godelski

8 hours ago

Ahhhh... nothing like sleeping in a wet bed... full of mold...

It could have been worse. They could have put the toilet there and you could be smelling the sewer all night...

noduerme

9 hours ago

For the same reason, I hate the showers without a door in a bathroom with a door. I've never understood the reason for that.

sam-cop-vimes

7 hours ago

I can't book my grown up kids into the same room because of this reason. Utter stupidity or callousness, can't tell which.

jmye

8 hours ago

I don’t know how to ask this without it seeming like snark, but as genuinely as I can ask (and with the assumption that we otherwise agree there should just be a door):

Why don’t you just turn on the heat in the room?

godelski

8 hours ago

Locality and humidity.

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

Tell me the results. Which is the most comfortable? Also tell me your power bill for each day... You can figure this out in 4 days with essentially no cost of time or effort?

mrandish

11 hours ago

> eliminating rooms with two beds

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.

caminante

10 hours ago

Not a good tip.

You now play games with per person occupancy fees/taxes upon arrival, instead of screening available information.

noduerme

9 hours ago

What country is this? I've never seen a hotel site that didn't sell rooms as either 2 Queen or 1 King. If I didn't know it was a king bed I wouldn't book it. Does that now make me a spoiled first world rich person?

mrandish

6 hours ago

This particular trip was in Europe but I also encountered it on a different trip to Las Vegas. It occurred on some hotel sites but quite a few hotel aggregator sites.

ghaff

8 hours ago

>Does that now make me a spoiled first world rich person?

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.

xp84

9 hours ago

Generally, what I’ve seen is on travel sites like Priceline, sometimes they list a room as like “standard room” and they don’t specify and (in the fine print) explicitly do not guarantee how many beds - with some cheaper rates. Basically trying to discourage people from booking them. The thinking being if you don’t wanna end up in 1 King bed with your bro, you’ll pay the extra $13 for the explicitly 2-bed room, which is always listed as well.

noduerme

2 hours ago

Which is odd, since I feel like I always end up paying $13 extra for one king bed with my girlfriend to make sure we're not sleeping in a queen next to an empty one

saurik

8 hours ago

So like, in the United States, if you book directly via Marriott, the number of beds isn't guaranteed unless you have some reasonable status at the hotel.

noduerme

2 hours ago

If you book a queen room isn't it always 2 beds? A king room is usually 1 bed. Is there some option where it's just totally random what room you get? I don't have any Marriott status but going on their site I can clearly see a choice of rooms, and each one says what amenities it has.

ruszki

2 hours ago

I’ve been to Los Angeles recently, and they wanted to give us a single bed room for 3 of us, and they told us that “some” wants the one bed option for 3 adults for whatever reason.

ehnto

10 hours ago

Heeey clever. I really struggled with this while travelling with my brother in Japan. None of the aggregation sites filtered on number of beds even though they had that data in the listing.

decimalenough

9 hours ago

This is not going to work well in Japan, since very few city hotel rooms have room for three guests.

Fortunately Japanese bedding naming is quite standardized: search for twin/ツイン and you'll get rooms with two beds.

lokar

9 hours ago

I think it’s at least partly right (few things are simple enough to have one cause).

A lot of businesses ask co-workers to share a room on trips. Business travel is a large share of reservations.

rand846633

7 hours ago

It’s wild to me that anyone would agree to go on a work trip where they are expected to share the room where they are sleeping. What an insane thing from a company to want.

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?

citizenpaul

11 hours ago

How do you complain and go to another hotel if every single hotel is owned by four companies that are colluding together to do the same thing. This ignores the very obvious fact that you may not want to search for a hotel at 2AM in a strange city when you are exhausted. Keep making excuses for your masters though, this is the world you live in.

Marriot,Hilton,IGT,Hyatt own almost all hotels in any area you want to go to.

Enshittification is not just for apps anymore.

WheatMillington

11 hours ago

It's hard to understand what you want here... No one is making excuses for the hotels? Literally "don't stay there, go somewhere else, and tell everyone you know" is as much power as an individual can possibly muster in this situation. Why do you think this is "making excuses for your masters"? What is your solution?

amadiver

9 hours ago

> don't stay there, go somewhere else, and tell everyone you know

You might be very comfortable sharing the story about the situation, but I hope you can appreciate that not everyone else would be.

aaomidi

10 hours ago

Regulation is when individual action isn’t enough.

