Practically every new lodging facility built in this decade appears to have standardized on offering long suites rather than just bedrooms. But, they forget to put a wall and a door between the two rooms, leaving them a studio apartment rendering them largely useless for two people to engage in serious sleeping and working simultaneously. Why not put up a door and turn them into small one bedroom apartments? In general, people tend to find large spaces, such as lofts, cool on first impression -- What a great place for a party! -- but lousy to actually live in.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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In the late '90's I used to travel to the Northwest often for work and my company had a corporate rate with The Four Seasons Olympia in Seattle (it was like $120 per night, believe it or not). One time they were out of regular rooms so they offered me a suite. Their suite did have doors separating the bed area from the rest of the suite.
Building hotel suites without walls and doors is especially hard to understand given a main reason why hotels build suites in the first place. A good part of the demand for suites has been from women who travel on business. Women often are reluctant to meet with customers or other business contacts in ordinary hotel rooms with the beds out in the open. Hence the popularity of the suite, with a physical division between the living/business area and the sleeping area. Building wall-less suites basically defeats this purpose, which is why it doesn't seem to make much sense.
Suites are more desirable than mere rooms, but harder to clean and subject to more maintenance calls (and vandalism). Every door is a rich source of maintenance trouble. Extra lighting circuits, fire sprinklers and alarm sensors (which many places' codes require in each room) ditto. More walls, especially "athwart" peoples' paths, means more wallpaper or paint visibly damaged by luggage and carts, etc.
Hence the marketeers solution: large rooms with some extra furniture, advertised as suites!
Customer books a suite (which actually means: more than one room) but only gets a deluxe room.
Pretty soon hotels will differentiate actual suites with some awkward term like "multi-room suite" or (wait for it) "European style suite!"
Soon to be shortened to "Eurosuite."
And the "traditional suite" will shrink, as a cost-cutting measure. Down to a single bed and a washstand in a closet.
Two rooms are nice, but most "suites" I've been in are much too small to make a separate room from the lounge area.
Nevertheless, misnomer or not, I like them. The lounge area has real furniture, including (usually) an OK couch and a chair one can actually sit in to read or watch television. Not everyone comes back to their room, works at the desk,* and goes right to bed. Some of us actually want to relax a bit, and having a comfortable place to sit is great. In regular hotel rooms, there's nowhere to sit except the bed.
*And those so-called desks in most hotel rooms are torture devices, with the work surface too high and no proper chair, so that one's shoulders and back are aching within a few minutes of starting to work/surf. At least in the so-called suites, one can rest the laptop on ones, well, lap.
Steve,does EVERY thought you have go into the blog?? (J/K of course!)
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