I travel a few times per year for work and usually stay in the Starwood line of hotels (W, Westin, etc.) since they are nice places and offer the federal government rate.
However, I’ve noticed that the past few times I have traveled that my hotel bathroom has only had a shower with no tub. Is there some reason that this is considered better/classier? Is this specific to the Starwood brand, or is it more widespread?
I’m considering explicitly requesting a room with tub next time…after a flight, I like to soak my feet and a shower just doesn’t do it for me.
I used to work for Starwood, in fact I helped open the W Hotel in Times Square and it’s marketed as an “upscale” thing. In fact it was done to save money. I was there when they had the meeting. It was done to save money and the “spin” was to make it classy.
In fact before they even started with the “W Hotels” they had a huge debate whether they should make the “W Hotels” brand above or below the Westin brand. It was decided to make “W Hotels” above Westin.
I can’t tell you about others but let me tell you about Starwood, EVERYTHING is done to save money. I was on their Six Sigma team. We had meeting after meeting and there isn’t one single thing in Starwood, that has not been thought about, studied in Six Sigma and reviewed to make sure it’s cost effective.
Starwood -> Figure Cost -> As low as possible -> Then put a spin on it.
Most of my travel is to Europe, and I haven’t found any correlation between bath/shower and anything else . . . except, of course, that older buildings with tiny rooms cannot accommodate a tub.
Do people really take baths in hotel rooms anyway? (You couldn’t pay me to sit in a hotel room tub.) If they’re eliminating something that has a low use and saving money, isn’t that a good thing?
I love the change of tub to shower, makes it more gimp friendly =) all they need to do to bring it to accessible in a shower is add a fold down shower seat, grab bars and a handheld showerhead. Plus, along with others… sitting in a hotel tub = eeeewwww. I don’t know if the cleaner has taken shortcuts because it looks clean … :eek:
I actually prefer a shower to a tub. If I’m staying in a hotel, I probably have stuff to do around that Hotel and would want to get out as quickly as possible; taking a shower is much more comfortable in an actual shower than in a bathtub.
At the highest-end hotel we’ve ever stayed at (the Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas), we had a nice shower stall and no tub. We have had tubs with showers in almost every other hotel we’ve stayed at (usually the lower-end Super 8’s or something like that). For what that’s worth.
I was discussing this with a friend the other day, what most places do to make it accessible is make the shower with no lip or basin and the water runs to a drain in the center of the bathroom floor. This is to make it wheelchair accessible - if you want to roll your chair into the shower. Also makes it messier for those not needing wheeled access.
Likewise, even when I’ve had a tub as an option at home. To me, the luxury of taking a bath is part of the pleasure of being on vacation. I normally wouldn’t have the time or inclination at home.
I travel to Vegas a few times a year, and the off-Strip hotel I usually stay at (the Gold Coast) has done room upgrades within the past three years or so. The newer rooms are definitely marketed as upgrades, but the tubs have been removed. I don’t doubt it saved them some money, but it is definitely being presented as being more upscale. Then again, if you’d seen the old Gold Coast bathtubs, you’d realize why removing them was an improvement.
When I have splurged for a really nice hotel (or more accurately gotten a killer deal on a luxury room thru Priceline or similar) either here in the US or somewhere in Europe, the true 4 or 5 star places seem to have an enclosed shower stall (the kind with the shower head the size of a pie tin) and a separate bathtub, usually ergonomically molded, so you can lay back and relax for a couple of hours, while saoking in utter opulance…
And FWIW, as another poster has mentioned, when I am on vacation in some exotic city that I have paid hundereds of dollars to fly into, hanging around my room, (either in the shower or the bathtub) no matter how upscale, is pretty low on the things that I want to spend my vacation leisure time on.
The OP stated that the Starwood line bill themselves as classier hotels. Ergo, things implemented in the Starwood line are “classier features” because otherwise they would have gone standard.
Markxxx confirms that the hotel chain is trying to spin their economic decisions.
The bathroom at the nicest hotel I’ve stayed in to date, West Baden Springs, had a shower AND a tub.
And I don’t get why anyone thinks hotel baths are oogie. Unless it’s a flea-ridden flophouse, they are cleaned every single day if someone is staying there, and every single time it’s occupied. So they’re actually cleaner than your bath at home … unless of course you clean yours every day.
The bedspreads, though, are another story.They never get washed, unless there’s a spill. This I heard from my brother, who’s in hotel management.
In the last 2 stays, I was told my room (corner room, upper floor) was an upgrade since I have a Starwood Preferred Guest number. My colleagues traveling with me were on lower floors, did not have these accounts, but had bathtubs.
My guess is that perhaps their way of making the “preferred” rooms larger is by cutting out the space the bathtub normally takes up.
I can confirm that, second-hand from my sister who worked as a chambermaid in a classy hotel. Sheets get changed, bedspreads don’t. She recommends asking for a new bedspread from the maid, and if you can’t then “accidentally” spilling something on it to justify getting a new one.