Regulation is a form of collective action.

kijin

9 hours ago

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.

ghaff

10 hours ago

I was a bit surprised that a Marriott property I was staying in in NYC a couple weeks ago actually had daily housekeeping service. I didn't really care but hadn't seen that in a while.

verst

8 hours ago

Very common. Every Autograph Collection, Luxury Collection, JW Marriott, Marriott, Westin, W, St Regis, Le Meridien, etc has daily housekeeping - and many of those brands / collections have turn down service too.

themerone

7 hours ago

I'm very surprised that you find this surprising. Do you mostly stay at Airbnb? I expect this at any traditional hotel in the US.

10 hours ago

What's the explanation for housekeeping? I actually prefer very little to no housekeeping, especially for short stays.

ghaff

9 hours ago

Historically housekeeping was daily and it largely went away during COVID.

These days, some people see scaled-back housekeeping as sort of a ripoff while others of us are fine without the sometimes interruptions.

Nextgrid

9 hours ago

> 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).

venturecruelty

10 hours ago

Well, since "laws" are outside the current Overton window, we could always do a hotel startup that becomes worse than the hotels we're trying to replace within ten years or so.

sebastiennight

5 hours ago

Next up: "Bring bathroom doors back to AirBnBs"

meowface

9 hours ago

I've stayed at a lot of hotels. I have almost never been in one that didn't have a proper bathroom door.

SoftTalker

10 hours ago

I stay at Hilton properties whenever I can and they always seem to allow filters for number of beds. Not sure about bathroom doors though.

noduerme

9 hours ago

Eh, at 2am you ask a taxi driver for a local non-chain hotel and see where the night takes you. Honestly the endless ability of people to complain about corporate control when they're unwilling to try anything potentially sketchy is annoying. Don't like staying at the four companies? Ask a local or wander into somewhere and ask the front desk. Don't blame corporations for your lack of adventurism.

lotsofpulp

9 hours ago

> Marriot,Hilton,IGT,Hyatt own almost all hotels in any area you want to go to.

Technically, they own almost none of the hotels. The hotel owners buy the franchises, and hence follow the brand standards.

amiga386

10 hours ago

This doesn't make any sense.

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?

Here are the options:

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?

Fnoord

9 hours ago

> 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?

(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.

amiga386

8 hours ago

This continues to not make any sense.

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?

dragonwriter

8 hours ago

> Why would any group of people book a single room?

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.

amiga386

7 hours ago

> To save money.

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.

Fnoord

8 hours ago

They want two adults (for example dad and daughter, or grandma and dad) to rent separate single bedrooms, yes with their own private space, own TV, etc. The price of two of such single rooms is higher than one double. The room for two people (bed together) is meant for couples, not F&F. Why, I think because they sell better. Maybe also to discourage teens, who'd rather go to a hostel with bunk bed, besides those are way more affordable. You'd think they wouldn't be able to afford a proper hotel, but what I've seen is spoiled brats and what not.

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.

amiga386

7 hours ago

> They want two adults [...] to rent separate single bedrooms

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.

Barbing

7 hours ago

Think based on bathroom rather than bed count here.

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)

amiga386

7 hours ago

This still makes no sense.

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.

chihuahua

9 hours ago

Mr. President, we cannot allow a bathroom door gap!

darreninthenet

12 hours ago

But how would you know until it's too late and you've already checked in? Doesn't seem to be a very effective way of achieving this... Just means my mate and I wouldn't go back to that hotel again.

bluGill

12 hours ago

Ask forithe manager and tell them you want a different room or a refund.

Barbing

7 hours ago

11 hours ago

If you’re going on so much travel that this is a burden then you’re truly privileged. Maybe your assistant or travel agent can handle this issue for you.

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.

TylerE

11 hours ago

There will be photos of an example room, with zero guarantee the room you get will be the same.

dangus

11 hours ago

Typically chain hotels are very careful about making sure everything in a picture is representative of the room to avoid this exact conflict.

Often this does mean that the pictures are lacking.

Cheer2171

11 hours ago

Literally false.

al_borland

12 hours ago

How would not having doors prevent people from sharing a room, unless it was highlighted prominently on the website? If that was the case, this person wouldn’t be making a website to catalog this information.

vagab0nd

8 hours ago

By making it enough of a nuisance such that the next time you book a hotel, any hotel, for 2 platonic friends you are strongly nudged to book two separate rooms.

autoexec

13 hours ago

It's far more likely to discourage me and my friends from staying at that hotel entirely.

throitallaway

12 hours ago

How many people consider what a bathroom looks like before booking a hotel room? I can't say I've ever done so.

gpm

12 hours ago

Actively? Almost no one.

