Above: Samantha at the Pantages Hotel in Toronto.

All of the photos in this post were taken in hotel rooms.

Dear Hotels,

You suck.

I travel a lot. I travel a lot because I love it. And I have a love/hate relationship with the hotels that I stay in. I’ve recently just booked a few trips for 2011 all at once and have come to realize what an epic frustrating mess it is to deal with hotels and their websites. These frustrations have popped up in the past, but it was always one trip at a time, so I could handle those relatively small doses. Booking five cities all at once is a different story and has really magnified everything that’s wrong with the hotel industry. Coming on the heels of my American Apparel post (I Hate You, American Apparel), I don’t want to turn this into a consumer advocacy blog, but… you can’t stop me.

I not only stay in hotels, but I also use them as shooting spaces. Most of my complaints would apply to any traveller, however, and aren’t specific to the fact that I’m a photographer.

Above: Madison at the Lord Nelson Hotel in Halifax.

So here’s a simple list of what I think hotels should and shouldn’t do to make the experiences better.

Do… show me big, accurate photos. Whether it’s a site like Expedia or the hotel’s own website, 99% of the room photos I see are so small as to be useless. When clicking thumbnails, they typically enlarge to about the size of a postage stamp, which is no help at all. And if you’re gonna show photos, make sure they accurately reflect what the room looks like — last year I stayed at a hotel that showed a beautiful blue sofa bed in the photo, only to have it be a ratty old burgundy one in real life.

Don’t… open a new browser window when I’m checking room availability on your website. I can’t effectively express how much this annoys me. Most hotel websites have a booking form right on the front page of their site where you can input a date and check availability. About half of these open a new browser window to display the results, I guess because they’re using some sort of third-party service to do it. When I’m visiting a dozen hotel sites over the course of a night, I quickly end up with a massive mess of browser windows. Learn how to embed an effing booking system into your website.

Do… show me pictures of the bathroom. Why is there only one photo of the room itself? But six of the lobby? And three of the conference rooms? But zero of the bathrooms? I don’t care what your lobby looks like. I’m going to spend a grand total of about three and a half minutes there. I’d say less than 10% of the hotels I look at have bathroom photos. Why is this important? Well, for me, I like shooting in bathtubs, so I want to make sure the hotel has one. For other people — say, someone with mobility issues — a bathtub might be a real impediment and only shower stalls will do.

Don’t… charge me for internet access. I’m gonna repeat that. Don’t. Effing. Charge. Me. For. Internet. Access. Especially if you offer free wi-fi in the lobby to any stranger off the street — don’t expect me to pay $15 a day for it in my room. The worst part is that this is more prevalent among the higher-end chains that charge more to begin with. Go to any 2-star international hotel chain and you’ll have free internet. A 4-star hotel that costs triple the price? Pony up. If you can put free coffee and a coffee maker in my room, you can give me free internet.

Above: Gillian at the Westin Nova Scotian in Halifax.

Do… clearly list all your relevant details on sites like Expedia. There is no reason I should have to go to your hotel website to find out whether or not you have bathtubs in the rooms, which way the rooms face, or how much it costs to park my car. Hell — just finding out whether or not I even can self-park my car is a struggle most of the time. Make your list of amenities and policies clear and easily accessible.

Don’t… force me to pay for valet parking. When the hell did this start? Why would you even build a hotel without parking facilities? $35 a night for valet parking with no option to self-park? Are you kidding me? I will never, ever book at your hotel.

Don’t… list stupid crap in your room amenities like the size of your TVs. Nobody cares. I’m not going to stay at Hotel A because they have a 32″ TV vs Hotel B’s 27″ TV. Likewise, I don’t give a crap if you have a coffee maker in the room. Now this is because I don’t drink coffee — but if I did, is leaving the hotel to find the nearest Tim’s or Starbucks that big of a deal? Hell, many of the hotels I’ve stayed at over the last few years have a Starbucks right in the friggin lobby. I’ll even offer up some anecdotal evidence of how useless coffee makers are — I make it a point to check the expiry date on those little packets of coffee they leave in the rooms… I’m not kidding when I say that literally every single packet of coffee I’ve looked at in the last five years of travelling has been expired. Nobody uses those. Nobody. Ever. Remove them and give me free internet instead.

Don’t… nickel and dime me. I realize that this is actually your entire business plan, but something’s gotta change. I recently looked online at hotel rooms that had fireplaces for an extra fee vs non-fireplace rooms. That’s fine. But then there was some small print that indicated not only do you pay extra for the room, you pay even more should you want to turn on the fireplace. What’s next? I get a sink but I have to pay extra for the water? A $10 surcharge to turn on my bedside lamp?

In closing, hotels, I’ll tell you this: stop treating your customers like enemies. Don’t make it difficult for us to find the information we want. Don’t overcharge us. It’s no wonder your occupancy rates have fallen to the 55-60% range in the last decade.