Sweet dreams are made of this
By Kate Simon
What makes for a good hotel room? It’s all about the bed. You can keep your Nespresso machines and Roberts radios, if the bed is uncomfortable the spell is broken.
First there’s the quality of the mattress. That’s a tricky call because everyone has their different requirements but, generally, it needs to be firm. Not so firm that you have to pull your old bones off it in the morning and walk about like an evolving homo sapien for the first five minutes of the day, but not a trampoline either.
Then there’s the bed linen. Different weights of pillow give options though, usually, one is never high enough and two are too many. And there’s no excuse for artificial fibres – especially at a time when we’re all becoming so much more enlightened about the menopause.
I stayed in a hotel on the Gower a couple of years ago that took me straight back to the 1970s – and not for its retro style. I hadn’t had such an uncomfy night since Mum decided to try out nylon sheets on our beds when we were kids. She quickly ditched them – must have been for fear of a fire from all the static electricity.
And it’s not only in a five-star hotel you should expect 100% cotton. One AirBnB I visited in the Cotswolds has revolutionised my linen drawer. The cloud-like effect of its bedding was so extremely comfortable that I was compelled to make a note of the make. Only Soak & Sleep will do for us at home now.
Am I a fusspot? Possibly, but blame it on a former AA Chief Inspector of Hotels and Restaurants who I shadowed for an article in the Independent on Sunday.
We met at a chain hotel in central London, which he was inspecting incognito. It all starts with the bed, he said, as he applied his expert eye to its different elements. Once that was done, he moved on to the efficiency of the hotel’s service, calling for a tray of tea and biscuits and timing its arrival, then picking over its contents in his meticulous assessment of the hotel’s star rating.
Service, like the bed, is a dealbreaker. Shortly after my crash course in inspecting hotels, I was asked to judge the AA Landlady of the Year award (as it was still titled, even though we’d entered the 21st Century). It was a pleasant task that involved travelling around the country checking out the quality of service at the B&Bs shortlisted for the award (most of which were in Scotland, which must say something).
There were plenty of boxes to tick, but in the end it was a toss-up. There was the owner who recorded Coronation Street for my mum (a companion on one of my covert trips) while we were out at dinner, prompted only by mum mentioning to her in passing that she liked watching the soap.
And there was the host who called to say that if she was a little late for check-in it was because her husband had been rushed to hospital because he’d severed his finger while gardening.
I immediately offered to cancel, but she absolutely insisted that I must not postpone my holiday, as she thought it was. And her determination not to let down her guest was indicative of the general level of service I experienced while at her guesthouse. She won the gong.
Photo © www.conghamhallhotel.co.uk