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.

conductr

11 hours ago

> 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.

autoexec

10 hours ago

All the more reason not to add mold from the shower and excess feces from every toilet flush to the list of things I have to worry about being on the mattress.

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.

gpm

10 hours ago

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good and all that, just because things aren't perfect isn't a good reason for the hotel to make things worse and doesn't mean I shouldn't avoid worse hotels on the basis that they are worse.

eru

11 hours ago

> [...] it's a significant hygiene issue.

How so?

cwillu

11 hours ago

Shit particles are literally blown into the surrounding air when flushing; closing the door and running the fan contains the mess.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_plume

rendaw

eru

6 hours ago

I've both opened windows and ran aircons. (Though I try to avoid doing both at the same time.)

Nothing bad happened.

godelski

4 hours ago

  > Nothing bad happened.

This is why it falls on us to not simply put up with what little they expect us to settle for. Ask about their privacy and bathroom doors when booking and if caught by surprise by a lack of an actual door or inadequate privacy demand a new room, or go elsewhere taking a refund if necessary.

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.

eru

11 hours ago

> Some statistical analysis ppt made by some mid level MBA must have proposed this and got a promotion.

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.

thaumasiotes

11 hours ago

> Until recently, you never had to think about it. But as it becomes more common it will become something you might want to consider.

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.

† https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/protasis#English (2)

sbarre

12 hours ago

I definitely do not return to a hotel where the bathroom was sub-par...

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.

zapzupnz

11 hours ago

I want a hot bath after a long day. I don't have one at home so you best believe I'm having one when I'm travelling.

rdtsc

11 hours ago

It could discourage repeat customers?

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.

neutronicus

10 hours ago

My wife is keenly interested in whether or not there is a bathtub. Keenly.

devilbunny

10 hours ago

Mine is as well. So far the only way I have found to locate such increasingly-rare rooms is booking.com followed by calling the hotel. For all their sins, Booking at least lets you search for hotels that have bathtubs in any rooms at all.

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.

chatmasta

12 hours ago

Really? It's one of my main discriminators. The quality of the bathroom is the highest signal indicator of the quality of the hotel. I look for a stone shower basin, a rainhead, a bath tub, or at a least glass shower door... if it looks bolted onto a plastic box, I'm not staying there.

If they're cheaping out on the shower then I'm not going to trust the mattress is clean or the linens are soft.

ajsnigrutin

8 hours ago

You don't, because you expect there to be a toilet, a sink, a shower, towels, a mirror etc. there. There's nothing to consider, it's just expected to be there. Same for the bathroom door.

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.

jen20

9 hours ago

I do. Most of my travel is alone for work so I don’t care about a door, but I always call ahead and refuse to book hotels with shower curtains.

rolandog

12 hours ago

It sometimes feels like hotels are taunting us: "we're behaving like a cartel, whaddaya gonna do? Regulate us!? We've already tricked you into thinking that's socialism!"

autoexec

12 hours ago

It's a weird flex for a time when airbnb and vrbo have options all over the place.

Nextgrid

10 hours ago

With hotels you're playing the lottery but there is generally a baseline consistent with the brand of the hotel.

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.

yunwal

10 hours ago

> there is generally a baseline consistent

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)

potato3732842

12 hours ago

>whaddaya gonna do? Regulate us!? We've already tricked you into thinking that's socialism!"

More like "I dare you, regulation will only further increase our moat"

gpm

11 hours ago

I'm gonna go ahead and suggest that the "bathrooms must have doors" public health regulation is unlikely to increase any moats.

eru

11 hours ago

How does this have anything to do with 'public health'?

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.

gpm

10 hours ago

Fecal particles are well documented as a vector for disease transmission, particularly an issue when travelling with someone who is sick but also just from the long term distribution of them into the room.

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.

neutronicus

10 hours ago

10 hours ago

"Buyer beware! You are responsible for checking for X!" is a lame excuse, and just enables the worst possible behavior from vendors and service providers. I shouldn't have to check 500 things every time I choose to do business with someone! This is madness.

