During Blog World in LA, I stayed at the Westin Bonaventure. It was overall a very nice hotel, with a lovely bathroom and very comfy beds, and I’ll do a full review to tell you all about it next week. But they were missing one thing, one important thing: plugs! Business travelers need plugs. Heck, regular travelers need plugs. Everyone needs plugs!! I crawled along on the floor looking for outlets near the desk—nothing. In order to plug my phone in next to my bed I had to muscle the freaking heavy nightstand out of the way to get to the surge protector behind it, and then had to unplug the alarm clock. But no matter where I looked, I couldn’t find a plug to use for my computer. So I ended up charging it in the safest of places—the bathroom. Sigh.
One of my blog friends said that she found plugs somewhere on the front of the desk, so I looked there too. As you can see, nothing.
Last night I stayed in an Embassy Suites that had tons of plugs, and my blogger’s heart sang.
Readers, do hotels usually have enough outlets for you? I would say my luck is usually half and half.
HUGE pet peeve!
A friend of mine always travels with a power strip, so when you do find a plug, at least you can plug in several items in the same place.
It is an understandable problem though. Adding plugs to walls is very intense work and replacing lamps with built in extra plugs is expensive if the current lamps still work and look good. I don’t fault hotels for lack of plugs because this is a relevantly new problem. One thing I wish they would do when they add new plugs(lamps) is put in USB charging outlets. I don’t know what the cost of USB outlets is, but on the surface it seems like an idea worth considering anyway. It would definitely get things ahead of the curve instead of constantly playing catch up.
No! I’ve found myself trying to move furniture and unplugging nightstand lamps just to plug in my iPhone charger or laptop. More plugs please!
It is a problem. I travel 50-75% for work and stay in Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt, Starwood, etc.. pretty much everywhere. Some are better than others… but they are all fairly bad across the board. And yes it is a relatively “new” problem for them. At the very least I’d rather see them add simple powerstrips… Until then I’ll keep carrying my portable Belkin just in case.
http://www.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=400738
I second the power strip suggestion. Hide the ugly thing under the desk if you think it does not match the decor, but please give me a place to plug in.
…and this is why I now travel with my own powerstrip! 🙂
This is one of my pet peeves. Grovelling under a desk to find a plug! Here in Australia, we have kettles in our hotels/motels. Invariably one has to plug that baby in in the bathroom. Not ideal. More and more though I’m finding hotels getting renovated with plugs near the kettles and at desk level. I’m very happy when I see these.
I travel with a CPAP machine for sleep apnea and often have no plug by the bed. I’m thinking about bringing an extension cord with me.
Travel with a power strip:
one outlet becomes six;
cheapest are under $5
Wow, what a great topic for a post. I stayed in that same Westin last week, and didn’t notice the lack of outlets, but I had an awful experience elsewhere later in the week. I plugged my phone in to charge overnight, only to find in the morning that the outlet did not work! Ugh. I spent the rest of the day trying to catch a few minutes and an outlet to charge my phone bit by bit. Not a happy camper.
But it bums me out to think about having to travel with a power strip. I try to take the absolute minimum of “stuff” – a power cord is really bulky.
YES – I hate crawling around on the floor late at night to find that elusive socket to plug my phone into. My phone also becomes my alarm clock so I prefer to have it next to the bed. When I travel internationally, I take the appropriate adaptor and a powerstrip, so I only need one adaptor for my gadgets.
+1 for carrying a power strip in my laptop bag…it has saved me from much crawling around and cursing!
As an airline pilot I have stayed in hundreds of hotels and the lack of sockets must be in shortlist of most frustrating things about most hotels (together with curtains that don’t cover the whole window and let light come through, noises from e.g. smashing doors and loud cleaning staff during the day and with slow and overpriced WFI).
I understand that a lot of hotel buildings have been built before people were traveling with more electronic devices than your average Walmart sells but it is highly annoying.
For starters, we all want to have our phone close to our bed as it serves as a wake up call, you often want to pass that last level of angry birds before hitting the hay and I like doing a quick facetime with my wife at home before I fall asleep on a layover somewhere in the world. As almost all hotel rooms have a bedside light, it can’t be that hard to actual split the wiring and insert a plug as well!
Secondly, I found that very often, even if the room featured a desk and a chair, there are no sockets closeby to plug in your laptop! I suppose that the Sheratons and Marriotts of today still welcome primarily guests traveling with an antique typewriter that doesn’t require electricity?
Let’s hope that most hotels will finally start to pay attention to the lack of outlets! Though the hopes are not high because I have been in too many hotels that proudly boast with their “refurbished” rooms, where the architects might have forgotten the basic needs of the travelers in 2016.
Oh and, to add to my top shortlist of annoying things in hotels: bright lights from televisions and smoke detectors when the room is dark (leading to having to unplug TV’s and even rubbing tooth paste on the blinking light of a ceiling smoke detector – not joking, the thing was flashing brightly just above my bed, real Guantanamo torture) and unlogically positioned light switches that guarantee a light show of three minutes before you manage to flick off all the lights!!