Who designs these hotel rooms anyway?

    We’re here in Yogyakarta at the All Seasons Hotel. It’s a lovely, fairly new building with an excellent staff. The place looks great. Our room is nice and large with bright colors and wood trim (an IKEA look to it). The entry area and bathroom have eight-foot ceilings but the main room has a ten-foot ceiling so it has a feeling of real spaciousness. The bathroom has a great shower and the first square toilet I’ve seen. That goes well with the rectangular washbasin.
    But then you start to unpack and you realize there’s very little space to store things. There are a couple of shelves in the entry area for storing bags and shoes and there’s a shelf beneath the TV that functions as an office center. But that’s about it. There’s six feet of dead space above the bag shelf behind the door but it’s just blank wall. Potential storage. Wasted space.
    There’s a six foot area above the shoe rack where they’ve placed a hanging bar. That would give you plenty of space to hang things if only it were available. The problem is that they’ve run some plumbing pipes or electrical wiring or something and the resulting projection takes up most of the space. The hangers provided by the hotel can’t fit the space so you’re left with about a half-foot of usable space on each end. I guess you could try hanging clothes on a 45 degree angle. Or, five feet of ties or belts.
    There are only four electrical outlets in the room (all singles) and they all have assigned duties–lamp, clock, fridge, kettle. If you want to charge your computer, phone or camera battery, you have to start unplugging things. The only plug that isn’t in constant use is the one for the kettle but it is also the most inaccessible one.
    I mentioned at the beginning how bright our room was. That feeling lasted until night fell and we had to turn on some lights. The light level is good enough for watching TV but not nearly bright enough for any serious work. We haven’t been watching much TV. Again, fancy, decorative lighting touches but not practical lighting. It doesn’t help that burned-out bulbs haven’t been replaced.
    We’ve been seeing similar deficiencies in other hotels we’ve been using. The Dorsett Regency in Hong Kong was a lovely hotel but the room was small and had little space for luggage. The shower door did not do a good job of keeping water inside the shower area. The Grand Swiss Bel-hotel in Medan was another up-scale hotel with a large room. It had a fancy bathroom with a problem shower. It also was looking a bit shabby.
    Rasa Seni was nice looking but it has serious maintenance problems. The room was not clean, the mini fridge wasn’t working properly and there was little or no effort to control the bug  population. The Nagoya Inn gave us a nice, big room with a separate foyer/dining area. It had a fancy, marble-like bathroom with the shower centered in a large bathtub. But then they tried to enclose the shower with a chintzy, short curtain on a curved metal rod (think hospital room). It was impossible to contain the water which flooded the bathroom floor.
    The place we stayed in Ibioh Beach was, according to the owner, only a month old (I have my doubts). Arpen is a small businessman who’s just branching out into rental property. He’s built this two-unit bungalow and has plans to expand. His lack of experience in the tourist industry was quite evident. The unit looks good from the outside and has a nice balcony. It’s a nice, bright room with a large bed.
    However, half of his storage unit is already broken and he showed no sign of intending to fix it. There were no sheets/blankets on the bed - I guess it’s so warm he doesn’t think they’re needed. There was only one towel in the room and, although he kept promising to bring another, he never followed through. Doreen eventually went next door to the second unit (unoccupied) and took that towel. He provides a large water container which is good because the water from his well did not look drinkable. We also noted the absence of a mini fridge.
    The bathroom had a nice tile floor but a very small sink and no shelving. When you tried to turn the water on/off, the entire tap assembly moved so you needed to use both hands. The shower was not a separate area and wa ter from the shower (cold shower only) sprayed everywhere. That’s probably why there was no toilet paper in the bathroom (though that might also be a result of cultural differences since many Asians think our use of toilet paper a disgusting habit).
    How hard can it be to design a functioning, useful hotel room that people could use without complaints? And how difficult is it for hotels to implement adequate maintenance procedures?