A spoiled travel editor’s guide to luxury hotels

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Features Journalist

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Five star hotels should do these six things, says our travel editor
Five star hotels should do these six things, says our travel editor

I know, it’s not en vogue to brag, but as CityAM’s travel editor, I stay in the world’s plushest luxury hotels for a living.

Here’s the shocking thing: despite the £1k-a-night price tags, they often fail to do the very simplest of things to make your stay better. So, here is some constructive criticism on how to make five-star hotels better.

6 ways to make luxury hotels better

  1. MAKE CHECK-IN SUCK LESS
    Why does check-in still involve standing in front of someone typing for ten minutes at a computer that looks like it’s from 2002? Why do they ask so many questions? No, I don’t need the hotel tour. Yes, I know where the lift is. Why are you asking for my email address when I booked with it? You already have my phone number. Aaahhhh!
  2. ROOMS SHOULD HAVE A BATH
    There is a heinous new trend for hotel rooms not having baths. It’s cheaper (and more water efficient) to put in one of those trendy ‘rainforest’ showers but the whole point of being in a posh hotel room is to feel the opposite of being in a rainforest. I want to be held, womb-like, in a porcelain chamber, like a cherubic infant with a penchant for Ruinart. Without a bath I’m forced to sit in bed like a teenager, which I quite like tbh, but anyway, give me a bath.
  3. LIGHT SWITCHES SHOULD BE EASY!
    I’m ashamed to admit the number of nights I’ve had to call reception to ask how to turn off the lights. The design is so unintuitive I sometimes question whether they’re doing it on purpose. If I’ve paid a grand for a hotel room, the last thing I want to do is stalk around the place like some weirdo trying to turn off the lights. I just want to sleep and now I’m covering mood lighting with socks.
  4. THE SMALL ROOM IS BEST
    Have you ever had a terrible night’s sleep in a hotel suite? Science says that often, the bigger the room, the worse the kip we have. Our brains perceive a higher risk of threat if we sleep in bigger, less familiar spaces. When did you ever throw a lavish dinner party around the in-room dining table anyway? Never, that’s when. The lounge is just a sad, ghostly, perfectly upkept corner of your room that amounts to little more than a luxury hotel status symbol. Its addition means there are literal corridors to get to the bathroom. Scrap the suite.
  5. NEVER GO TO THE SPIRIT TASTING
    Never let anything eat into a beach day, especially not a spirit tasting run by the hotel bar. A superlative beach holiday should involve absolutely no activities at all. Anyone who says doing nothing is boring has no idea: doing nothing is the hardest thing in the world. So don’t go to the spirit tasting billed as a ‘fun’ 3pm freebie. No one needs hard liquid at that time in the afternoon. Plus, when a barman talks about spirits, you listen for ten or fifteen seconds, then stop, because brains can only absorb so much information about grains and distillation processes. Everyone just smacks their lips and says something about it tasting like ‘coffee’ or ‘chocolate’. There is nothing intellectually highbrow about this, go back to the beach.
  6. BREAKFAST FINISHES AT 10.10
    If breakfast ends at 10am, I get a thrill from getting out of bed at 9.42am, showering, dressing and being downstairs in seventeen-and-a-half minutes. This maximises my sleep and potentially helps me shake off my jetlag. I still deserve to have the full breakfast experience. Because I am on time (just).

    Adam is the deputy editor of CityAM – The Magazine

    Read more: Inside the real White Lotus hotel in Thailand