Hotel rooms: why no ceiling fan?

General Questions
#1

Convo with someone who just returned from a sleep-deprived business trip made me realize: no matter how high-end or fancy the place, I don’t think any hotels have overhead (ceiling) fans.

Enough people want or need one to sleep that I have to wonder, why is this amenity completely overlooked?

I assume maintenance costs are a factor, but having seen other lavish or even ostentatious amenities it seems like a friggin’ fan would be peanuts by comparison. Any Dopers in the hospitality industry - or others LOL - have any insight?

#2

Having been part of a hotelier’s biggest nightmare - a big group of junior high kids - just imagine what teenagers can and will do with those, not to mention intoxicated adults.

They have enough trouble with people hanging things on the fire sprinkler, and then activating it when they jump up and pull the item down, and the faucet along with it.

#3

I’ve never heard of anyone wanting/needing one to sleep, and have never considered them “high-end” or “fancy”…perhaps air conditioning can be thought of as such, and most every hotel room I’ve been in has had that.

#4

Some people like them primarily for the white noise, and the fan function of the A/C unit can accomplish that, I guess.

#5

Agreed with NEARWILDHEAVEN and add that they can be kind of a pain to clean. You pretty much need a ladder to do it properly and that’s something about which the hotel managers don’t want to worry.

It would be nice if the front desk had fans which could be loaned out to guests on request. When I’m traveling by car and staying at motels, I usually bring a fan with me because it’s difficult for me to sleep without the white noise.

#6

The answer is always ‘money’.

#7

My Google-Fu is STRONG! http://claridges-hotels.com/why-do-hotel-rooms-rarely-have-ceiling-fans/

Actually I was looking images to confirm a reason not mentioned in the article. Most hotel rooms (at least those I’ve seen), don’t have anything too sturdy hanging from the ceiling. I suspect part of the reason is they don’t want a guest to be found ‘hanging around’ by a rope or bedsheet.

#8

It’s definitely the maintainance. Not that it’s so hard. It’s that they break easily. If I owed a hotel I rather my maintainable crew would be available to work on toilets and ACs. If you need white noise to sleep, bring a fan with you. Or a white noise machine.

#9

Should a hotel also provide your choice of pillows, bed sizes, blankets vs duvets? I want mine with proper blinds, the kind which doesn’t let any and I mean ANY light in; another poster thought that any hotel which didn’t have microwave ovens in the rooms is a dump.

There are hotels which have ceiling fans, but it tends to be because they’re old and haven’t put in a/c yet; or the a/c is finally installed and the fan may not even be functional any more.

#10

Hotels in warm weather locations sometimes have them. I’ve had rooms in Florida and Mexico that had them, in addition to the air conditioning.

#11

Yeah, IME they’re a thing in tropical locations. Certainly, hotels in tropical parts of South Africa, Mozambique, Zanzibar, Madagascar, Seychelles, Mauritius, Kenya, Indonesia often have them, as a straw poll of my co-workers turns up. One thing is that a lot of those places don’t really have good/cheap A/C infrastructure, but I personally think more importantly, they are considered to convey a certain Look&Feel to a place.

#12

By the same token, there are many parts of the world where most ordinary houses don’t have ceiling fans either - they aren’t needed.

#13

Most houses don’t not have any windows on three of the four walls and can get a good cross breeze or at least air circulation going.

#14

Proper maintenance on a ceiling fan, especially in an environment like a hotel room is more than just wiping down the blades. Dust and other particles are on top of the blades and in the motor housing. Unlike a window air con, ceiling fans don’t have a filter that traps most of the dust particles. Ceiling fans have a pretty delicate balance (most have small weights to provide balance) and constant cleaning can throw that balance off pretty quickly. Wobbly fan blades are extremely likely to break or fall, but they’re really scary to look at and listen to.

There’s also the odd balance when using fans plus air-con. Unlike air-cons, fans don’t actually lower the temp of the room. And it actually heats up the room slightly because of the heat from the motor. It just feels cooler where the breeze hits you. Step outside of the air zone and it feels hotter. In a hotel room, if you raise the air con temp to feel comfortable when you’re in the fan’s air zone, you’ll feel hotter when you step out of it and complain that the room was bad because of the hot and cold spots. If you just used the air con, the entire room would eventually settle to roughly the same temp, feeling more comfortable anywhere you move.

#15

We have ceiling fans at home, and in the winter, the one in the living room runs backwards (there is a switch for this) to circulate the warm air coming from the radiators.

#16

We had ceiling fans in the rooms of some of the beach resorts we were in. None of them produced the form of white noise I need to sleep. I got addicted to that noise when I first worked 3rd shift over 35 years ago and never kicked the habit!

#17

I’ve never seen any electrical device of any sort attached to a hotel ceiling.

#18

That’s very true: I’ve only seen a ceiling fan at Embassy Suites in Orlando. I like it because it provides some white noise. I’ve thought about taking my portable fans to hotels when I’m driving for that purpose.

#19

Also with regards to any electrical device: I rarely see sprinklers (not electric but still) in hotel rooms attached to the ceiling: they’re often attached to the side, with a label exhorting you to not hang anything on them (which would be a lot harder if they were attached to the ceiling instead!) I wonder what’s up with this reluctance to put things on the ceiling.

#20

Ceiling fans are common in India and they’re contantly breaking.

Given the maintenance and daily cleaning issues presented by ceiling fans, plus the risk of employees falling all the time and guests attempting suicide, it seems to me that’s a line item that’s a no-brainer to cross out.