Manu Joseph: Why the 5-star hotel experience needs urgent reforms

Later, when he decides to sleep, he apparently loves finding the blanket so tightly tucked in that he feels like a letter slipping into an envelope. He loves to try and pull up the blanket and fail, as achieving that requires uprooting it from its moorings—an act he can perform only with his legs, which are not strong enough. And thus, he thinks, “I must work on my quads."

Also, he surely enjoys finding his towels folded into animal shapes. Maybe market surveys revealed this as a key satisfier—why else would hotels do this to you? Even so, I have a very different view of human nature, and on that basis, here are my suggestions on how to reform the five-star hotel experience.

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Gag the TV and put out the lights: The first experience of the room should not be the TV. Not only should it be off, it should also be dead. The ever-glowing power lights of the screen and set-top box may seem harmless but can significantly disrupt sleep, especially in a pitch-dark room. And they are not the only things with glowing lights.

A hotel room is often filled with them—on air conditioners, phones, clocks and, of course, smoke alarms. Many rooms have a smoke alarm right above the bed, as though people tend to vaporize—and when that happens, sprinklers should come on. What’s insidious about these small lights is that they never appear to be the reason for your poor sleep, but there’s a good chance they are.

Tell guests the trick to survive tightly tucked beds: I have tried to find out why hotels tuck in the blanket. Like many things in life, people don’t know why they do stuff, and hotels are not sure why they tuck in. There is a view that they do it for aesthetic reasons. What is clear, though, is that they want to do it. As a favour to their guests, they need to do one of two things—or both.

They need to use longer blankets, long enough to fully cover you even if a large portion of it must stay tucked in. Or, if inordinately long blankets are not easy to find, hotels should at least reveal to guests a very simple technique for slipping in smoothly and safely.

The central conflict with a tucked-in blanket is that you cannot pull it over your head—something you may want the freedom to do even if you don’t usually shroud your face. So you need to pull the pillow down, away from the bed-rest. Then, you don’t have to uproot the blanket. That way, both the hotel and you win.

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Bring back ceiling fans: It is ridiculous that Indian five-star hotels do not have ceiling fans just because their rooms are air-conditioned. It is a senseless imitation of hotels in cooler countries, where fans are not part of the culture. But ceiling fans are important to Indian guests as they are accustomed to their soothing hum.

Also, the fans help regulate the temperature without over-relying on air conditioning and in that way save energy. Fans also hide other noises, more disturbing noises. Guests who dislike them can always turn them off.

Simplify switches: An elaborate ritual in hotel rooms often involves figuring out how to turn off all lights. Even if there’s a master switch, a mysterious floor light or corridor glow will defiantly persist. These lights seem deliberately elusive, hidden in obscure corners as if they are shameful secrets. The designers, in their quest for cleverness, ensure these switches are impossible to find, especially when you’re half-asleep.

At times, it feels like the hotel room competes with your sleep, finding subtle ways to disrupt it. Wardrobes, if not firmly shut, emit light. And even if you conquer all sources of illumination, you’re greeted by the glowing stars of power buttons on TVs or smoke alarms. All this degrades the quality of rest.

Accept that music is sound: There’s something about a hotel corridor that makes most people think they are alone even while passing dozens of shut doors. I have heard all sorts of things from people passing by. The corridor offers a completely false sense of privacy.

I’m not saying this because I care for your welfare, but because I want you, when you are staying in my hotel, to keep shut, especially at night. I have been woken up too many times by happy people, some of whom have been the hotel’s own staff. Instead of promoting themselves on the TV screen inside, hotels should promote the idea of silence in corridors.

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Hotels also seem to think that music is okay everywhere. In corridors, cafés, lifts and more. Music is generally a human wind instrument collaborating with a very bad poet and producing sounds that are supposed to create a mood. I know that most people are alright with it, and I enjoy some of these collaborations myself, but it is also one of the great pollutions of modern life.

I don’t need music all the time; I don’t need my mood to be set constantly by people who do not know my moods. But it is hard to escape music, whether you sit in an aircraft, walk down an airport terminal or take a seat in a cab. But why must it chase you after you are deposited in your hotel?

I remember once a hotel played Nessun Dorma in the lobby. How did they presume I was in ‘the mood’ to listen to a song about a crazy princess trying to find a poor man’s name so she could have him killed?

This may not be one of my most popular reform proposals, but I do nudge hotels to consider silence.