by editorial office, chd, Top Hotel

What distinguishes a good hotel? Heinz Horrmann, the internationally renowned hotel critic, lists the most frequent annoyances that made a negative impression on him during his worldwide hotel visits (without regard to hotel stars and categories):

1. Queues at check-in after an exhausting journey and badly trained personnel at the reception (it took me more than an hour at Fontainebleau Miami)
2. Searching for one’s room because guests are not being accompanied, a welcome lacking geniality, the guest as a mere number
3. Long wait for the luggage (general limit for the suitcase service: 6 minutes!)
4. Poorly prepared rooms: not ventilated, no welcome, no flowers, no plants, no complimentary mineral water, shortcomings in cleanliness (traces of foam on the shower wall, streaks on the mirror, no sanitized tooth brush glass)
5. A generally musty odor at the hotel. Corporate fragrance is easily controllable by electronic means
6. Bland breakfast service without produce; the worst case yet: blue, molded bread at the buffet of a Berlin four-star-plus hotel; unsavory: the waste bin on top of the tables of many hotels. Frequent flaws in the presentation of fruits and impolite personnel (it’s early in the morning, after all). Also annoying: the breakfast bill being served before the coffee.
7. Arrogant waiters and service personnel who like to think of themselves as more distinguished than the guest (with the worst example being the Ritz in Paris); another annoying occurrence: the decided interruption of a conversation because the waiter can’t wait to announce what we are about to eat
8. Noisy cleaning personnel on the floors early in the morning, without regard to sleeping guests; negative record: in a certain Mariott, the vacuum cleaners were wailing as early as 5.30
9. Interruption by people filling up the mini bar and by housekeeping (as often as five times in 90 minutes at Four Seasons Miami); the floor warden system at Oriental Bangkok sets an example: a match, placed on the door, shows that the guest is inside his room – rendering all distraction strictly forbidden
10. Hotel personnel to which the guest is a hindrance rather than king – along with actions denoting guests as potential thieves, such as clothes hangers attached to rails, signing for the number of towels; a hotel in Kehl by the Rhine topped it all when it demanded a deposit of 50 euros before installing a telephone in my room.

From April 5 on, Heinz Horrmann (65) will be appearing as “Hotelinspektor” in the live documentary by the same name on channel RTL. The internationally renowned hotel critic and editor (several columns, more than 30 books!) will be taking on difficult cases: Hotels in the face of ruin.