So far this year we’ve slept in sixty-three different beds. That’s a lot of sleeping around. Naturally, not all of those places were winners even though most were perfectly adequate for our needs and some were even stellar. We don’t really ask for that much. Give us a clean room at a decent price in a good location and we’re pretty much set.
Lately, though, we’ve hit a string of pretty annoying bed-and-breakfasts that have made us wonder whether they’re really the right kind of accommodation for our current style of travel. It wasn’t always that way. We used to prioritize quaint, family run B&B’s over soullessly homogenized hotels. Now we’re not so sure.
We’re noticing the problems before we even show up. Stern statements in our booking confirmation advise “Your accommodation will be available from 17.00 hrs on the day of arrival. Please vacate by 10.00 hrs on the day of departure.”
The hospitality just makes me feel warm all over.
Now we understand that small B&B owners need time to prepare rooms and that they don’t necessarily have cleaning staff to help. But seven hours? They don’t really need all those hours to clean rooms. They just want a third of the day where they don’t have to be bothered by guests.
And you know what? I totally get it. I wouldn’t want to have people in my house around the clock and around the calendar either. But that’s why I don’t run a freaking hotel out of my home. If I did, I’d recognize that having people in my house is part of the job description. Instead of being treated as paying customers we’ve been made to feel like unwanted relatives who show up unannounced and overstay their welcome.
Some of our problems stem from a simple difference in expectations. You see, we expect to have unfettered access to the room for which we’re paying. They, meanwhile, seem to expect we’ll leave the premises for long hours every day.
Everybody and the power guy waiting for our B&B owner to make an appearance
We narrowly avoided booking at one place that required guests to be out of the hotel from 10 to 4 each day. We still somehow managed to get kicked out of a different place for almost an entire day.
The B&B owners didn’t seem to think anything of it, either. They just simply told us one morning that they had errands to run and that we had to vacate for the day. No mention of a refund for the hours our room was unavailable to us. They “assumed” it wouldn’t be a problem because most guests are out all day anyway.
Except we don’t travel like typical tourists on vacation. We don’t spend every waking hour of our lives sightseeing and dining out. We stay places longer and travel slower. When we go out it’s usually just for a few hours. When we’re done, we expect to have a room to return to. Oftentimes we need to spend entire days in that room to get our work done. That was supposed to be one of those days.
It didn’t help matters that our eviction came right on the back of another B&B where the owner left us, and other guests, stranded in her driveway for ninety minutes waiting to check-in. Now it wasn’t like we all arrived at some unexpected hour. This particular B&B had a mere two-hour window to check in. And she was an hour and a half late for her own check-in time. In “her defense” she tells us that she has to “wait for guests all the time.”
It all strikes us as exceedingly amateurish. Maybe there’s something to be said for the clean efficiency and impersonal professionalism of large hotels.