Why the 5-star hotel experience needs urgent reforms

From gagging TV sets to guiding guests on surviving tucked-in beds, plenty needs to be fixed

- MANU JOSEPH

According to Indian five-star hotels, a guest likes to walk into the room and see the TV come alive on its own, blaring third-rate music and displaying promotions for the same hotel, as though this is the sort of entertainment that brought him to town. 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.

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.