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.

kstrauser

10 hours ago

Perhaps not, but I'd definitely check Yelp, and I'd also definitely pass word to the next Yelper or travel website viewer who comes along. That's not perfect, obviously, but those poor reviews really do start to take money out of the scummy owners' pockets.

ghaff

8 hours ago

And a lot of people just don't care about many of those details (and others may deeply care about things that don't matter to you). Bathroom doors are mostly something that wouldn't appear on my radar screen in general. While I might notice things that wouldn't be on yours.

giantg2

12 hours ago

New business idea... set up a truck with automated lockers on it next to the hotel and rent folding doors to the occupants for $20/night.

tartoran

7 hours ago

One way to get hotels to bring back the bathroom doors and other amenities from yesteryear is through cultural warfare of sorts. When all your customers consider and talk off these not as hotel rooms but cheap motel rooms or even brothel rooms:) Hotels aren't going to like it and eventually it'll catch up with them.

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..

roadside_picnic

12 hours ago

I honestly think it's more about "things that look better on instagram" that has infected virtually every hospitality related experience I've had in the last few years. A room that photographs well or a meal that looks ridiculous are more important than a room that's actually comfortable or a meal that tastes good.

_jab

8 hours ago

The logical conclusion here would be to have no door for the bathroom, but to have specifically the toilet in a separate subroom.

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.

idiotsecant

jillesvangurp

an hour ago

I've never seen this. But I'm kind of the opposite. When it comes to hotel rooms, I prefer function over form. A lot of hotels cover up their lack of quality with a lot of crap that serves no purpose whatsoever. Generic art reproductions on the wall. A lot of shiny chrome or bronze. A fancy looking shower that produces a luke warm mediocre flow of water that than splatters all over the bath room, etc. Or, worse, a dingy looking bath that you have to awkwardly step into and a shower head that will point anywhere except at you unless you hold it. I've seen it all. US hotels tend to be the worst on this front. It's all form over function and the amount of nonsense goes up with the number of stars.

What I want is:

- clean, comfortable bed. Preferably without pubic hairs from the previous occupant (which is what happens if the hotel cuts corners on servicing the rooms).

- a simple but functional shower with hot water

- enough toilet paper. I don't care about anyone folding the first sheet over. Who does that at home? Absolutely no-one I know.

- Power plugs next to the bed so I can charge my phone and use it while I'm on it.

- A window that can open and an AC with an off button.

- Wifi that works just like at home and doesn't kick me out every morning because some cookie expired.

- Bonus points if I don't get to listen in on the TV next door.

What I've found in some expensive premium hotels is the exact opposite of all of the above. Stuffy warm rooms. Barely functional plumbing. Windows that cannot open "for my safety", ACs that are producing noise and bad air 24x7 that are turned off at night to save energy. But the light fixtures are beautiful. And there are 20x more pillows and blankets on the bed than I need.

Some of the best hotels I've had were very affordable budget affairs aimed at return customers that are like me. Basically good management and pragmatic decoration is all you need to turn a mediocre room into a very comfortable one.

rsynnott

an hour ago

> a simple but functional shower with hot water

Sorry, no, not allowed. Hotel showers always have _something_ wrong with them; it's a law of nature.

Potential problems:

- No thermostatic valve (particularly common in the US and Spain, neither of which seems to believe that thermostatic valves exist at all)

- Leaks and/or insufficient drainage

- Overly complex control scheme

- Fixed showerhead, with no handheld shower at all (mostly a US thing)

- Arbitrarily loses pressure.

analog31

12 hours ago

In The Good Soldier Svejk, the tavern keeper Pavilec is arrested for taking down his portrait of Emperor Franz Josef, because the flies were shitting on it.

lysace

11 hours ago

Seems like it. Randy from Cupertino should probably avoid visiting UAE again.

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.

Nextgrid

10 hours ago

> the Divine Essence

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.

dhosek

9 hours ago

Looking over the linked legal page (with the caveat that I spent ten seconds and I am not a lawyer although I did use to watch Law and Order every week), I didn’t see anything that would make the portrait of the king subject to the law.

saagarjha

2 hours ago

This reminds me of the last time I was in Vegas for DEF CON and we booked rooms in this dimly-lit hotel that had surprisingly bright bathrooms with a floor-to-ceiling mirror in the shower. A similar mirror hung outside in the room on the wall opposite.

