Hotel Rooms with Glass Bathrooms: about the Idiocy of Hotel Managers…

It’s been a long day… Every journey to any vacations destination – sometimes short, sometimes long – turns out to be somewhat exhausting. At least for all the packing and organisation, that needs to be done in the run-up. But then finally you arrive at your hotel, you do the check-in; you can’t wait to see your room. You open the door and all is stylish, and neat, and looks so good. Awesome! But then… The bathroom is made of glass! This is about how a nice hotel room can still turn out into a nightmare and what hotel managers really should think about concerning their visions of a vitreous guest.

A glass bathroom at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Zurich.

This year I had the time of my life thanks to an open glass bathroom in a hotel room during my trip on the Camino de Santiago in Portugal. I have never had such a bathroom before! It was a hotel room with three beds in it. The bath is located in front of the third bed. How does it look like? In the middle (still inside the bedroom; no separation!) is the sink. Doesn’t enthuse me but I’m used to that thank to US-motels. Alright, next to the sink, on the right side there is a glass wall with one stripe of milk glass in its middle. Behind it is the shower. A test proves it: it is absolutely possible to recognize shades and shapes through this milk glass – it is distinguishable whether someone is naked or not! On the other side of the sink there is another such wall. The toilet is trying to hide itself behind it… Oh, and by the way – those walls end up 7.8 inches (20 cm) before the ceiling, so there is no (!) separated area at all for any kinds of bathroom businesses. You gotta be kidding me!

At the airport in Zurich, Switzerland at the Radisson Blu I once had one great double room: If you lied down on the bed and turn your head to the left you preceded a wonderful view straight to the shower. The bathroom is separated from the bedroom only by a wall of glass with some few stripes of frosted glass in the lower area. Behind the shower the toilet is clearly visible. Turn on the lights? Everything is visible… The Wiesbaden ACHAT Premium hotel in Germany also offers some nice gimmicks about the lack of privacy: A plastic-milk-glass-construction is placed in the centre of the bedroom. It is provided with a sliding door that wouldn’t close properly. On the one glass wall there is the shower, the toilet is on the other side and the sink – again – in the middle. Turn on the lights, and again you receive a premium overall view of anything that is going on inside the glass bathroom.

An open bathroom at a hotel in Portugal: View from the bed towards the toilet which hides behind glass.

Dear hotel managers, interior decorators, designers or whoever comes up with such absurd ideas and also makes them real. My friend would ask if you somehow missed the big bang. That’s normally not my way of expression but I think it’s actually not so improper in this case. So: have you guys somehow missed the big bang?! It is one thing to believe your hotel guest only enforcedly chose the hotel above a harbourage because in fact they do wish to share their bed with strangers and use shared bathrooms … But are you really so far from this world (or European standard, that is) that you believe people wish to have their toilet virtually uncovered placed beside their beds? That is a bit like this bathroom of “Dauntless” – simply single toilets one next to the other. Also, sinks in the middle of the room – in the great wide open. When they were all frightened staring at the beds the guy says: “If you like this, you’re gonna love the bathroom!” So guess what: nobody wants to feel like a part of the Divergent boot camp when living in and paying for a hotel room!

So please, give your own hotel rooms a try – share them with a person you don’t like that much or who is not too close to you at all. That might possibly be colleagues, bosses, neighbours, relatives, acquaintances, ex-partners, study-buddies, parents or any other person whom you loosely know. Now, if you feel comfortable sharing such a hotel room with one of those people, then you can be sure it will also feel comfortable to share it with your partner, your best friend, your mate or many other dear people. But that wouldn’t work the other way round! How can you assume the couple, who had been sharing their own bathroom for 20 years, feels comfortable with your glass baths and then transfer that to any other two persons who live in a double room? Many people have to share hotel rooms for business and there is (hopefully) nobody who wants to watch their bosses showering or using the toilet.

This ignorance makes me so angry! Bathrooms made out of glass make me so angry! Having to use a public bath inside the hotel because the alternative would be using the open-air-toilet inside my room makes me so incredibly angry! It may be that not everybody is as sensitive about their privacy as I am. Especially the guys seem to be pretty used to do without separations – at least in public bathrooms. To me the term “glass bath” or “open bath” is a true faux-pas-word and I think those habits in hotels (at least from up to double rooms) is an unacceptable no-go. Lose yourself in such ideas in single rooms but don’t bother the other rooms! Leave these glass baths aside when it comes to hotel rooms for more than one person! Avoid the situation that in the end nobody feels cozy and comfortable in your rooms anymore and even someone like me would have to quit her great passion for hotels!

Best wishes,
Claire