Yes, it was a one-way mirror looking in. A number of people who had booked rooms together had an exercise kicking their roommate out of the room to take showers that week.

leo_e

9 hours ago

This trend is the absolute bane of early-stage startups.

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.

sharts

8 hours ago

just book separate and cheaper motel rooms.

lucgommans

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...

robrain

13 hours ago

You have the choice to open the door if you wish. This choice has been removed from those who prefer privacy if the door doesn't exist.

frereubu

12 hours ago

From your link:

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.

rkomorn

12 hours ago

Your sample link's examples seem conspicuously toilet-free to me.

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.

op00to

12 hours ago

I love pooping and having my dog visit. A little someone to talk to rather than scroll.

Only once have I seen anything like this. The room had a bathroom door, but also a giant hole cut out in the wall so that everyone in the room could peer into the bathroom for some reason. We demanded a different room with a complete wall separating the bathroom and got one (a nicer one at their expense too).

kotaKat

12 hours ago

The Brookstreet Hotel in Kanata (just outside Ottawa), Ontario has bathrooms with windows in them.

an hour ago

What is there to explain? Bathroom needs to be isolated.

Do they also have to explain why there are walls around your bathroom and it's not just a commode next to a bed?

brador

11 minutes ago

Actual reason - users would lock the door before suicdice or during mental health events. Or even just refuse to leave.

No door, one less thing to worry about.

orloffm

3 hours ago

I've recently stayed at a new Holiday Inn Express near NYC. It had a proper bathroom, nothing to complain about. But there was no ventilation at all. There was this American-style air conditioner under the window and some small outlet in the bathroom, but I couldn't force the air conditioner to force-intake air. It's either super-noisy with compressor running or completely off. I absolutely don't understand how it is even possible that room has no ventilation.

aosmith

9 hours ago

This is a huge theme (for lack of a better word) in Bangkok... I have seen countless condos with glass box bathrooms. My wife and I love each other deeply but we have 0 desire to make eye contact while pooping. Our daughter is another case but we both hope she will grow out of it.

GaryBluto

13 hours ago

This is a thing? I've only stayed at Premier Inns (a budget UK hotel chain) and have never heard of anything like this happening.

bluGill

11 hours ago

High end hotels are more likely to follow the fads in my experience. The cheap ones have a door but it might be damaged

ghaff

13 hours ago

I've seen it in the US in smaller dense urban rooms and it's honestly something I've never thought about.

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.

DaSHacka

10 hours ago

I assume you must be a solo traveler?

ghaff

10 hours ago

Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. Not something that's ever come up as an issue.

krona

12 hours ago

I first encountered it at a Hotel du Vin (UK) about 10 years ago.

ohhnoodont

12 hours ago

I’m glad that someone has built this and made it their personal crusade, but this is a problem that I can’t relate to having. I find it far more uncomfortable/intimate to sleep next to someone (even if in separate beds) than to shower or use the toilet in front off someone. Snoring, farting, dream talking, morning erections, etc.

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.

bwfan123

9 hours ago

On the topic of hotel baths & showers, Dave Barry has this hilarious piece. Innovation in hotel shower controls has lead to UI/UX getting messed up.

https://davebarry.substack.com/p/hotel-showers

truelson

9 hours ago

Dave Barry having a substack was such a bonus find here

Havoc

13 hours ago

On insta I'm seeing more stories about people reviewing/mocking OPS (Open plan shi.tters) on rental websites like rightmove.

Boldest choice thus far was the one with the OPS next to the kitchenette.

There are some very strange people out there...

hdgvhicv

12 hours ago

A lot of rightmove ones are old people who need access to a toilet and don’t have room to install a whole new bathroom

Havoc

2 hours ago

Yeah, the joys of London real estate market :(

dexzod

12 hours ago

Basically, just like the airlines, the hotels are saying if you are such a broke destitute to be able to upgrade to our premium tier, then go suffer in the smell of your own shit.

nrhrjrjrjtntbt

11 hours ago

Dont give those airlines ideas. A doorless toilet at the back of the plane would be awesome (traditional usage of word)

SomeUserName432

4 hours ago

I actually analyze the photos of the hotelrooms looking for the bathroom door before I book a hotel room these days.

Has become this new weird step to take during bookings.

seanmcdirmid

10 hours ago

Glass box bathrooms are common in lower end Chinese hotels. So they don’t really have a door, and you are separated from the rest of the room by a glass pane. Weird, but not the worst I’ve experienced. The worst is when the shower straddles the squat toilet.

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.

noduerme

9 hours ago

Possibly even more important than a door is an extractor fan. Sometimes two people gotta do their business and get out in rapid succession.

51Cards

10 hours ago

Perhaps I say at all the wrong (right?) hotels but... I stay in close to two dozen North American hotels a year and I haven't noticed this trend? Many have pocket doors but I can't think of a hotel in recent memory that was missing it completely. I usually partially close them so it's not as cold getting out of a shower so I hope I would have taken note if it wasn't there.

ghaff

7 hours ago

It's been a while since I've stayed in one but separation in Yotels seemed to be pretty much missing. Can't think of other chains in particular.

apexalpha

5 hours ago

>’m done. I’m done arriving at hotels and discovering that they have removed the bathroom door. Something that should be as standard as having a bed, has been sacrificed in the name of “aesthetic”.

In what country or region are we here? I've never seen a bathroom without a door in a hotel.

Or anywhere, really, for that matter.

roncesvalles

2 hours ago

If there's no door between the toilet bowl and the bed, the bed is in the bathroom.

kqr

4 hours ago

I agree bathroom doors are sensible when traveling with company. When staying alone, though, I prefer no doors. If there is a door, I tend to use a small piece of gaffers' tape to hold it open. I don't spend a lot of time in the hotel room, so while I'm in there I want my movement unimpeded.

The worst I've experienced was a sliding barn door which covered either the bathroom or the clothes rack. If I wanted my clothes to breathe, I had to shut the bathroom with a door that only impedes movement and does not provide privacy. If I wanted to move around freely, I had to shut my clothes in!

junon

12 hours ago

Have had some where the shower is just glass panels for the room to see (and no, it wasn't that kind of hotel).

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.

happyrock

10 hours ago

I stayed at one in Iceland where the entire bathroom wall facing the living room was unfrosted glass, including the door. The living room was open concept so it was hard to avoid seeing into the bathroom. Great place for couples to bring their entire selves to the relationship.

dreamcompiler

11 hours ago

I wonder if this is because hotels are in a race to seem "cool" and "edgy." Will this trend get to the point where they cut a hole on the middle of the mattress and tell you to just lie down and shit right there?

nwellinghoff

6 hours ago

Not to mention these modern showers that have a slab of glass on the 1st 3rd but then open door for the rest such that water leaks all over the place. Looks great on insta but sucks at being a shower.

forthwall

12 hours ago

I noticed in East Asia, they also have some tendency to have floor to ceiling windows through the whole bathroom to the bedroom, sometimes with no curtain either. I am not sure who this is for

netsharc

11 hours ago

The legend is that if you invite a lady for the night, it's so you and she can keep an eye on each other, in case either is worried about one going through their stuff/wallet while the other is in the bathroom.

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...

octoberfranklin

9 hours ago

Hotel safes are a much simpler solution to this problem...

m463

12 hours ago

I've seen that in japan, but they had a switch that would electronically switch off the window (it would become opaque white).

b3ing

8 hours ago

Take a dump in the lobby bathroom, and crap on the seat and clog the toilet with paper, maybe they will learn

Gigacore

6 hours ago

Just returned from Malaga in Spain. The EasyHotel we stayed in had frosted glass cubicle for the toilet and shower. But there were huge gaps in between. Haha!

Gud

7 hours ago

I am a frequent traveller(literally have the star alliance card).

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.

ajanthanmani

10 hours ago

Nice Collection! Glass box are good for couples and all. But if you're traveling with group friends, it could be awkward.

tjwebbnorfolk

5 hours ago

A way to force people to buy separate rooms?

morshu9001

11 hours ago

Ok so it's not just me. I keep staying in hotels where there's a bathroom door, but it's partially see-through. Clearly they were ok spending the money for a door but decided they don't want to give privacy. Didn't bother me, but it stuck out.

amarant

crossroadsguy

6 hours ago

Just when you think you’ve seen all the corporate/business fuckery in this world. I already ask stuff like — is it a non-smoking room or not, do not use a strong room freshener when prepping the room (or better save money and skip freshener), etc. Now do I have to ask — whether your room has a bathroom door or not? Fucking hell! Hopefully, such fucked-up trends don’t reach this corner of the world at the speed and efficiency with which COVID did.

Teever

13 hours ago

I'm interested to see where zoning laws permit this kind of stuff.

quickthrowman

12 hours ago

My state does not require a door on a guest bathroom in a hotel. A bathroom serving employees and the public in a hotel is required to have a self-closing door, but the law does not say anything about doors on guest only bathrooms.

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.

> https://www.revisor.mn.gov/rules/4625.1200/

toast0

10 hours ago

A water closet is just water shelving without a door.

ghaff

13 hours ago

Not sure why it would be a zoning thing.

11 hours ago

Haha that’s crazy, there has to be someone with a financial interest in instant hot water heaters making bank from that. If it was conservation they’d mandate ultra low flow toilets and other water saving measures. Is this a township or similar level of government?

rz2k

12 hours ago

Likely for the same reason that fans are often a building code requirement.

ghaff

12 hours ago

Is that actually common? My house has no built-in fans much less AC.

dreamcompiler

11 hours ago

In my state every bathroom in a private home is required to have an exhaust fan or an openable window.

puppycodes

12 hours ago

isnt the compromise usually that the stalls have fully enclosed doors if the bathroom doesnt?

Personally I like having both. Doors are great for a variety of reasons, not just privacy.

ChrisArchitect

14 hours ago

What happened to bathroom doors? [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFPGUTyo9Yk

(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46062242)

globular-toast

4 hours ago

My personal "travel hack" for a while now is to poo in communal facilities that hardly ever seem to be in use in any hotel I've stayed in. I don't understand why anyone wants to poo a metre from their bed, regardless of a door.

As for showering, I don't really care to be honest. I'm cleaning my naked body. It's not some super secret affair that nobody is allowed to see.

Having said that I've yet to encounter a hotel where the toilet/shower isn't private.

What I really care about when travelling is being able to sleep which means the correct noise level and temperature. Far too many hotel rooms are simply too warm. Who the hell can sleep at 23 degrees with gigantic fluffy duvets designed for Nordic countries and no fan/airflow?

I've thought about making a similar site for this issue before but, ultimately, I don't travel anywhere near enough for it to be worth it. These days I just assume travelling will be shit sleep, and if it isn't then it's a bonus.

gorbachev

10 hours ago

I wish I could upvote this multiple times.

paulmooreparks

7 hours ago

One of my favourite hotels in SE Asia has this problem. (I won't name and shame, since when we complained they said it's going to be fixed soon in a redesign.)

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?

sneak

8 hours ago

More useful than this would be speed test results from the hotel wifi.

The free wifi in my last hotel in Tokyo was 800Mbps symmetric. I’m ruined forever.

Klonoar

10 hours ago

This is some new age Costanza shit.

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.

rchandna

8 hours ago

The people's champ

mseaworthy

11 hours ago

Along with a closing door, a nice loud exhaust fan is appreciated.

d--b

7 hours ago

For the rest of the world: it seems way more common in the US/americas to share rooms than it is elsewhere.

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.

ww520

12 hours ago

London, Marriot, W. Sink in the bedroom. Just No.

https://dynamic-media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-o/2e/9...

shirro

9 hours ago

That would be weird and uncomfortable traveling with a kid. Is it geographic or is this madness taking over the world? Seems like something that would get a place destroyed in reviews and lose them business.

brunoborges

8 hours ago

Can we have a website for these things too?

    - ceiling lights
    - shower curtains or glass box
    - 7 ft tall (minimum) shower head
    - firm mattress

m463

12 hours ago

Also bring back brighter lighting?

Is it just me, or have hotel rooms gotten dimmer?

It seems less cheerful.

xlbuttplug2

11 hours ago

That's probably intentional to prevent you from realizing how unsanitary the room really is.

system2

11 hours ago

This site showed me a few links, like booking.com. Booking.com took 40 seconds to load with all its weird JavaScript, popups, and blocks. Is this the norm to have extremely heavy sites like this?

One doorless bathroom if you are interested:

https://cf.bstatic.com/xdata/images/hotel/max1024x768/919323...

jonstewart

11 hours ago

If this is a trend, I have not noticed it. Are there particular brands and/or regions where there is happening?

_giorgio_

2 hours ago

Bad, bad architects.

They have a reason for this choice. I remember studying it at university—the professor said that when people have intimacy, there's no need for doors.

But what if you have a guest? And what if your poop stinks?

Incredibly low-IQ people.

This doesn't have anything to do with Americans.

Ylpertnodi

7 hours ago

And europeans.